Of Ego and Essence

I have this thing I want to create. This is something I’ve never created before, so I have no track record of success in creating this particular thing. It’s a pretty big thing, as things go. By that I mean it has a lot of significance. Most people would say that such a thing cannot be consciously created, consciously manifested.

Most people would say, if such a thing manifested at all, that it would be by luck or by cheating or by 'the grace of god,' as if god were something that was not us. That’s what most people would say. There’s not much listening in our world—yet—for conscious creation, or for ‘you are god also’ for that matter. But I know something that ‘most people’ do not know. If you’re reading this you know it too.

We know that we can all consciously create because we unconsciously create all the time. Every waking moment of every day in fact. I know that I can consciously create, and I know that I can consciously create this thing that I want. I know, strongly, deeply and without reservation, that I can consciously want a thing and have it show up in my experience. That is, have it manifest.

Though I know this with every fiber of my being, thoughts pop into my head frequently that question my ability to do this. I have some ability to look at thoughts and choose whether or not to accept them, and over the years I’ve had a lot of success doing so. I’ve had some success doing the same with these thoughts.

But I noticed that these thoughts have been coming with increased frequency and urgency, and that increase in frequency and urgency caused me to stop and ask myself what was going on. Why was I trying to sabotage myself with thoughts that are exactly opposite of what I want to create? Why am I frequently being visited by thoughts that say “I can’t” when I know I can?

It’s kind of a fun thing that happens in my life when I ask questions like that. After asking some kind of question to no one in particular, generally I’ll end up being guided to the anwer. I’ll see something that sparks an interest in me that I follow, or I’ll have some inspiration to do something or go somewhere or look something up or call someone. Or someone will say something, or I’ll see something on TV or in a movie or something I’m reading that either answers the question or becomes another clue to follow.

In other words, very often when I follow my impulses I’ll be led right to the thing that answers the question I was asking. I’ve begun to think of my life as one giant Easter Egg Hunt, where the clues to the answers I seek are hidden around me and it’s my task (my joy!) to find them.

Over a year ago I contacted Gina Lake for a private consult. Gina Lake is a wonderful gal of many talents, one of which is a strong background in understanding and interpreting astrological charts, and another is channeling her spirit guides, a group she calls Theo. She writes books with Theo on her shoulder, and gives personal sessions reading charts and channeling Theo.

I called her for insight into an an area of my life where I was having some frustration. It was a terrific session, one that I enjoyed and which helped me a great deal with the issues I was having at the time. I should add that I highly recommend Gina to anyone who has such an interest. Gina had sent me a tape recording of our phone session, which I put into an old tape recorder and listened to.

In my house I have a lot of places to store things. Lots of drawers and closets and cubby hole things. My dad had a saying “A place for everything and everything in it’s place.” I’ve spent the greater part of my life living in opposition to that philosophy. Likely not by accident, if you think about how children often and purposefully do things in direct opposition to the wishes of their parents. ;) So anyway .. Often I don’t pay much attention—sometimes no attention—to where I put things. Add to this that I’m not particularly organized, so things in my house get ‘misplaced’ frequently.

Knowing all that, it probably won’t surprise you that at some point the recorder—with the tape still in it—became lost. I searched for it rather diligently for awhile, but never found it. As time went by, every once in awhile I’d realize the recorder and tape were still missing, do a brief search, not find them, not care much that yet again I hadn’t uncovered the recorder’s hiding place, and move along. Eventually I stopped looking for it at all. I figured if I ever really needed it, it would show up.

Back to this question I was pondering—the question about why thoughts, unwanted thoughts, keep surfacing in my mind despite the fact that they are thoughts that draw me away from an intent that I have, a very strong intent, to consciously create something in my life, something that I really want and fully intend to have. I know that I will prevail, yet these thoughts keep surfacing. I felt like I was sabotaging myself. I wanted to know why, and what to do about it.

It has become a habit with me, when I have a question like that, a question where the answer is not forthcoming immediately, to just let it go. I know that somewhere, somehow, the answer will come. I’ve pretty much stopped being concerned about the when and the how, I just live in the knowing that it will.

So that is what I did. I had this question mulling around in my mind, and I let it go.

Some time later I noticed that my husband was digging around in a compartment of our buffet—the buffet having some of those infamous cubby holes I mentioned. He was making quite a mess moving things around, and I had an impulse when he was done to get in there and clean things up. Not because I insist on all things being neat and tidy, because I don’t. I simply had an impulse to get in there and clean things up. So I did.

In a corner of one of the shelves, half buried but still visible, was the tape recorder with the tape of my session with Gina and Theo. “Well, huh!” I thought. “There it is!” After all this time of not being able to find this recorder and tape, there it was, hidden in the corner of a shelf in the buffet. The buffet is not a place I would have ever thought to look for it, and hadn’t. But there it was.

