Don’t your ego get in the way of your true spiritual or business path…

The Ego is sneaky and insidious, A Course In Miracles says. And boy did I find that out over the last week. I recently had a spiritual revelation (terribly un-British of me) that showed me my life’s purpose. The message I was given is that I am meant to be a mentor for young women in the UK. To bring the teachings and the language of my less stoic, and dare I say it, more enlightened American friends, coaches and teachers to the young people of old Blighty, in a way that can be received over here. That is it say with less whooping, re-birthing exercises, high fives and chest bumps, and certainly less unabashed reference to God.

That day when I experienced my revelation, for the first time I understood what it meant to meditate. The feeling of revelation continued through my meditations as I saw visions of people who had left their Earthly bodies and called upon people who had hurt me deeply so I could forgive them.

Then I started to see totems everywhere, and my spiritual healer gave me the message that my energy was more clear than at any time in the 6 months that we had been working together and that she saw me being guided on my journey by a Buddhist nun, just as I had returned from a trip to Thailand (a Buddhist country) to work with my business mentor.

I was meditating every day and continued to get physical feelings of Spirit’s presence through my body during my time in stillness, as well as outward signs that I was doing and allowing all the right things.

Then I went away for 5 weeks for work, and despite the hectic travel schedule – 15 flights and all the germs and bodily compression / decompression that goes along with that – despite the drastic change in climate – the humid rainforest of Costa Rica in rainy season to the high desert of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah – despite the long hours working for my clients and the short time I had to adjust to each time change, make and then pack up my temporary home every few days, I continued some semblance of a routine with my spiritual practice.

During these few short months since I have discovered and started to practice spirituality I have been buoyed up by the fact that Spirit doesn’t seem to mind how imperfectly I do it as long as I make time for it. First thing in the morning is ideal, but not necessary. A clear mind that doesn’t wander for the whole meditation would be best but just 1 or 2 minutes of focus will do it, providing the willingness to ask for guidance and receive the answer remains.

However, since my return home my Ego has dug it’s heels in with it’s most effective trick… The legitimate excuse. I’ve spent the last 7 days being convinced that I’m “just jet lagged.”  I can tell you that no one outside of people who have chronic fatigue syndrome is this tired. (And many of those people will tell that’s all down to ego, resistance and mental burn out too.)

Here are the ways in which the ego has tried, and succeeded, in tripping me up, until today when I began to journal and realised there was a blog post in this lengthy list…

• It has convinced me that I’m really this exhausted.
• It has fooled me into thinking I’m getting ill. The kind of ill that never quite manifests into a cold or flu because it’s not a real virus.
• It has tricked me into thinking I have lost my connection with Spirit and my revelation was a fluke.
• Worse, that I will not be able to retrieve my connection with Spirit. Which of course by it’s very nature is an untrue fear based thought. Spirit is always there in every one of us. We simply choose whether to be willing and open to receive it, or not.
• It has mocked me. How dare I try to become a spiritual teacher and mentor for young women when I can’t even keep up my own practice!
• It has even crept into my meditations making me grasp for the wonderful tingly feeling I get when I connect with Spirit. Trying to make it happen, rather than allowing it in, therefore driving it away altogether.
• It has my mind in such a fog that I’m struggling to concentrate on any productive thing for any significant amount of time to make anything happen. A classic sign of the Ego. It is unfocussed!
• It has me convinced that signs from the universe have dried up. However when I review my last week I can see that I have had many many nudges from Spirit, but my mind and vision have been so foggy they weren’t clear to me.

So I’m writing this, partly because there’s so much to say and typing this is faster than my little hands can journal with a pen. And partly because I want to call this Ego Trip out in a big public way. A long, slow, journey such as this one, deep into the back streets of Ego Town, needs to be acknowledged in a suitably large way. I felt the need to call it out on a scale that is fitting. And hopefully as a comforting story to those who like me, are new to their spiritual path, or have tried a practice before and come under a fire so sneakily sustained by the Ego that you have let it go, convincing yourself it all seemed too good to be true in the first place.

I’m here to tell you it isn’t. Open your heart and check in. Then try this. Forgive yourself and your Ego. As the course says “In my defencelessness my safety lies.”  Remove your defenses to Ego, and hand your struggle over to Spirit and see what happens.

You might be pleasantly surprised.

January 2014 Issue