{"id":1386,"date":"2016-01-11T22:52:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T22:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batesonline.org\/triciablog\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2016-01-11T22:52:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T22:52:15","slug":"jan-10-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciabatessmith.com:443\/index.php\/2016\/01\/11\/jan-10-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 1-10-16 The Ego Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cOne thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.\u201d ~ Eckhart Tolle<\/em>
\nHappy Sunday!
\nThere is a committee that I have been on for the last year.\u00a0 It seems from my review of the upcoming meeting agenda that I have not been re-appointed for this year. I knew that this was possible leading up to the New Year so I am mostly OK with it.
\nBUT \u2026 there is a part of me that is bothered and keeps pulling my thoughts back to the situation. My ego is making problems where there are none.
\nMy ego mind keeps pulling my thoughts into questions to understand what they thought of me. Did they not care for my alternate perspectives? Did I not fit into their cliques? Maybe I just didn\u2019t come off as friendly.
\nNone of this really matters. I wouldn\u2019t change anything as I handled myself authentically. I know the ramblings of my mind are just my ego formulating a problem and trying to solve it.
\nJoel\u2019s message this morning was for me.\u00a0 He spoke about letting go of and leaving behind grievances.\u00a0 He spoke about how we feel insulted.\u00a0 Yes! That is the word for what my ego is feeling.\u00a0 I realize that only an ego can feel insulted \u2013 your true Self cannot feel that way.
\nThere are hurts that others can cause us such a betrayal and physical trauma; mindfulness and forgiveness are the tools you need to go deep to release internal hurt. But an insult is just on the surface. It pokes into the role of the character we have created, the personality we present to others. Accepting something as an insult is a choice, and a very easy one to avoid taking on.
\nI want to understand why ego works so hard to protect the personality?
\nAre they the same thing?
\nMichael Singer, in his Youtube video on mindfulness, explained that the mind is a tool, like a computer, that stores all of our experiences and just problem solves every past, present, and future situation for the purpose of making us feel OK.\u00a0 Are mind and ego the same?
\nPersonality, mind, and ego, what are they?
\nI accept Micky\u2019s explanation of the mind as a database of experiences with the addition of a constantly running program called \u2018see problem – find solution\u2019.
\nTo me personality seems to be the persona we build based on our preferences, things we like and dislike. Some of these preferences seem to be innate coming from the talents and desires that make us (our soul) happy.\u00a0 And, other preferences are formed from the experiences of our past \u2013 what we will let happen again and what we will not.
\n\"data<\/a>
\nSo what is ego?
\nMicky said we are all just trying to be OK. Through our childhood and youth we took on a series of beliefs that we thought would protect us.
\nIs ego the solution of the mind’s computer program that has run amuck?
\nLet\u2019s think through this idea \u2026 as children we are not yet socialized.\u00a0 We feel free to express our true selves but our peers or grown-ups berate us for not fitting in with social norms.\u00a0 Our mind processes the experience and comes up with a solution so the hurt doesn\u2019t happen again.\u00a0 We form solutions that become beliefs: if I become aloof, if I become aggressive, if I become accommodating, if I become arrogant, then I will be protected from others attacking me.
\nAs I more and more identify with my spiritual Self the purpose of the ego program becomes\u00a0unnecessary.\u00a0 I am OK.\u00a0 My eternal Self resides in a place of well-being.
\nEarlier today I chose to look at my time on the committee from another perspective. What if it was here for a season just to teach me something. I did learn a lot on this committee about subject matters that are new for me.\u00a0 What if the Universe is just setting me up for something new, that the things I learned this past year will be of service to!
\nJoel said this morning to let God be the vindicator. I took that advice from him back in September and \u2018oh-boy\u2019 did Jesus come through for me!\u00a0 It\u2019s time for me to drop it, leave it, and move on.
\nThere was another thing Joel said that really felt good to me.\u00a0 He said we should all have a file in our minds labeled \u2018don\u2019t need to understand\u2019. I love that \u2013 it is so freeing!
\nI don\u2019t have to understand everything (even though I desire to). One thing that makes the spiritual journey AWESOME, in my experience, is that God gives you the understanding of things when you least expect it.
\nI love those A-HA moments!
\nAll is well.
\nI feel good.
\nNamaste\u2019
\n\u201cThere is a poem by the great Persian poet Iraqi in which he tells, ‘When I went to the gate of the divine Beloved and knocked at the door, a voice came and said – Who art thou?’ When he had told, ‘I am so and so’, the answer came, ‘There is no place for anyone else in this abode. Go back to whence thou hast come’. He turned back and then, after a long time, after having gone through the process of the cross and of crucifixion, he again went there – with the spirit of selflessness. He knocked at the door; the word came, ‘Who art thou?’, and he said, ‘Thyself alone, for no one else exists save Thee’. And God said, ‘Enter into this abode for now it belongs to thee’. It is such selflessness, to the extent that the thought of self is not there, it is being dead to the self, which is the recognition of God.\u201d ~ Bowl of Saki, 1-9-16, Hazrat Inayat Khan<\/em>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cOne thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? 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