The Empowered Ego: Developing Inner Strength

How to Heal and Mature Your Ego into an Ally
You must develop your spiritual nature in order to mature the ego into an Adult. The characteristic of the ego at this stage is that of waking up from the trance addiction to uncover its spiritual nature. The adult ego unlike the lesser evolved ego, reunites with its inner power to access the wisdom, creativity and truth from within. The adult ego is born out of seeing the truth within its own delusions.

When the ego can honestly think, feel and say, “I am Enough” it is functioning from a mature expression. Knowing you are enough, isn’t a position of arrogance, it doesn’t mean you feel ‘better than’ others. Embodying the truth that “I am Enough” isn’t a statement of superiority or inferiority, it is the simple truth. Feeling “I am enough” is like finally being able to exhale after 40 years of holding your breath. It quickly becomes a surrendering to the goodness, truth, and beauty of who you really are. This is the exhilaration of waking up and reuniting with your truer self.

When you heal and mature your ego, your life begins to transform. The way you view the world shifts and lifts to a higher octave. You simply drop the suffocating anxiety of pretending you’re not good enough and quickly bond with your divine potential. You discover that you are secure, creative, connected, loving, confident, intuitive, and wise—enough. This enough-ness comes from within. You no longer try to “take” or “get” your enough-ness from your relationships with others, your career, or the amount of money you have in the bank. This knowledge becomes internal and it changes everything.

The adult ego owns these concepts and begins to bring this ‘enough-ness’ into their daily lives. The adult ego functions from this ‘enough-ness’ within relationships, on the job, and during creative projects. There is no more wasted effort of trying to get that sense of being enough from outer sources.

Changing the Course of Your Future
Awareness leads to understanding. However, there are two expressions of understanding: 1) the understanding of our mind (intellect), and 2) the understanding of our heart (caring). When we understand from our heart, we open the door to compassion. Compassion is the way to help our ego mature into a spiritually empowered adult ego. Remember this simple truth; our ego seeks to be understood, our Soul seeks to be understanding.

The immature ego does not recognize truth and therefore always lies. Its measures everything only through the five physical senses and has difficulty measuring or valuing anything metaphysical. Every human being is metaphysical by nature. Its valuable to learn what it means to ‘be‘ metaphysical.

Exploring Your Metaphysical and Spiritual Potential
Metaphysical (Beyond the Physical): Meta means ‘beyond’; Physical—the physical.

Metaphysics isn’t a ‘New Age’ concept it is the nature of every human being. What is metaphysical about us? Our spiritual nature (Soul and Spirit) our relationship with the Divine. Our mind is completely metaphysical because it is made up of the beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, choices, and decisions we make every day of our lives. The immature ego has a difficult time understanding the most important parts of our reality; our metaphysical nature.

For instance the immature ego doesn’t know how to forgive and would rather seek revenge. Forgiveness is a spiritual quality and comes from our Soul. Jesus taught people to forgive, when you are in a place of forgiveness you are functioning from your Soul, your spiritual nature, not your ego. Forgiveness is a metaphysical concept.

Our metaphysical nature is the most important part of us, because when we change our metaphysical reality then our physical reality changes as well. Our physical reality is an expression and reflection of our metaphysical consciousness.

Regardless of our biological age, our mental-emotional state can be stuck in any one of five immature stages of ego development. By understanding the ego we can begin to approach it with compassion and respect. It can begin to heal and mature and evolve into a spiritually empowered adult.

Adult Ego. The adult ego knows it is enough. It isn’t perfect or ‘better than’ but it feels and functions in life from a place of ‘enough-ness’. The grown-up ego usually hits a crisis point where it must surrender to the Divine. Feeling completely lost and hopeless the grown-up ego finally stops trying and asks for healing from God-Goddess. The immature ego is right, it isn’t enough. When we discover our spiritual nature and consciously align with our Soul we receive love; a love that heals and matures the underdeveloped ego. To succeed in life, to be ‘safe’ in life you need to connect with your Soul and Spirit. This connection allows you to gain access to inner wisdom, discernment, creativity, passion, and the intuition of your metaphysical and divine nature.