All giddy with excitement at having found my session tape, I had a sudden impulse to listen to it again there and then. So I did. I had no inkling that I was being guided to this ‘find’. But I was. I realized that soon enough.

If you didn’t know it already, that’s the nature of the way that spirit often speaks to us. It rarely comes as a voice shouting “hey! the answer to your question is on that tape from Gina, you'll find the tape in the buffet!” .. instead it’s just little flashes of inspiration that pop up. Things like ‘notice the buffet’ ‘clean it up’ ‘play it now’.

Little inspirations, little clues that, if we follow them without needing to know why they are there or what they mean or needing them to mean anything at all, will easily and fluidly lead us to where we say we want to be. Where I said I wanted to be was with the answer to my question, or more accurately, with a way to move past my self-doubt.

As I listened to the tape, in there with other wisdoms I found this gem that seemed to speak directly to what I was experiencing:

Don’t be halted by the doubt. Any kind of doubt always comes from the mind. Do you think essence creates doubt? No, essence never creates doubt. Essence doesn’t need self-doubt to protect you. Essence protects you in other ways and through its own wisdom.

Not long after that was the following excerpt. What Theo is discussing here is about ego and essence: About ‘us’ as human and ‘Us’ as spirit.

This that you are—who you truly are—is alive right now. It’s not some concept. “It” is living your life, it’s breathing your body, it’s right here. It gets overshadowed by this manufactured me that the mind speaks about: I’m this, I’m that, I like this, I like that.

This whole identity is created by the mind. It feels real, it seems real, it even has feelings attached to it which makes it more real, but that isn’t who you are. All that mental stuff, it isn’t you.

What is real is this aliveness that is living this life. This awareness that is aware of this life, that is aware of thoughts, that is aware of feelings. You are that awareness. And this awareness is co-creating with itself on other levels.

So that which you are is incarnate. It’s not just a concept of a higher self that’s sitting up there in some other dimension (separate from you). It’s incarnate. It’s here. And when you’re responding naturally and joyfully, that’s it responding, that’s it living. When you’re involved with thought, that’s your ego living you.

So there are two ways of Being in any moment. There is Being aligned with the ego and the mind, and there’s Being aligned with essence. Any moment any of those two things can be happening, but not both of them at the same time. So there’s a dance going on in every moment—people spend time involved in the ego, and they spend time in essence.

The more spiritually progressed you are, the more time you spend identified with your true self rather than the mind. And that’s what awakening is about. It’s a movement toward full identification with essence as it’s living you now.

There was the answer to my question, the inspiration I was looking for. There aren’t two me’s, the one who knows she is consciously creating and the one who’s trying to sabotage those creations, there’s only me. Just me. I’m either aware or unaware, but always me. I'm not sometimes a powerful god and sometimes an insignificant human. I am always god—as you are—so I’m always creating. Therefore there's no such thing as an insignificant human. The question is, am I being aware of what I’m creating or am I not?

It was fun, having the questions I had, knowing that something would come along that would ignite me back to the belief that I hold so strongly and so clearly, the belief that we can manifest any desire that we have if we just get out of our own way. What Theo said helps me remember that thoughts are just thoughts, that they don’t mean anything unless we give them meaning, that we can choose which thoughts forward us in where we want to be and discard the rest.

It helps me remember that there is no separation between us and our Higher Self/Inner Being. We are our Inner Being. Our Inner Being is us. There’s not two of us like it sometimes seems, the lowly human and the mighty spirit. There’s only one of us. We are the creator and the created, all at the same time, all the time. There’s never a time when we aren’t that. And that which we are is every bit as powerful as that implies.

As Seth has said:

... you ARE your entity. You are its materialization in space and time as you understand it. There is no division between your entity and what you are.

You are your entity growing through the seasons. The entity is not some soul—completed, perfect, done—and you a product. You are a living portion of the tree of your entity. You experience newly in your own dimension, and therefore enrich your entity as it constantly enriches you, for your source springs from it. But you are one, and there is no division.

All that’s going on, when it seems like there are two of us, is that we forget that we are both the creator and the created. We can remember again any time we choose to. In the remembering is the power. In the remembering are our conscious manifestations. In the remembering is the awareness that we are the creator, we are god, a knowing that has lain forgotten for so long. Lain forgotten on purpose, because that was the nature of our game.

That game is over now. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to remember.

It's time to know that we’re into a new game. A game where we experience walking in the remembering instead of walking in the forgetting.

It’s time to start playing that new game now. It’s time to own up to and consciously use our power, our inherent power, as creators, as conscious creators. It’s time.