Letting Go of Ego Raises Awareness of Impact

How aware are you of your impact on the people in your world and the world around you? To do no harm (in thought, word, action) is one of the tenets of a number of faith. For that to happen means we must be paying attention and aware, as often as possible, of what those thoughts, words and actions are before they take form. Not only must we be aware of the impact on others, we must also be aware of the impact they have on ourselves.

The ego or our unconscious would have us believe there is only right and wrong. There really is no right no wrong; only what works and what doesn’t work. With that perspective, we are liberated from the game of blame and shame.

Thoughts become things which in turn become behaviours. Where we focus our attention, our thoughts, is what we will create. This is what will manifest and grow. Have you ever heard of someone getting more of what she said she didn’t want? That tells you something about where her attention is focused.

Paramahansa Yogananda and numerous other spiritual teachers believed everything, not just the physical, is energy and we have a responsibility to think before we speak, act or think.

Quantum theory supports this premise. Recently, there has been much talk about the movies, The Secret and What the Bleep?! Oprah Winfrey and Larry King have both dealt with them extensively on their respective TV shows.

In fact, this information has been around for quite some time. A number of faith traditions in the east and west have addressed this subject. Go into any bookstore and there you will find numerous books written on the subject. Those two movies have gotten our attention and there is an eagerness to know more and to know how to apply it.

What is the impact of your thoughts, words and actions on your relationships and the world around you? Every action, thought, and word matters and has weight and impact. To be aware of one’s impact means to be awake and conscious and prepared to make choices and take responsibility for that impact.

This false thinking of the ego keeps us perpetually ungrounded and separate from each other unable to recognize our common divinity. This unconscious thinking of the ego fuels the stories of lack and loss that keep us in a never ending state of suffering. This what the ego, the unconscious does best and it will do whatever it has to in order to hold on to control, to ensure its existence.

Once we become aware of the attachments in our lives that contribute to our suffering, we can choose to let them go in order to live more fully present and conscious.

At the moment, we are becoming more keenly aware of our impact on the planet, ecologically. What about our impact on the world in other ways? Our world would be changed if we slowed down and were more aware of the many different foot prints we leave behind.

Awareness is what will set us free from the yoke of the ego, the unconscious. It opens us up to choices and helps us recognize we are more than a body. We are spirit itself.

For the next week, pay attention to your thoughts, your choices, your relationships, your language, and your actions. Where do they take you? How do those thoughts make you feel? What changes are you prepared to make to ensure your peace of mind?

You have a choice to wake up, be more aware of your impact on the world and make your actions, words, and thoughts congruent with doing no harm or to stay in service to the capricious unconscious who is intent on wreaking havoc.

As Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, “Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.”