We all come into being with an innate understanding of existence.

We are curious and full of energy and wonder.

Our spirits are hungry for understanding.

Individually we are hungry for knowledge and experience—not to make us more or better than others, but simply to participate. As children, we are all just interested in taking part.

We don’t view life or the progression of certain skills or having natural talents as some sort of means to an end. We aren’t thinking about the degree we could get or how much money we might make or who we might impress. We just want to engage in this life.

When we first come into this world we are full of questions, but never question ourselves.

The nature of light is to shine.

The rivers path is to return to the sea.

Our human essence is being. We are, after all, human beings.

Yet we become uneasy as we try to analytically define the heart of being, our tie here to this human plain.

And this is Love.

We are love. We live love. We give love.

Our physical perception of love is very much ego-based, and thus it appears to be like anything that we can palpably perceive—limited.

Yet spirit is love, we all come from this same essence, everything in existence does. We now know through science, that most of our chemical signature is directly correlated to stardust, and thus, as some say, we truly are made of stars.

But what holds these small chemical bonds together?

What is this glue that keeps our atoms and electrons and molecules spinning and moving and holding together every moment? It’s something beyond the physical or quantum plains of reality, something we cannot yet measure, but is omnipresent nonetheless.

A universal life force, an infinite celestial sanctity, a divine adherent—that I like to simply call love. And it’s this same notion of love that terrifies the ego.

Love is the ego’s undoing, yet it is also its savior, its balance and its truth.

When we are born, love is our truest nature—our purest state of being. There are no words or borders or lines—no structure. Love is boundless. As we can’t express ourselves through words yet, we express ourselves through sheer vibration.

We understand the world mostly through energy, moment to moment.

This is Spirit.

This is what we come from—a place without judgement, only awareness. We don’t come into reality hating or being fearful of anything. We come into this world crying out for attention, for love, and this is all we give in return. We are perfectly present.

Then, eventually, we begin to categorize and measure the world around us. We create tangibility.

Physics has proven that in reality, on a quantum level, we are all just different resonant frequencies or energy, a sort of molecular soup. If our senses were faster, we would perceive that in fact, nothing is truly solid, and that on a daily basis, we mix with everything we come into contact with, especially those we love.

Tangibility allows the ego to establish possession, whether it’s about our toys or whose brother is cooler or whose mom makes the best treats. There is no possession without tangibility, and the ego must own in order to understand. It’s in this transformation of perception that structure awakens.

We put Love into a tighter and tighter box. We give it perimeters, and we begin to fear that we might not be loved if we don’t act or look or do certain things. So we start to shy away from what comes so naturally to us. We begin to
view our existence more and more from the outside looking in. A hyper-awareness is erected through this odd sense of vanity that is built into all of our societal norms.

Imagine for a moment that your basic needs were all fulfilled. You had home, a place of shelter and rest. You had food and water to nourish your physical body. And you had love, unconditional, boundless love.

What would you do with the knowledge that you could do anything and it would be just right?

What avenues would open if you weren’t under the constant pressure of others expectations?

What would you decide to do with your life with the knowledge that you are perfect?

This is such a foreign concept to most of humanity that the truth is most of us really have no idea. In fact, some of us, completely refute this notion.

I’m aware that in contrast to this idea, some might argue that without any pressure or expectations we wouldn’t push ourselves to be great, to try and do more. But define greatness. Is this your wealth accumulation? How many people adore you? How amazing of a title you have?

To me, greatness lies in how much you have given. To me, happiness lies in kindness, in helpfulness, in all of our own perfectly unique ways in participating in this existence. And I truly believe that we all have something to give this world. It only becomes lost in translation for fear of simply being, fear of acceptance and the yearning to be satisfactory. We exist in a reality of comparisons.

We’ve spent so long developing a sense of purpose from the external feedback and responses around us that we’ve simply lost the true notion of what purpose is.

If we look up purpose in the dictionary it can also be defined as meaning.

So the question stands: what gives our lives meaning? Most would agree it certainly isn’t material gain. Most would agree that it is those you love and what you love. Our talents are gifts to give, a channel to nourish ourselves and the world around us—our personal kingdom—not platforms to erect monuments of ourselves on.

I don’t wish to harp on the ego, or even to make it out to be a dark part of our human nature. Not at all.

The ego is part of the human experience—it is something that we would have regardless of societal pressures or feedback. It has its place, just like everything we are given in this life, and I truly believe that the ego’s sole purpose is to protect us.

This is why we fear love, nothing hurts more than lost love, broken love or unrequited love. Ego is our protector from the outside world, from the intensely passionate human heart. But Ego shouldn’t have to fear love, for it is in all.

If we could only recognize our own perfection, and that of everyone and everything around us, then Love, then Spirit, could be Ego’s truest companion.

With mindful awareness of what our Ego-based decisions are and what our Spirit-based decisions are, we can become clearer on the truth of who we are, what we want and why we are here.

I know this can’t happen all at once. I am still evolving in this practice.

But I believe it’s a concept in vital need of attention, because perhaps it’s in this paradigm shift that we can all begin to value each other, and the world around us, in an entirely different way.

~

Relephant:

The Ego is Not the Enemy.

~

Author: Rainer Michael Jundt

Editor: Khara-Jade Warren

Photo: Author’s Own