Written by Wes Annac, The Culture of Awareness

In order to feel any degree of lasting spirituality or wholeness, I think we’ll have to be willing to give up the mortal, ego-driven self and allow Source to express itself through us.

This isn’t because Source is somehow ‘holier’ or more lighted than our physical personalities – it’s because the ego, if we let it, will take complete control of our thoughts and emotions. The result could be that we sputter into depression and myriad other symptoms of an overactive ego that, speaking from experience, don’t feel very great.

I’ve probably written a hundred times that we need to transcend the ego and allow Source to take the perceptual wheel and steer if we want to find true wholeness, but I’ve had trouble with it.

I’m realizing that it’s easy to say something, but actually doing it can be a lot harder. Completely transcending the ego sounds doable, but we might have trouble if we don’t stay diligent.

Lately, I’ve woken up in the morning and struggled to balance my thoughts and emotions.

Only after the hours of unbroken depression I experienced yesterday have I finally realized what my issue (and maybe the issue of those of you out there who’ve also struggled with depressive thoughts or feelings) really is: I care too much about the ego self and I haven’t put as much of my energy into Source or spirituality in general.

I know some seekers don’t think we should look to a higher spiritual source beyond ourselves for inspiration, clarity or general positivity, but I think there’s value in focusing on spiritual concerns over egotistical, however dualistic it sounds. I’m learning that the more we feed the ego and its rigid mindsets, judgments and expectations, the unhappier we’ll be.

Deep inside, most of us are hurting in one way or another.

We’ve all accumulated pain, which, in some cases, we just don’t feel like we can surface or release, and our pain can come to the surface when we vest ourselves too much in the ego. It won’t heal – it’ll express itself through us so strongly that it overtakes us.

I don’t know about the rest of you who struggle, but I’m realizing that I need to get the finite ego out of the way and become an unbroken conduit for the expression of my latent Christ consciousness. Just like we’ve all felt hurt before, we can all tap into our inner Christ consciousness, which can alleviate our identity-based stresses, worries and concerns.

Like reggae artist Matisyahu has said, “You got to give yourself up and then you become whole.

“You’re a slave to yourself and you don’t even know. You want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow. If you’re trying to stay high, then you’re bound to stay low, you want God but you can’t deflate your ego. If you’re already there, then there’s nowhere to go. If your cup’s already full, then it’s bound to overflow”.

It took hours and hours of depression for me to finally call on Source to give me some kind of sign that I wasn’t losing myself. Shortly after I made this call, my depressive haze gradually turned into a meditation, and it was in this meditation that I received what I feel was important intuitive guidance about steering clear of the ego.

I intuited that if I continue to fret over matters that involve my mortal self, I’ll be unhappy forever.

I’ve experienced plenty of things in life that could cause me to embrace depression, and it’s because of this that I’ve been advised to let my identity-based perception go and let myself become an unhindered conduit for Source and its energies and expressions.

Let your finite physical concerns go, I was advised. Let your ego die, even though it’ll fight very hard against it, and rebirth yourself into meditation; creativity; sharing your love with everyone around you, free of conditions. Let the ego’s influence fade, and you’ll find the bliss you seek.

I asked Source for a sign, and instead, I was given a direct intuitive message.

It seems that the message will always be to let our ego-driven grip on our reality not only fade, but completely die. Ego death might sound like kind of a dark thing, and to our egos, it’s the absolute worst thing that could happen.

I’m reminded of the story of a spiritual seeker who meditated under a famous teacher. After meditating for quite a few months, he suddenly found that he was gripped with intense fear when he’d get into his zone.

He told his teacher about it, and his teacher’s perspective was that he was reaching the threshold of complete and total ego death and his identity-based self was responding with as much fear as it could express.

His mortal self was afraid of the ego death that’d eventually result from his diligent meditations, and it made this fear known in its exact, raw form. I feel like I’m going through something similar, only instead of intense and unbearable fear, I’m feeling a range of emotions that all lead back to the ego self feeling hurt, fractured or damaged in some way.

Concluded in Part 2 tomorrow. To read the full post, head here.