Lately many people have been talking to me about self inquiries around guidance versus ego. They are asking themselves, “How do I know when a choice is being made in ego?” As with a lot of my life, I do not ignore synchronicities. The consistent exposure to this line of questioning has led me to write about this complex question as a service to those that are asking major questions in the midst of life changes.
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These inquires around guidance and ego have led me to my own self inquiry. I find myself thinking:
How can we tell if we are doing what we are wanting to do versus what we are supposed to do from a more spiritual perspective?
How can we differentiate between following a spiritual path versus convincing ourselves we are on a spiritual path?
Those of us who seek awakened paths of being need to believe that spirit is speaking to us. We need to engage in signs, synchronicities, and guidance. Without spiritual feedback that is real and physical, we cannot face the darker aspects of being without getting lost. This leads to another question.
How many of us are so lost in daily life that we have forgotten a spiritual path is even possible?
We need our ego as a construct to function. We do not, however, need it to hear and follow guidance. Our ego gets in the way of our ability to hear and follow guidance.
Finding balance between ego and spirit requires a comfortable relationship with ego along with the ability to connect with guidance.
Ego State Awareness
I write about the Healthy Adult Ego. This is an ego that can function in all states of being - negativity, confrontation, positivity, support, extreme emotion, turmoil, and bliss. The healthy adult ego is a construct that we work towards developing in therapeutic work. However, it is impossible to have a healthy adult ego functioning 100% of the time.
Imagine being completely triggered. You are freaking out. Your ego is demanding that you react in one way. You listen. You probably freak out more. This is a triggered, and often wounded, ego state. Does your ego voice tell you to focus on reacting - emoting, attacking, or escaping? Most people who have not done deeper self work can only handle being in one state of being at a time. The only voice that is heard is the voice of reaction. This ego state is that of a child. This is not a healthy adult ego state of being. This is a wounded ego state.
Now imagine being completely triggered and reacting. Another voice comes in. This voice tells you NOT to react the way you want, but to react the way you are supposed to. This voice creates guilt and shame if you react and listen to the child’s voice. This is the voice that guides you to suppress, hide, give attention to another person (fawn), and mask. This is the voice of your parents and care givers. This is also not a healthy adult ego state of being. This is another wounded ego state.
Now imagine being triggered, feeling it, and not reacting…yet. Multiple streams of consciousness flowing through at one time when triggered is indicative of a healthy adult ego. Multiple streams of awareness are happening at the same time.
Awareness of your wounded/defensive reaction or the wound itself
Awareness of the reflexive and perhaps familiar way of reacting
Awareness of an expected behavior or reaction
Awareness connecting you to a different and perhaps unfamiliar reaction
All these streams of awareness can happen to you at the same time.
There is a voice that allows you to understand multiple states of being at one time. When you can hold all forms of awareness at once, you are in a situation in which a healthy adult ego is present. When you connect to your negative reactions and still hear a connected voice inside you that isn’t reacting, the healthy adult ego is present.The healthy adult ego that can be heard, listened to, and acted upon as an extension of a more spiritual life path and on behalf of guidance is an ego that does not just react to life, but wants more from life. The healthy adult ego needs connection to a spiritual path.
Fragile Ego States
A fragile ego is going to avoid change. Fragile egos cannot stand change in any shape or form. In this state, change equals death and death equals the end of all existence. If a person is only capable of black and white being, any change in circumstances that is inviting healing, or an ego shift, is absolutely going to feel like death or have to be as loud as death itself. For these more fragile states, guidance may not even be heard or may need to be negative to be heard.
Guidance can be positive or negative or neutral. Not many of us realize this fact.
A strong ego is not a positive ego state either. A strong ego is a vulnerable ego state. This is an ego that feels superior, judgmental, avoidant, separate, justified, or above it all. Of course, underneath the strong ego is a fragile ego. It is important to discern the difference and not listen to the facade of the strong ego. Both the fragile ego and the strong ego are insecure. They are young. They expect negative feedback from others. They are anxious or stressed. They worry. They require attention.
Perfectionism and the Need to Seem Perfect
Striving to be perfect, by the way, is a fragile ego state that is often held in shadow. It says to the people around us that we are a distrustful, closed system. Children will not learn to trust adults who cannot face their own reality. We instinctively react to people who are holding onto a facade. Mind you, this reaction can be conscious or unconscious depending on our own reaction and ego state.
Burn out in people who do healing work is often the result of a shadow around perfectionism. Mothers needing space because they are exhausted from raising children is another place of shadow around perfectionism.
We need to let go of the idea that we have to be on a pedestal as a healer or that we cannot wound our children. These images create a mask around the more fragile states of ego we hold. Perhaps there is something we fear that causes a containing of self or an avoidance of self. These fears need to be brought to light to heal the fragility inside. Perhaps we do not know how to receive or be authentic but whole in negative interactions. Whatever it is to you, it is very important to recognize that perfect = fake = fragile. Fragile does not mean weak in this case. It means avoiding vulnerability and authenticity.
Befriending Ego
Befriending ego requires knowing how to identify your ego, how it
functions through you, and whether or not it is in a healthy or unhealthy state.