The price we must pay to evolve beyond the grown-up ego and become a spiritually empowered adult is to recognize we are enough. We can only feel ‘I’m enough’ once we become conscious of our Divine nature. Like in the Wizard of Oz, the way Dorothy always had the power to return Home, so do we. Dorothy’s journey was to find the great Wizard where she quickly discovered his illusion of being powerful. She was terrorized by the witch. She listened to all of her friends ‘if only’s...’, ‘If only I had a brain, heart, courage, etc’. The story of the Wizard of Oz is so powerful and popular because it tells the story of our spiritual journey in life.

We must heal and mature our ego and the only way to do that is to approach the ego with compassion. To be compassionate we must develop our spiritual nature. When we look through the eyes of the Soul, we are able to discover the love that heals and understands the limited self (ego). Through this understanding we can begin to help the grown-up ego mature into an adult ego and reach a place of inner peace.

The adult ego is the rarest stage of ego maturity. Few people ever mature their ego to the adult stage. Many people in their sixties and seventies are still in a state of arrested development stuck at the infant or child ego stage. These are the individuals who eye the biggest piece of pie at the cafeteria and always making sure they ‘get enough.’ This is the infant ego’s greed, “I need to get the biggest and the best for myself.”

Ten Characteristics of a Spiritually Empowered Adult Ego:

1. Enjoys exploring the world of complex answers. It takes time to think and feel for itself. It knows that the emotional nature is complex. The adult ego will spend time learning and understanding how our emotions function and discover the lost power hidden there. The healed adult ego knows that ease is found within complexity and doesn’t seek only the “simple answers.”

2. Moves beyond judgment and criticism into compassion and understanding. The mature ego consciously discerns and evaluates life rather than labeling and judging it. It makes room for a the possibility of some gray area. The adult ego is not fixated on black or white and is more than capable of thinking and understanding within the realm of ‘gray.’

3. Knows it is worthy of receiving help and feels gratitude toward others. The adult ego wants to share the credit and to work together. It knows that it has limited time and resources and that there are other people who can do things better. The mature ego owns its strengths and knows that there are skills it owns and skills that others may have are better than its own. The mature ego realizes that if someone else is doing something ‘better than you,’ it doesn’t actually make them a better person than you. The adult ego doesn’t feel threatened and is willing to receive help.

4. Functions with humility. It looks at each person and event without projecting the past experiences onto the current reality. It allows for people to change. To have humility is to see things as if for the first time, with fresh eyes. Not to assume you “know it all” but to be willing to learn something new from this experience.

5. Focuses on being trustworthy. Do you follow through with what you promise yourself you’re going to do, or do you break promises all the time, looking for excuses to avoid responsibility? To build self-trust, we must develop our strength of character, to mean what you say and say what you mean.

6. Looks for ways to love and give to others and life. It feels blessed and wants to share its good fortune with others. It isn’t concerned with keeping score. It enjoys the reward of being a loving, caring, and giving person. The adult ego is able to give freely not always expecting something in return. The mature ego knows how to fully accept and appreciate love that is reciprocated.

7. Respects and honors differences. In so doing, the mature ego respects its own uniqueness and knows that it is inherently valuable to all life. It doesn’t question or doubt that it belongs in life and knows it’s an important expression of God-Goddess’ uniqueness made physical.

8. Spends time in solitude, meditation, and self-reflection. The mature ego connects with the present moment by being sensual; conscious of the physical sensations of the moment. It tastes the food it eats and feels the warmth of the sun as it walks down the street. This mature ego lives in the present moment and feels the connection with the Divine.

9. Develops the qualities of caring, intimacy and love. It has redefined the limited past definitions of what love is and has developed mature and healthy relationships that start with love for self which then expands to others. It focuses upon being understanding more than being understood.

