I'M LEARNING TO EVOLVE BEYOND MY SELF-PRESERVATIOANAL EGO

Lately I have been reading and hearing a lot about how ego is our self perception of who we are and it has taken me 76 years to realize that mine has been known to work against me.  In all fairness, however, my ego has been trying to help me in a self-provisional sort of way.  It resists change and forces me to make judgements.  My ego is comfortable with me the way I am.

The little voice that tells me that I am not good enough or that a certain task is beyond my capabilities, is in reality trying to shield me from disappointment.  In the same way, an even smaller, still, voice is trying to guide me to achieve greater things in my life and to strive for a better self.   The only trouble is that the stronger, yet fictitious, voice of self generally wins out because it is just plain comfortable with me the way I am.

The goal then is not to try to completely get rid of my ego, but to recognize it isn’t me at all. Ego, positive and negative, is the accumulation of a lifetimes’ worth of experiences, emotions, baggage, trauma, issues, hopes and inspirations.  And whatever comes to us from God, or the universe, gets filtered through the lenses of our ego before we can comprehend it.

Considering that every thought we have is processed through our ego, it’s my job to weigh each of them and decide whether or not I want to accept it.   It’s like those cartoons where you have the ‘good’ angel and the ‘bad’ angel…except the one you listen to most does the most talking.

Because much of what I do involves the spiritual realm, I have been studying the key to evolving beyond ego and it has opened up a whole new insight for me.  I think that we all have a calling to participate in the evolution of our world but many of us feel stalled in our spiritual growth.  Most of us are convinced that we want to change in all the right ways, if only we had the right conditions.  But our circumstances never quite line up properly, or so our ego would have us believe.

Why is it this way?  Why don't we jump at opportunities to evolve to a higher level of being when they present themselves.

Many of us feel stalled in our spiritual goals.  When we are stressed we revert back to past patterns.  Most of us want things in our lives to change for the better but we do not want to let go of the things we have become accustomed to, our comfort zones -- the old beliefs, routines and habits our ego tells us to cling to.

The change that changes everything, according to Craig Hamilton, lies in the discovery and activation of a usually dormant part of the psyche that he calls “The Evolutionary Self.”

Despite aspirations to “be the change you want to see in the world,” you may find yourself struggling with the same habituated patterns that have plagued human beings since time immemorial.

• For instance, you might spend an hour a day on the meditation cushion, but still find yourself reacting unconsciously in your relationships. 
• You might speak about the importance of  “loving thy neighbor” and yet find yourself falling into momentary “road rage” when someone cuts you off in traffic. 
• You may have even experienced what it’s like to be temporarily elevated beyond the confines of the separate ego, only to find yourself falling back into it again and again. 

The Evolutionary Self is not the timeless, changeless “Ground of Being” spoken of in the great traditions, nor is it the conventional ego self that spirituality aims to transcend. It is the creative force of the universe alive within us, the human face of the Impulse of Evolution itself.

The creative power that gave birth to the cosmos, and that has been the driving force of evolution for the last 13.7 billion years, is not separate from us. In fact, it is the deepest part of who we are. And, if we can learn how to align with it, we will discover the keys to a life beyond our highest imaginings, according to Keith Hamilton.

I'll let you know more about this fascinating subject after I have explored more about how to awaken the revolutionary self and how to keep it front and centre in my life with a post-awakening cultivation and integration of an evolving world.  The key will be getting real with that ego that wants to protect me...and hold me back from evolving.