What all of this means is that our spirit came here to play with our ego. We are a fountain of creative existence within an infinite ocean of imagination. And all our ego needs to create that life is some desires intense enough to pursue, and obstacles large enough to require strength, flexibility and/or cleverness to overcome.
Just as in the stories from the books and movies and bedside tales we love, it is through the overcoming that we gain the experience of the triumph of achievement. And in failure we pay the agonizing price for expectation. We can only recognize one thanks to the other.
It is through experiencing unconditional love that we experience the highest highs. And yet, when lost to us our missing loves bring us to the lowest of lows. To our soul these are the very experiences it is here to have for, as Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Discovering all of this, we may now ask, what then is the difference between the life of someone living with the clear light of wisdom, versus someone sleeping in a state of ego? The answer is largely, ‘context,’ or rather our ability to perceive and then shift ours.
To be our ego, our ego must believe in the limits of its framework and the values it presents. It is only through powerful moments of character that our spiritual self will evaporate it’s way through our ego’s mirage. Otherwise our ego is here to be a believer.
For the aware, the ego still rolls along, but the wise always leave portions of their awareness reserved for remembering that other people and the world around us, are all wonderful forms of self-produced fiction loaded with fantastic potential. And as fantastic as that is, none of it should be taken too seriously for too long.
This simple degree of awareness generates a lot of optimism and a real zeal for the simple acts of living. Viewed with wisdom it is possible to deeply enjoy the theatre of our minds with even more enthusiasm than our egos alone previously could. From that perspective we are able to ride both the highs and the lows with equal interest, but with greater attention and investment in our own story.
Much as we would view fictional characters from books or movies, the wise person spends much of their life aware of the fact that none of our ego’s thoughts, frameworks or identities should be taken so seriously that they would lead any of us to violate the lines that form our spirit’s character.
On the occasions where our ego is so convinced about its beliefs that it leads us to cross those lines anyway, the result will be us feeling beneath ourselves. This is a natural feeling that often precedes learning. Those are the sort of events that will often form a lifelong, pivotal memory that relates to who we fundamentally are.
Despite our sincere sense of having committed some form of ‘violation,’ none of these ‘mistakes’ or ‘bad roles’ are damning. Even if we think we’ve defied our spirit, we should know that in the end we can’t really do that without instantly making that experience a part of both our ego’s and our spirit’s larger journey. All of these dramas take place within a limitless and forgiving universe.
Fear not. Live boldly. For an infinite soul, there is always more time to work on some ability, or creative endeavour, or to solve some problem. There is never any need for worry. But every now and then, we’ll let our ego do it for fun anyway, just for the adventure. Such is life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
peace. s
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.