Explaining ego to the Christian Community
Some thoughts I Shared with the Christian Community. Had some elements that may be helpful here. Shared values with the Spiral Dynamics community.
I removed ego. When I say ego, I mean just the pursuit of an individual narrative outside of God and disconnected from everything else. I recognize that the truth is that God created everything, but He didn't just create it. That's not a good way to see it, because there is nothing without God. God is everything. God generated. God transformed Himself into what we have here. But there is nothing separate, and nothing existed before Him. He is everything. And so, that being said, there's nothing that's been created that is not also Him.
Now, it seems like me and Him have done a lot of work to remove this pursuit of selfish ambition, because it doesn't seem like it's selfish. Everybody talks about the hero story, or who it is you are, and all this and that. None of it can be true. And I know that this is a lot of information for people who are not familiar with this type of thing, but just look at the end goal here. Jesus says, "I'm one with You and You are one with Us," John 17. "The Father and I are one." There's a reason that He's saying this. "I'm not here to do what I want, I'm here to do what the Father wants."
It's not just Him. This is how we're all supposed to be. I know this may seem like a lot, but understand that the goal was never to discover an independent identity. Jesus doesn't even talk about developing an identity, and that's because the more He focuses on making sure that you actively are just one with God, that's because this identity stuff is an illusion. It's a distortion. It's something that our brain creates. We're trapped in it by society and by our biology.
You start off without it when you're a kid, like a young kid, and then you grow through all these realizations. You have to really do a lot of work that Jesus was talking about, and then maybe you get to the other side where you're okay removing it. Mine's gone. You kind of come to the understanding that it's all an illusion.
I look at everybody else, and I'm not angry, but so many things just don't fit for me anymore. They don't fit. I'm not in my own story. If anything, I can be in the Jesus story or God's story, but there's this lack of creating any sort of narrative that is individualistic and separate from who it is we really are and being a vessel for the one person who truly exists.
I guess I feel like being in the Christian community isn't for me as much anymore. I love people who love the Lord, but I didn't realize until I really dedicated myself to this how much unintentional evil we are bringing into this space as a group. We're evil. I know it doesn't seem like it, but we're evil. Any identity that we currently hold, that we're really rooted in, is immediate competition for your priority, and is arguably the thing or whatever is connected to that identity that you would put over God. It's the idol in your life.
Every time you fight for yourself as number one, it means you're unintentionally fighting against other people. We're trapped in these identities that we create. We're trapped. I'm free from it now, but you really don't fit into the world without an identity structure that is super self-serving or serves a very specific community while being exclusionary to others.
We just have so much evil in our Christian community. People want to lift themselves up or create a hierarchy. They want to be better. They want to be your teacher. They want to be your leader. They want to be above. They want their story to be pushed. Quite frankly, I think that if they could just take God's place in that hierarchy, they would do it. They want to be God. We're evil, bro. We're evil.
Here are these different stages of ego that develop. The first one is the most selfish, harmful, I do what I can get away with, and I'm the main character. The second one is: I'm important, we have established rules, there's a hierarchy that I'm in, and we're all going to stick with these rules. The third is making the rules for yourself, being ambitious, competence driven, status driven, and competition driven. After that comes more of a caring, kindness, and compassion that develops when you realize it's more than about your ambition and status, and that other people are very much an integral part that need your energy and compassion. The one after that is understanding systems without needing to be involved in hierarchy as much. And then the last one is kind of dissolving the need to be anything other than yourself, everything that is, and operating with love as a steward.
You're pretty much trapped in that progression until you get to the end. But each of those levels requires other people to be beneath you. Each requires comparison and hierarchy. And in all of those levels, in order for you to win, somebody has to lose in a way that you find intolerable. Somebody has to be less. Somebody has to be smaller. Somebody has to be less authoritative. Somebody has to be less intelligent. Somebody has to be off track. And it's evil, because what it means is that other people have to essentially be suffering dysfunction and what comes with that is them hurting others, voluntarily and involuntarily, living in that, and you observing it in order to solidify what you call a win for yourself. That makes us evil.
It all comes from being committed to having and securing an identity that is individual, away and above everything else. That's why identity is such a fickle, shaky thing. We are always trying to prove and maintain it. It is a lie. But you can prove we are all connected. If many things are all connected, then maybe they aren't many things. It's one thing.
If I don't allow my identity to expand to cover you and your life, then I won't love you enough to act right. I have to "become" God. Similar to when you have a great career and you aren't "Dan from the town" anymore. You are the company's HR department while you are there. A similar switch.
This is a response to someone who asked a question of what to do next:
Start with this: "I am willing to give everything... and it is worth it. They are worth it."
