Waking Up

You are not your ego. You are the consciousness observing the ego as it reacts to the prompts it receives from its environment and experiences emotions.

Natural instincts, encoded in your DNA, along with societal programming, guide your ego through emotions and, consequently, actions.

Having an ego is necessary for survival in the physical world. This cannot be avoided.

To wake up is to achieve ego death and realize you exist beyond it.

To prepare for ego death, you should make peace with yourself.

When we are children, we are full of potential. All avenues of being remain open. As we grow, however, we learn that some aspects of ourselves are more acceptable than others, and we begin to push the unwanted ones out of sight. This is a natural part of growing up, but what is pushed away does not disappear. It settles into the unconscious. How do we find it again? Look at the people you dislike and ask yourself what it is about them that provokes you. The answer may reveal something in yourself you once learned to reject.

Once you identify the part of yourself you are at war with, the next step is to integrate it. This means forgiving yourself for what you have rejected and finding a healthy place for those qualities within yourself. Integration does not mean becoming what you once rejected. It means becoming whole.

Once you feel you are ready, you must make the true leap of faith. You must overcome the fear of death. You must let go.

You may experience ego death as a physical separation from your body, but in truth, only your vantage point has changed. There is nowhere to go. There is no space to cross and no time in which to cross it. You are simply experiencing all that is from a different perspective.

When the ego falls away, fear falls away with it. Without fear, you return to your true nature, which is love. In that moment, you understand what it means to become like a child again, happy and carefree.

Once you are unified with the Source, you come to understand that this childlike quality is an essential part of it. Part of us.

When you return, you return to the same container, but your consciousness has been altered. The ego returns as well, but your relationship to it is no longer the same.