Part of self knowing is being able to simply identify what your less developed ego states are telling you to do. Accept the reaction but NOT run with it. There is a difference between saying “Yes, my ego is fragile in this situation” and accepting that fragility versus denying the fragility and using it as an excuse to act out.
The capacity in us to accept our multiple states of ego leads to an understanding that fluidity is part of authenticity and self acceptance.
How do you know when you are friends with our ego?
When you are not striving for perfect actions or reactions.
When you have an ability to try or a willingness to play with actions and reactions.
When you can mess up and be self responsible.
A person who is friends with their ego can handle negative feedback, can admit they are triggered, and has a freedom to both express emotions and take responsibility for the affect of those emotions on people around them.
If you think about it, this really isn’t that hard. Being friends with your ego requires a simple admission of ordinariness.
How Ego and Guidance Interact
Following the unfamiliar path is always considered the spiritual path. Why? Because breaking down the ego requires disrupting familiar patterns.
Moving from ego into surrender is the action of any spiritual path.
If our ego is fragile, too strong, young, or unbalanced in a specific situation, it is going to resist guidance. The signs of guidance - synchronicities, messages, meetings, voices - are likely to get missed when our ego is in weaker state. This means either guidance is going to have to get pretty loud for us to hear it or, and this is the harder one for many of us to connect with, it is going to have to become negative for us to pay attention. Sad to say that negative situations are often bigger wake up calls for many of us than positive guidance, but it is true. Our ego may only be able to get shaken up when negativity calls it to heal.
In situations that we are likely to desire change or healing the signs of guidance are going to be easier to find. Why? Because we are looking for them. The same is true for situations where our healthy adult ego is running. In this case we are open to guidance because we do not feel it as a threat. We are open to surrender and can accept the messages of something bigger than us in a positive way. Guidance gets to be positive when we are capable of seeing it as positive.
If you are comfortable with assessing the state of your ego, then you will know how easy you can see and accept guidance in any given situation or choice. Guidance in ego states that are going to inevitably avoid change will require more work to notice and surrender to. In these states, tools such as emotional release, journaling, reaching out, and searching within can be used to bring more awareness to the ego and support building a healthy adult ego. In cases where we desire guidance but do not have a healthy adult ego, meditation and slowing down are going to give guidance a chance to be heard. We’ll have to search for the guidance in order for it not to have to become negative.
In certain situations, even when we are relating to the situation with a healthy adult ego, guidance may be inviting us to open to the shadow of our more fragile ego. When guidance is opening us up to places within our own ego that need healing, it does not matter how healthy our ego is, we are going to feel resistance. What we are asking to open to is going to be hard to accept. Guidance we resist is inevitably going to create voices that say, “No. Don’t do it.” The voice of the no is going to get louder. Fully accepting guidance in this case is going to feel like making the most terrifying choice possible.
The need and willingness to heal the fragile states inside our ego create fear.
When we find ourselves in a situation that we can hold a healthy adult ego, a fragile ego may be present, but quieter in its reaction. Situations where we can hold a healthy adult ego are going to be less scary and more dynamic when the other ego states are recognized but not given over to. This is where we feel flow in guidance. Connection to guidance might even be effortless. We observe ourselves able to make a choice directly towards the direction guidance is calling us in and accept the results with surrender. With an intact healthy adult ego, there is healthier discernment of choice.
SItuations in which a mixed state of ego between healthy and vulnerable is going to find us vacillating. We are going to question guidance that comes and also feel the lack of guidance as something missing. This is the state of being that is most likely going to want guidance. It is also the space we may resist using tools to deepen into finding guidance itself. It is easy here to avoid the vulnerable ego states, listen to guidance egoically, and then realize in retrospect we were choosing acts of self sabotage or over action. Answering the call of guidance means following negative emotional states, not avoiding them.
Fear and terror reactions versus anxiety, worry, and stress.
When seeking guidance, we are going to need to be able to discern fear and terror reactions from anxiety, worry, and stress. Anxiety, worry, and stress are signs that we are not in alignment with our true being. Anxiety, worry, and stress are telling us, to “stop” doing what we are doing. They are telling us we need more of our aligned self in a situation or perhaps in our lives. We actually need to develop a healthier ego state to be able to make the change we want. Guidance here may not seem like a possibility, because we believe that the emotional space is a part of our reality not a choice. We need a healthier ego to develop a sense of choice.
Fear, panic, and terror reactions are signs that we are avoiding an ego death. Fear, panic, and terror reactions are actually telling us to embrace with a “yes” what scares us. Fear, panic, and terrror reactions are asking us to let go and move into change. These emotions as reactions are actually telling us we are ready. This is where guidance will flow effortlessly once we take an action step to embrace what we are afraid of. Whether or not we notice the guidance is up to us, but the universe will respond positively whenever we make a choice to surrender to more spirit and less ego in our lives.
Okay. So writing about the ego has been an interesting journey for me. I have spent the week heavily immersed in my own ego, thinking about it, calling it out, and working with it. This week I have doubted whether or not anyone is reading my work, whether there is a benefit to the service I offer in what I do. I have unconvered shadow. Guidance has been so responsive in my process, simply by bringing attention to my own relationship to all aspects of my own ego and my willingness to call myself on my own ego states with more discernment.
I’d love to hear from you. What is your relationship to guidance? How do you struggle with understanding ego states?
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