Dear Friend,

I got to thinking recently about how many people within the “spiritual community” say, “Kill your ego.” It’s always bothered me when people say that, so I finally took some time to sit with why it bothers me.

As I pondered this topic, I realized a couple of things that strike me as true regarding this phrase: 1) it’s a falsehood, 2) it’s completely unnatural, and 3) it can lead to psychosis. Granted, one thing does lead to another in terms of these truths, but let me explain why this statement sets off my BS meter.

“Kill your ego.” Such a noble and worthwhile cause, right? I don’t feel it is. From my perspective, killing your ego is like killing your toes. They too provide a necessary stabilizing force as you walk, stand and move about your day. There’s not much, perhaps not anything, within the human body that’s not useful in some manner. In that same respect, there’s a basic construct that we all have in terms of our overall energetic makeup – the ego is one of those things. It is an integral part of why we all came into being in this 3D reality that we call Earth. Everyone has one, just like a nose and a chin.

I find “kill your ego” to be a pat phrase muttered by people who have spent very little time truly understanding what makes up this experience. It’s a lovely thought we could be “above the fray” and while those of us living in the continental US no longer worry about being attacked by large scale predators (barring some humans), there are plenty of things that could harm us emotionally, energetically and psychically. The ego is there to protect us from those things – and at the very least, provides us with a warning of what could potentially cause us damage. I have found this to be an important warning system for myself – for things that cause high degrees of emotional discomfort and distress, the ego’s warning enables me to get myself to a safe stop and then deal with the item/issue in a very supported manner. It has enabled me to grow exponentially in terms of my spiritual practice given this support.

I must separate out those who use this phrase as a means to highlight that the ego should not be running the show – wise sages have said for eons of time that the longest distance ever traveled is the 10 inches or so from the head to the heart. (As a side note, perhaps that’s why children are closer to honoring their heart’s call, it’s a shorter distance, but that’s another topic for a different day.) I do agree with these people that indeed the heart must be present and an active participant “at the party” which is our lives. But we all have stories around when we listened to the heart over the head, and have lived to regret it…the romance that went on too long with no forward progress and perhaps dashed our hoped of having children…the job we love but isn’t challenging our minds, and so we stay which then jeopardizes our chances of getting another one as we price ourselves out of the market, and there’s other examples. In situations where one is truly enlightened, the ego naturally falls into line, and perhaps even away. But we must call a spade a spade; most of us are actively working on the enlightenment piece and we all have “feet of clay”.

In my experience, those who have actively “killed their ego,” have some of the largest white shadows I’ve ever encountered. There is an inauthenticity with these folks – their judgment (and I’m always one to judge so I’m able to see this CLEARLY!) is in full force, along with a boatload of “better than thou”ism which typically shows with a huge amount of preaching about how and what one needs to do, and there’s a very real lack of compassion and empathy for others. I have also encountered these folks as people who think they have a “formula” that if people just were to follow, all would be well. They tend to forget that there’s 10,000 ways up the mountain. Surprisingly sometimes their way isn’t one that even leads to the mountain!

I do agree that the American culture is experiencing a high degree of people living with the ego firmly running the show. For those of us who are aware of this, it’s an opportunity for us to actively practice compassion and empathy. As we are all subject to the universal energies bombarding the Earth-plane, bringing the feminine back and into balance, this ego focus will gradually start to shift. There is real beauty in the fact we all process these energies, even unconsciously, much like breathing, it requires no thought to occur. The compassion and empathy comes into play as those of us with active spiritual practices realize the horrible and hard things we see happening in the world is a result of that shift in people who aren’t aware of what is going on at a deeper level.

From one goddess…