Although we all think life should be easy and fun, and our relationships loving and supportive, life is challenging for everyone, no matter how successful, confident, or wealthy one may be. You are a complex, multilayered soul on a journey of exploration and self-discovery. That is, you’re here to accumulate experiences and then learn from those experiences to transcend the mental fluctuations that bind you to the density of this plane, to find joy within you.
The ego-mind wants you to believe that happiness comes from sensory gratification, so you keep seeking it outside of yourself and it keeps fleeting away; in truth, life is about discovering the inner resources guiding you to real fulfillment as you develop a deeper connection to yourself and the emotional freedom that eventually leads to your true Self.
You have a body with physical senses and an ego-mind that provides the sensory perception of your individualized experience, but first and foremost, you are a spark of Divine Consciousness in search of itself. It’s easy to forget this, distracted as you are with external obligations and relationships, but your soul is eternal and perfect while your body, your senses, and your mind get distorted by ego; so they can never give you the steady contentment you yearn for.
But they’re the vehicles through which you know whether you’re on track to find it or deviating from it. In other words, individual emotional fluctuations can be your compass to follow the direction of your soul. Doubting yourself or losing your enthusiasm are clear signs that you’ve somehow disconnected and must find your way back to yourself. Now, how does this happen?
Well, since the purpose of the ego is to separate you from Divine Consciousness, to give you the individual experience of sensory perception, it will trick you into believing you’re not good enough or things aren’t good enough, or something is missing or wrong, creating obstacles along the way to keep you trapped in a perception of victimhood. Maintaining this distorted self-perception keeps the ego in control of your mind—at the expense of your own joy, of course.
The core of your soul is Divine Consciousness, so it doesn’t suffer; however, the energy layers ‘encapsulating’ it (since each soul is individual) carry all the imprints of past experiences and incarnations that now create your perception, tendencies, and current events. So it’s like living life in a loop of past energy that colors any situation with familiar and repetitive emotional energy. What makes it familiar and repetitive is the ego-mind; your job is to become aware and manage this energy differently, to shift your direction and get out of the loop.
You Are Consciousness Trapped In Ego
Imagine you’re a bottle filled with sea water floating in the ocean, surrounded by many other bottles like you. What’s inside the bottle is the same as what’s outside—your true nature—but the bottle creates the illusion of separation from the ocean and the bottles around you. Your soul yearns to merge back with the ocean, but the ego-mind keeps your perception fixed in the bottle (in itself), distorting things and causing suffering.
That is, as long as you believe you are the bottle and not the ocean, or that your happiness depends on the other bottles out there, you remain disconnected from your your true Self, where real joy abides. Your happiness is not about people or external things but about freedom, for nothing that binds you can make you truly happy. Inner freedom is the peace and fulfillment you seek—the ocean of Consciousness—which emerges from awareness and love; none of these can be found outside of yourself, you must dissolve the bottle to reconnect from within.
Self-doubt and lack of enthusiasm come from the fluctuations of unconscious guilt and fear. Fear or guilt of what, you ask? Of being happy and free! Yes, you feel guilty of being happier than others, happier than your parents, happier than your friends, happier than the world. And you’re afraid to express all of you, the real you, since the ego-mind wants you trapped in the wounded child archetype like everyone around you (the other bottles), feeding your energy to a dysfunctional world that blocks the awareness that we’re all one and the same ocean of Consciousness.
So whenever you doubt yourself and your decisions or you feel disconnected from joy, as if your life had been painted gray and you can’t find the energy or enthusiasm to move forward, remind yourself it’s the ego-mind trying to keep you in a mental loop of dis-empowerment. Rather than believing it and letting these emotional fluctuations turn into a snow ball of self-judgment and sabotage, find something, anything, that helps you reconnect to yourself and your present moment. Here are a few suggestions:
- A goal to get you out of your head, no matter how small: fixing something, painting a wall, going for a walk, studying something new, etc.
- A creative endeavor to immerse yourself in: art, music, dance, writing, or any craft.
- A project focusing your attention in the ‘here and now’—can be work or fun related.
- A daily spiritual practice including meditation, mantra, prayer, or pranayama (breathing techniques) to dissolve ego.
- Quiet time to simply be and appreciate everything that’s good in your life.
- Self-reflection to recognize what you’ve accomplished so far on any level (both small and big victories).
Since the mission of ego is to keep you separate from the awareness of you own divinity—to experience this plane in individualized form—it is relentless in its ability to color your perception with past, painful emotional energy. Your battle with it has to be ongoing as well—through self-awareness and love. So contact me today to manage your energy and discover your inner resources to reclaim your true power against ego and spread your wings toward spiritual freedom!
© 2018 Yol Swan. All rights reserved.
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