by Ross Bishop
People are often confused about what they are supposed to do in life. That is largely because we Westerners are so accustomed to living on the outside, in deference to the needs of our inner selves, that we lose sight of why we are here. We focus on our jobs, relationships, health, income and families, and with our intention firmly fixed on external concerns, we forget that life is an inner, not an outer, journey.
This has been said in many ways, but when you peel away all the intervening layers, what it all comes down to is that the purpose of life is to lose the fear of surrendering. That may seem simplistic, but in order to truly surrender, one must release the ego, and that is where everything bogs down.
You assume that if you give up control and surrender, you will be cast into some sort of endless, meaningless eternal oblivion. This is not accidental, nor is it coincidental that every human holds this same fear. This is the consequence of the feelings of abandonment we all felt when we “separated” from the Creator to come here.
At one moment you were nuzzled comfortably in the bosom of the Creator, and although ignorant, you felt safe. And in the next moment, you found yourself cast out of the nest, lost in the endless expanse of the cold and unforgiving universe. You had lost your security and felt rejected, unsafe and abandoned. And suddenly there was a “you” separate (or at least feeling separate) from God. This was the origin of your ego.
Your assumption at the time, although incorrect, was that you had been judged unworthy and tossed out. This was not an accident. It was intended. Under the circumstances, your feelings were both inevitable and predictable. The state of your consciousness prohibited you from seeing the truth, so you were bound to take these events personally. And because of that, you fell into the Mother of all Misunderstandings.
Fortunately, life is not about becoming something different than you already are. Life is about learning to feel safe so that you can let go of the ego and allow your true self to emerge.
You are a child of God, but you don’t know that yet. You are a part of the God-consciousness, and although you can feel unworthy, unlovable or a hundred other self-limiting things, you cannot be any of them. You are already the magnificent being you are “becoming.” The evolution that is taking place is not in who you are, it is in who you think you are. The change will be in your consciousness, in your awareness.
Coming to earth meant that you would eventually challenge the Misunderstanding and come to learn the truth about yourself. But today the Misunderstanding sits at the core of everything you do. It is why, aware of it or not, you feel unworthy and unlovable.
Your feelings of unworthiness have only a modest connection to the events of the present or even your past lives. Your life experiences reinforce those feelings, but in most cases, life events simply do not have the potency to generate the intensity of feeling you hold around the issue of unworthiness.
Feeling separated from The Creator, you became aware of a sense of “difference.” There was now a “you” and a “Him,” and now you were not feeling the love and comfort you had experienced just moments before. Once you invest in the concept of “you,” something is created that must be defended and protected. Now “you” could be hurt, as you had just “learned” from your experience of the separation.
Responding to “your” feelings of abandonment and unworthiness, you experienced fear. Thus it became necessary to create ways to protect yourself. The problem is that there is no real “protection.” The best you could do was to hide out in your ego. It did not provide protection, but gave you the illusion of it. It allowed you to limit your emotional exposure. Pain and anxiety became accepted parts of life. Today you work hard to avoid rejection and the insult that comes with it.
Today part of you does not move in harmony with the rest of The Universe. This is not because of who you are, but because of what you believe. Your beliefs cause you to experience fear and prevent you from remaining centered. When challenged, the ego-beliefs you hold (primarily about yourself) pull you off center. They move you into fear and limit your ability to respond from a place of compassion. This is the part that you and the Creator decided that you should resolve through coming here (and yes, it was a mutual decision).
Learning the truth is what sits at the core of your earthly experience. This “awakening” is why you have come here. But until you learn the truth, there will be a “you,” separate from God, that needs to be protected and defended. This is what led to The Misunderstanding ion the first place. Now, the really interesting twist in all this is that it is something of a setup. Since you cannot possibly be unworthy, your journey can only have one outcome! No matter how you bounce off the walls and create grief for yourself, there is nowhere for you to go but home. You must eventually come to know the truth.
Holding on to your beliefs mean that you will experience pain, and even the most stalwart amongst us has a limit to how much pain he or she can endure. Eventually even she will give up and surrender. And we must remember what she is surrendering to – she is giving up the ego’s ways to live in God’s truth.
When you grow tired of the pain created from living in your ego, you will eventually shed it and your beliefs and chose to stand in the light of truth. And as difficult as the process is sometimes, without the pain you would have little motivation to change. The desire to avoid pain and live in peace are guaranteed to bring you “home.” Because of this, the Creator knew that you would eventually find your way back. There is no other way that things can turn out! There is nowhere else for you to go!
The Ego
You are a child of God, but you don’t know that yet. You are a part of the God-consciousness, and although you can feel unworthy, unlovable or a hundred other self-limiting things, you cannot be any of them. The saving grace is that you are already the magnificent being you are “becoming.” The evolution that is taking place is not in who you are, it is in who you think you are. The change will be in your consciousness, in your awareness.
Your feelings of unworthiness have only a modest connection to the events of the present or even your past lives. Your life experiences reinforce those feelings, but in most cases, life events simply do not have the potency to generate the intensity of feeling you hold around the issue of unworthiness.
In it’s most basic form, the ego creates a sense of “you” which is different from your sense of “them.” This differentiation provides a wedge that can be used to create a sense of separation. The ego either makes others “less than” us by giving us a false sense of superiority or makes us “less than” them by creating feelings of shame, inadequacy or guilt.
Either way, you use the feeling of separation to find “reasons” to hold back and not risk being close. It gives you a myth of insulation from the vagaries of life. You can blame others, rationalize away an insult or in the alternative, beat yourself up, creating separation through self-debasement. But, ignoring the long-term implications (which it does), the ego provides a crutch to help you get through difficult moments.
The ego manifests through belief: “I am better/worse than her.” “I am beautiful/ugly, smart/stupid, etc., etc. It doesn’t really matter what “it” is, so long as it can create a difference that the ego can use. And although a belief may contain an element of truth, beliefs blow everything out of proportion so that your rationalizations will hold up and can pander to your fear. (Remember, beliefs are different than Truth.)
You may be overweight, and this is factual, but to create a belief that you are therefore a bad person, if you think about it, is just plain nuts! Yes, there are issues that you need to address, but these do not make you an unacceptable or substandard person! But, seeing yourself as bad does distract you from having to address the deeper pain that caused you to put on the weight in the first place. And that takes us back to your relationship with The Creator.
Copyright©2009 Blue Lotus Press
