I have come to strongly suspect that we (some of us anyway) incarnate here on earth, not to lose ego, but to gain it.
Hear me out.
The ideal of many is to let the conscious mind, and thus “ego,” die out, so that we’re living completely “in the flow”; just letting life happen without resistance, authentically, spontaneously, unconsciously, all the time. There’s certainly a lot to be said for being able to live in the flow. I experience it most readily while creating art, where I enter that peak state in which no conscious thought is required; where it would be more accurate to say the drawing or painting is happening through me. I’m even in the process of integrating that state into many more areas of my life so I can enter into it at will. But while that would be good to be able to do most of the time… would I want it ALL the time? No, I wouldn’t. Why?
Because extinguishing the conscious mind prohibits us from evolving consciously.
I submit that the much maligned ego is the source of conscious, self-directed evolution. The subconscious mind has the capacity to absorb information from the universe in raw, abstract form… but without a conscious mind to bring it into form, it stays abstract, and manifests as a force of evolution which acts ON things rather than through them. This is a slow process, and not very conducive to innovation… essentially you just get more variations of the same until that information has been combined in every way possible under the circumstances, and then new pieces of information introduce both new circumstances and new phases of evolution.
When you’ve got a conscious mind, the capacity to imagine, observe, interpret and plan, this process can be both much faster and self-directed. At the individual level, we can come here and observe a wide range of things that we had no frame of reference for before. We can imagine things that don’t currently exist, and create planning strategies to bring them into being, until one of those strategies realizes our vision or close to it — in short, we can innovate. We can also observe other beings who are doing or being something that we are not, and learn that capacity from them in various ways, without having to reinvent the wheel from scratch.
I personally value the ability to learn and integrate new skills and experiences, and to constantly refine, expand and make changes to my sense of self. To do or be something completely new, that I have no prior frame of reference for, requires a degree of conscious thought. To take something completely foreign, and integrate it comfortably into my existing framework, requires the presence of ego… first to figure out how to make room for the new within the framework of the old, and then to become proficient in it so it becomes part of the Flow. What I said above about entering the Flow while creating art wasn’t always the case for instance — it was a learned skill that originally required the input of my ego. The process is the same when learning any new skill. First you learn the basic, rudimentary set of actions that are required, and utilize a lot of conscious thought in order to memorize and perform them all at the same time. Then you get to the point where you can perform them all without thinking about it so much, but still need to practice; efforts at this stage are still a bit clumsy and unsure. Finally, the new skill integrates into a unified whole, and passes into the subconscious mind, where it becomes “second nature” and can operate automatically without conscious input.
In all my experience with nonphysical beings – there have been very few who seem able to do that. On the astral plane, what you experience, is who you are, is what you do, is what you experience – in other words, your environment immediately reflects and responds to who you are and what influences are contained within you. All negative entities are certainly acting spontaneously and authentically for instance… but could a neg one day decide not to be a neg? I highly doubt it, because their entire experience likely reinforces what they are, and they don’t have the ability to step back, and consciously decide to try something new for a while.
Sure, there are highly intelligent nonphysical beings capable of impressive and seemingly well-planned feats. However, this is easily accounted for due to the way the subconscious mind functions. Without the conscious mind to exercise critical thought, accepting some input and rejecting others, the subconscious simply sucks up everything it is exposed to and acts out of the sum total of what it has absorbed. It can evolve — which is to say that it can take what it has absorbed and combine it in new ways for greater effectiveness; even improve its own processing ability. But it’s still limited to available info, and what it has a prior frame of reference for, which is highly dependent on the environment… which it’s creating or attracting based on what it absorbs. You see the dilemma here. Nonphysical and non-sentient physical beings can evolve, but it would probably be more accurate to say that evolution happens TO them. They don’t make choices per se; they simply attract, and react. Some of the more evolved beings can “calculate” in the sense that a computer calculates — they take the information they already have available and can combine it in all the ways that it can be combined. The ones who have been absorbing and combining the longest, and whose processing speed and storage capacity has been improved upon over the eons, are the “higher ups” of the nonphysical. This would explain the “machine-like intelligence” or otherwise semi-conscious, automatic behavior that many have reported in their dealings with various nonphysical entities.
Consider that when we actually like who we are and what we’re experiencing, acting spontaneously is called “being in the flow” — but when we don’t, it’s called “being reactive.” But is there really any fundamental difference, other than personal preference? Being “authentic” is all well and good if you like who you are and where it’s taking you… but if you don’t?
Well, you might incarnate here, to escape yourself.
In this place, and probably other places like it, you will invariably be surrounded by examples of beings who are NOT like yourself. In order for the subconscious mind to thrive in such an environment, you create an ego, which can act as the guardian of the subconscious, to choose what it is absorbing, and to seek out novel information for it to take onboard. When I’m dissatisfied with my own patterns or lack of skill in a given area for instance, the first thing I do is find someone who’s proficient in a way I’d like to be, figure out how they got there, and what the difference is between them and myself. For best results I’ve found that this requires cooperation between the thinking ego AND the purely reactive, processing, subconscious mind. Granted, most peoples egos aren’t actually doing that — the done-thing on planet earth is to have the ego not only thinking “I am thy God, before me there are no other,” but asleep at the gate and letting the subconscious absorb whatever dissonant and contradictory information advertisers want to pump in there – which, in turn, leads to the well documented “polluted” and chaotic expression of the ego.
Incarnating is, of course, a double edged sword. You might incarnate here originally to change your fundamental alignment in a place where it’s possible to do so deliberately… but unfortunately you will also pick up things you’d be better off without. Then you die, lose your ego, the imbalances and falsehoods you’ve picked up get you bounced around various nonphysical planes like a pingpong ball with no way to change your trajectory, or otherwise stuck in a very limited, self-generated environment with no way to move very far. As authors like Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe attest, the nonphysical planes are full of beings who are stuck in a state of flow that isn’t flowing anywhere particularly enjoyable – or escapable – without eventually being shuffled into another earth incarnation.
Considering all that I’ve personally witnessed, and what many sources (particularly of the Gnostic variety) have to say about this system being a self-perpetuating, energy farming machine, it would not surprise me in the least if the those that are pumping our egos full of destructive programming, and the ones telling us the ego itself is the problem to be relinquished, are “serving the same master,” so to speak. Good cop, bad cop, problem-reaction-solution, wash rinse repeat, and so it goes…
…Until you figure out how to take command of this ego-self, and use it for what it’s good for, which is a tool for consciously choosing in which direction you evolve. While many people are trying to dissolve the ego, I can’t help but wonder if at least some Higher Selves are trying to figure a way to incorporate it, to transmute and integrate it into something sustainable before it dissolves at the death of another incarnation, in order to grant them a degree of freedom they didn’t have even with all their impressive capabilities. That is, the freedom to radically shift gears and try something new and unprecedented at will, without having to send parts of themselves into physical incarnation to do it.
Further Reading
This article has been inspired, and the concepts herein elaborated upon much more in depth by a number of sources, for those who are interested in further research on the finer points.
Enlightenment: From Siphoning to Assimilation
Bruce Moen’s “Exploring the Afterlife” series
Robert Monroe’s groundbreaking series on nonphysical exploration
Montalk on the Matrix Control System
–Palehorse
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