Lesson 1 - FREE online mini course - FAST TRACK to PEACE
Time to start our FREE online mini course FAST TRACK to PEACE with Lesson 1. You will find a new lesson each week and over that week read it, reread it, discuss it and explore the Thoughts, Suggestions and Things to Practice. This first lesson is short but packed with a great start to an overview of the ego. So let's begin. . .
Ego, for better or worse (From Part I "All About Ego" of the book 'Guilt? Fear? Anger? FAST TRACK to PEACE')
Are you walking around in a body? Then you have an ego in working order. Egos run our lives, our bodies, our developing lifestyles. Egos are praised and egos are cursed – they are either necessary for proper psychological development, or an evil that drives us into becoming self centered bores or even sociopaths.
But, the most important thing to remember about egos is that we all have one, with its unlikable offspring guilt, fear, and anger. What we do with our egos and their offspring, for better or worse is what this book is about.
‘Jekyl and Hyde’ might be a good name for ego, but for now I prefer going with the simple nomenclature – Survivor.
Here is your brain honed down to its simplest directive - use all its expansive resources to keep your body alive. Alive is good. Dead is bad. Anything that in the slightest bit resembles death, dying and loss is bad.
Every physical sense, every synapse lining up to connect electrical pathways, all the information you collect, all the habits you form, all of this is designed to keep you alive. And to survive you must keep pushing yourself to your highest level of performance. Whether it is the most daring athlete, the richest financial genius, or just going for the gold in resident couch potato – your brain, the working arm of your ego wants you, no needs you, to survive at what it has deemed ‘the best for you’.
The good part of ego is that it will direct you to get better at what it deems important for your survival. The bad part is that it can collect mistaken beliefs about certain things being helpful when they are really hurtful – Jekyl and Hyde at odds – and at your expense.
Ultimately, by following these stepping stones, we cannot but come to the conclusion that keeping this corpse walking around forever is a really rotten idea. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun.)
Providentially, our egos will guide us to do anything to survive, so we can teach our mind to guide it to what true living is. We can teach ourselves that the body is only a tool to help us gain life, and life is so much more than just living in a body. Then we can take that quantum leap across miraculous boundaries using our egos to fling us into the arms of Something indescribable and all encompassing.
Before, we go to that most important first step we must shine a light on ego’s offspring – the emotions of guilt, fear and anger – the wolf pack lurking within. ( We will cover these indepth in the next lessons)
“Providentially, our egos will guide us to do anything to survive, so we can teach it what true living is.”
Signs that ego is at work will be feelings of guilt, fear and anger. Since we are so used to ignoring these feelings, and/or calling them by other more acceptable names, why not make a list of other emotions that fall into these three categories so you will notice ego’s shenanigans easily.
For instance:
1. Guilt – can feel like unworthiness
a. (What else may be a disguise of guilt?)
2. Fear – can feel like anxiety
a. (What else may be a disguise of fear?)
3. Anger – can feel like righteous indignation
a. (What else may be a disguise for anger?)
Next week we will start the study of ego's offspring, guilt, fear and anger. Take time to share a discussion of these ideas with friends, and you can find a 'hard' copy of the whole course at
bettejeancundiff.blogspot.com
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