First is leverage. You have to really do a deep dive and see what a corrupt brother or sister having an ego has done to hurt and damage all the intimate parts of the kingdom. See the moments ruined. See the pain that people never got through and didn't forgive. See Christian brothers and sisters burning in hell because of ego seeds planted at sensitive times in their life. See the fact that a bunch of us are letting other people suffer in our own communities because we feel like they're a different denomination. Our church could help out. I want you to see all the people who were good people but were ignored by our brothers and sisters because they felt like they were too good to serve. I want you to see all the people who could have had answered prayers had we lined up together to serve those who didn't have the eyes to see the Lord. I want you to see the people who didn't make it because we didn't come in small groups to join with them in prayer during their important moments. That's our fault. We thought that we weren't them. I want you to see all the collective pain and just decide you're never going to be contributing to that again. You have to decide that it's enough, and that time is over. I will never bring that distortion to my Christian brothers in moments where God needs me to be a vessel, empty, ready to serve. Ego energy corrupts. It just makes sure that we don't make it. We won't be doing that anymore. Please decide that you're not going to do that anymore. And that's where the first thing I said matters. I'm going to give everything and do everything to make sure that my life force and energy is separate from that issue. When I come to my brothers, my heart needs to be right. God, do everything. I give you access to everything, irrefutably, to change me and make sure that I'm never this problem again. Do everything in my life to separate me from that issue, to make sure that I'm always a clear vessel for you.
Okay, so the goal here is to fuse who you are with God Himself. So essentially, when somebody asks you who you are, you really just say Him. Now, the way to functionally do that is to develop a good relationship with Him, with the Holy Spirit, and learn from Jesus' teachings but really intimately get to know Him and understand the ideas that He's bringing to you, like really core character traits that He is bringing to you, and choose to be the expression of those traits. So that's one. That's going to replace your identity. You're going to use the notion of us all actually being God's physically manifested body, in a very colorful assortment, to allow us to have an aggregate identity that fuses us to everything around us. What am I? I am everything, and everything is one thing. Who am I? I am the one sentience that created this journey, period. I am God, period.
So then, what you also do is take everything that can be removed from you or anybody else, changed, like a name, like a story, a narrative, or any part of identity that is fickle, can be changed, can be destroyed, can be modified, and actively remove it from any identity label that you have and that other people have, while recognizing that we are all this one thing, this entity called God. Then you're going to recognize that when your mind is just silent, it's just you and God, the only thing that can't be changed is that active awareness of what's going on, this kind of pre thought perspective. And remember, that's you without any of the story, any of the narratives, still fully present. But also look at how closely it goes: God, and then directly creating that in you, which is also Him. So the most that you can possibly be is that immediate awareness, which is also Him. What we are is everything. Who we are is the one person who is.
Okay, now, what's going to happen from there are a few different blessings, but one thing that needs to happen is you have to decide that your story and narrative are worth less than the alternative. First, you're going to completely remove those, and ask God to allow His divine intelligence to flow through your life and to just be expressed as often as He sees fit. From this place, you live with love because you understand that everybody and everything is who you are, and we are always only God. And you want to love people and love animals and love all of creation and forgive them and live in grace, because we are here to steward ourselves. We are not different from our neighbors. We are all only God's expression.
Remember, remove the lies that people tell themselves from their story so that you can see them clearly. They are that silent part of the mind, and they are God's essence. Everything else is delusion and an aggressive illusion. So once we're living from love, you're going to want to keep an eye out for every time that God worked in silence, and really be comforted by the extraordinary activity that the Holy Spirit has privately and publicly carried out for everyone we now have a heart for. And to see that He is so much more capable of stewarding this planet, this world, and all of creation than we can ever witness, which is great, because it always means that there's somebody who absolutely loves us, who is giving everything and is adequately showing up for every component of this system that matters. It's all in good hands. And you are a part of that process.
So then you just live without this illusion, total clarity, walking hand in hand intimately. You seek that intimacy with God, knowing the higher part of yourself. Oneness comes through intimacy, spending time with Him. And you allow all that love that you feel, that gratefulness you have for being here and for being with your best friend, the Holy Spirit. You get to live in a world where you're one with God and you love everyone, and you know that no matter what it feels like, everyone is taken care of in ways they can't understand. All you want to do is show up and give figurative kisses, service, and love to everybody else. And it doesn't matter if you take a job or a position that nobody knows about, because you're stewarding a plant that is a person, that is a system, that is a thing, that's going to become something else. I, as a gardener, don't need my plants to thank me, and I love them just the same. Most of our contributions will be without reward. But the reward is being a part of a capable system where the Holy Spirit is stewarding everything and everyone we love.
Operate because it's an expression of God. Love will replace the drive to do. Intention needs to replace attachment. There's more to do here.
But you need the Holy Spirit, to hear from Him, to drive against being the kind of person who hurts your brothers. You need willingness to get through it. You have to give this old life up, because your family needs you to. There are so many consequences, including not all of us making it to Heaven, if you don't turn this corner. If you are going to show up, you need to be ready. Being ready looks like this.
Here is my link. The journey Ive had may help you. There are other writings on my page.
You've got to love the Lord. You've got to just decide that you're doing this the right way. It will cost you everything, and I promise. I give it up for God, and for other Christians, and for everyone else who is supportive to the Kingdom. Even if I have to give my life, it's worth it. I don't own anything. Everything is shared, using wisdom from the Holy Spirit, and I will steward everything with discretion.