Spiritual Courage

Your ego is scared. It’s quite telling that I’ve never had a blog read less than yesterdays. It wasn’t disliked, it was barely even read. That’s not only statistically bizarre, it cuts to the point of the entire post: If you want to get healthy without having to make sacrifices of ego (not real sacrifices) then you’re reading the wrong blog. If you want someone to lie to you and tell you there’s an effortless, glorious way through this then you’ll have to read someone else, I’m here to actually help.

This blog’s like Krishnamurti: it tells the hard clear truths. They’re still beautiful truths once you see them from a different perspective, but if people want to grow without facing their own personal resistance then they’re really better hanging out with friends or going to a funny movie than they are to read a blog that will tell you that you can have it all. You realise the Dalai Lama lives in exile and he struggles with his temper, right?

Monks make sacrifices to grow, people get cancer and grow, people meditate long and hard and grow and some people are just so busy doing things that they never have time to ask themselves if things are good are bad, they always simply are and it turns out that’s pretty close to enlightenment. They certainly aren’t afraid of a blog that might tell them that they’re hiding from their responsibilities to themselves, to those around them and to their spirituality.

There’s a saying about tribes that commonly states: if you want to know how to grow just look across the fire and find something you dislike about another person and then find the source of that dislike within yourself. Do the same with these blog posts. Why do you have that resistance? Why do those ideas upset you? What about your life is out of alignment with your spiritual self? Because the real you is huge and capable.

What do they do on guided LSD or Ecstasy treatments for trauma and depression? They make you walk toward your fears. Heard of ayahuasca? You puke, you get chased by jaguars and people are terrified–it’s stressful. But that’s your ego being stressed. Your spirit is always fine. These are events restricted to your personal consciousness. The whole point is to detach your identity from your experience so that you can simply have experiences without judging them. That is what acceptance is.

You can hide from all of this for decades. I known spiritual seekers who’ve been busy at this for 30 years and gotten nowhere because every time it gets hard they panic and pull out. In return they get to have bookcases filled with spiritual texts and yet they live tiny, frightened timid lives as though love can only look like birthday cake and not your Mom yelling at you not to cross the street when it’s dangerous.

You’ve heard it from many sources; you must kill your ego. To do that you must face it and dissolve it. You must disassemble its counter-arguments leaving yourself in internal silence. Without your ego’s arguments and excuses you would be free and those arguments and excuses are meaningless to anyone but another ego. It’s not me that’s being hard on you it’s you. And by turning away from a challenge rather than toward it you not only don’t grow, you shrink.

Timid people who are missing out on life are in far worse shape than someone crashing and burning by moving forward. Business-people who are looking for the perfect decision never make one. Successful people make them as best as they can and if they go wrong they take new action in that new moment to rectify that. Anything else is spiritual stagnation and, as you may have noticed, it’s painful.

I care about each and every one of you in a way that you cannot imagine from an ego’s perspective. It’s not me that’s beating you down by telling you the truth, that’s the feeling you’re getting from the resistance you’re creating inside. I talk to your spirit. It’s the one creating your ego like a shadow of itself. I just talk to it and you slowly remember who you really are and that healthy spirit grows and grows until there is no more room in your consciousness for an ego, you’re too busy being awake and alive.

Don’t read quotes you like, focus on the ones you don’t like. Don’t shy away from the blogs–mine or anyone else’s–that make you angry. Anger is the reaction of ego. Anger is born of fear. I’m fine with you being afraid of the death of your ego because that makes sense. But you don’t get healthy by reorganising your existing ideas, you get healthy by challenging them and replacing them with something better.

Move toward your fears. There is nothing to be worried about. You are always safe. Every action you take takes places in the palm of the universe. You cannot fall. No matter which way you topple, the universe will catch you. So be brave. Be bold. Your life is on the other side of the doors you are afraid to open. And no matter what you find there, you will still be loved.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

Scott McPherson

A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.