The Way
- olivierbranford
- Apr 14, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 29
There are two ways that people live as adults. In this article I will describe the two ways, and show that there is only one way of BEing. It is a daily choice, made upon awakening. Every thought we think leads either deeper into love or deeper into fear. Without love we are without life. Fear is insanity. Let me explain...
The way
Confucius said that “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.”
The way of the ego
The ego is who we think we are. The ego is our fragmented, terrified inner child who was wounded during our childhood who is trying to run our life from a place of fear and pain. To heal we have to let go of our ego - the 'little me', the 'King baby', or the “I, me, 'mine'” in our life. The ego is an illusion. The ego is simply self-will run riot: It is self-obsessed and self-destructive, and is desperate to control everything out of fear. Although our ego is our consciousness, it runs our life unconsciously until we realise this and start to reparent ourselves as our Higher Self.
This short word, ego, is often misunderstood, yet it is the cause of all conflict and drama in the world from an interpersonal level all the way up to world wars. Jocko Willink wrote “If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.” Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual Master, wrote that “Complaining is one of the ego's favourite strategies for strengthening itself.” The ego and complaining are the cause of your downfall.
The ego is a Self-limiting prison that we choose to lock our Selves into.
The ego is simply a negative thought pattern from your conscious mind, which is actually fast asleep.
The ego makes us believe that we are totally unworthy and the golden child at the same time: John Lennon wrote about the paradox of the ego that “Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.”
Eckhart Tolle wrote “All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.”
The disciple said to the Zen Master "When shall I see God?" The Zen Master replied "When the 'I' ceases to be.”
Are you struggling with pain or fear right now? Do you feel as though your life is spinning out of control? Do you feel like you are drowning? Do you read a lot of 'self-help' books but find that they are not helping? Are you hooked on social media and trolling? Are you addicted to external validation? Are you insatiable in your quest to be loved, ‘successful’, young, slim, or beautiful? Are you addicted to negative or catastrophic thinking, drama, and conflict? Do you have alcohol or substance addictions? This is the way of the ego. But there is another way.
In John 14:6, Jesus said "I am the way and the Truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Mahatma Gandhi said that "The problem with the world today is that humanity is not in its right mind."
The question that you need to ask your Self is "Do you want to be host to God (Higher Self) or hostage to the ego?" Your mistakes have only occurred only in the realm of illusion.
Marianne Williamson wrote in 'Tears to Triumph' “How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.” She continued “We’re not without hope; we just haven’t been seeing it. We’re not without power; we just haven’t been claiming it. We’re not without love; we just haven’t been living it... The pain you are going through is not what will determine your future; your future will be determined by who you are as you go through your pain... Your human self might be in Hell right now, but your divine Self is literally untouched by your suffering. And your divine Self is who you are.””
Love is our natural state from which we have deviated as a species, and which we all long to return to. We need to return to love: Real love not imitation love. Don't deviate from love. This is the way of the Higher Self...
The way of the Higher Self
Spirit forgives whereas the ego attacks. Love is the power of God. God always has the final word. The world will always make sure that we actualise our full potential. The problem is that we resist love.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Marianne Williamson wrote in 'Tears to Triumph' that “The soul craves meaning the way the body craves oxygen.”
By shifting our perception from fear to love and surrendering our emotions to the Universe, we ensure that miracles occur by rearranging our thoughts and thus the emotions that come from them. Surrender all thoughts that are not from God. In other words ask in every moment: “What would love do?” Loving thoughts create loving feelings and loving feelings create loving behaviours and this creates love for us and all those around us.
As the paradigm-revolutionising Psychiatrist and Spiritual Master Carl Jung said that “In each of us is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.” The Higher Self is who we truly are. The Higher Self is also called the soul, the Higher Power, or the real Self.
This is the only real way of BEing, and is the only reality, but you may not know him yet as he has been hiding in your subconscious: In reality he is not subconscious, he is fully awakened and is connected to the highest level of consciousness imaginable: Universal consciousness, also known as the 'supra-conscious' or 'higher-consciousness' (as Carl Jung called it), or 'awareness'.
Who will you choose to run your life today? Your ego (wounded self) or your Higher Self?
It's a daily choice of BEing
Who will you choose to run your life? Your ego or your Higher Self? It really is a daily choice, made upon awakening each morning, through prayer and meditation.
It really is up to you. Only you can make that choice.
Namaste.
Olly
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