10. Explores and delights in the mysteries of the metaphysical. It seeks to understand the nature of the mind and values its qualities. It monitors its intentions and what it pays attention to. Knowing the power of the imagination, it uses these tools to create a better life. It thinks with originality and experiences

Four Techniques to Harness and Mature Your Ego:

1. Understand Your Arrogance. Arrogance is two sides of the same coin. The “better than” position is easy to understand. The other position isn’t as easy to see, it is the “less than” position of arrogance.

Both positions, “better than” and “less than” are a form of arrogance. The truth is you are a valuable human being no matter what. Your ego has convinced itself of its insignificance by denying the truth of its spiritual nature and refusing to own its true value. God-Goddess; your Soul-Spirit knows you are a valuable and worthy expression of life, yet your immature ego refuses to accept that. The foolish immature ego is saying that God-Goddess is wrong! I am worthless, not good enough. It is pure arrogance to pretend you know better than God-Goddess. It is the inverse ‘arrogance’ of being “less than.”

2. Move from Judgment into Discernment. Love opens the heart to understand, understanding leads to compassion. Compassion is the opposite of arrogance. It is the understanding and compassionate expression of love that heals and our ego mature.

Judgment separates us from love and leads to imprisonment of arrogance. Be conscious of judgments of self and others. It takes maturity to open your heart to seek greater compassionate understanding and give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Stop criticizing yourself and start loving yourself. This exercise is to make a list of people you judge. Then write down why you are urged to do this. Is it a way for you to feel superior or ‘better than’ them? If so recognize what you’re doing and forgive yourself.Guided meditations can help you to make deep changes in your mind.

3. Simplicity versus Complexity. Grown-ups who insist on everything being simple, are the people who struggle the most in life. There is a paradox of simplicity that states; the more you allow yourself and your life to be complex, the easier your life becomes. When you insist that life be simple, you are functioning in your immature ego and your life can quickly become very difficult to live. Our Soul is complex but the ego wants everything to be simple.

A good example of this can be seen in the Church. When the “rules” of the elders were put into law question about the sexual nature the priests such as: When does a Priest have sexual relations if he doesn’t get married? These were just too complicated to think about. It was much simpler to just say that priests abstain from all sexual behavior. That was the easy answer and one that has led to a difficult (if not impossible) reality. Look at the mess this “simple answer” has created in the Catholic Church today.

When you stop trying to make life simple and allow for it to be complex, you’re moving into the truth of living life. The truth will set you free. Complexity doesn’t mean difficult! It means intricate, detailed, or having many aspects or factors to consider.

Ever try to program a VCR? Oh that’s too much to figure out. Let’s just hit record when we want to record something and shut it off when we are done. Simple. Yet if you let yourself enter into the chaos and complexity and actually read the manual to figure it out you can program your VCR to record shows in the middle of the night or while you’re on vacation. This can add elegance and ease to living life. Strangely enough accepting complexity can lead to an easier existence. That is if you’ll allow yourself to be challenged by complexity instead of frozen.

The spiritual empowered adult loves the challenge of complexity. What is complex is fun and draws out greater strength and empowerment. We came into life to challenge ourselves, not to shut down and do what we’ve always done. Learn to find the joy of challenge and be willing to enter the magical realms of the chaos of complexity.

This depth of feeling can shift and lift its own understanding and attitudes. The state of complexity is accepted by those who are concerned with learning how to change.

4. Journal Work. Answer the following questions:
a. Do you feel better than or less than others?
What makes you “better than” other people?
What makes you feel “less than” others?
What is your Ego’s fantasy of personal destruction?
How would you think and feel if you knew that you were whole, complete, and enough just as you are?

Soul-utions Challenge:
Seek to break the habit of trying to be understood by everyone. Instead focus on being understanding.

Rent the movie the Wizard of Oz and see if you can recognize story’s parallels to the spiritual truths about the journey Home to your empowered and spiritual nature.

Make a list of 5 close friends and write down the qualities they possess of the mature ego. In person or by email express to them how much you appreciate these qualities of their personality. Look to see if the positive qualities you see in them are also within you. Journal about your new understanding of the characteristics of the adult ego.