Previously, we have looked at why so many people are still asleep or fully immersed in their incarnation. We’ve also looked at the many ways we can engage in spiritual bypassing. These posts have touched upon the spiritual ego, but not in much detail. What is a spiritual ego?
What is the ego?
The ego is the temporary personality or mask that we develop when we are in human form. When a soul is “fully immersed” in the human incarnation, the ego takes over. It has command and control over the sentience. However, the ego is not a mistake or something to be destroyed. We need the ego to anchor us to this reality and to take care of our basic needs for survival, relationships and self-esteem. So what’s the problem?
“The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.” – Chögyam Trungpa (“Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”)
What is a spiritual ego?
John Welwood (“Toward a Psychology of Awakening”) coined the term “spiritual bypassing,” which describes the tendency of many people to use spiritual practice to bypass or avoid dealing with certain personal or emotional “unfinished business.” He explained:
“As a result, they wind up using spiritual practices to create a new “spiritual” identity, which is actually an old dysfunctional identity — based on avoidance of unresolved psychological issues — repackaged in a new guise.”
JP Sears is a YouTube comedian and a life coach, who has taken the spiritual ego to task in his video series (see JP Sears 10-5-14… “How to be Ultra Spiritual” (Video) – Big Picture Questions.com). He said:
“Perhaps our ability to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously is what increases our spiritual growth.”
What are the signs of a spiritual ego?
The spiritual ego is a spiritual mask or a new ego identity recreated with spiritual information (or disinformation). Here is a list summarizing the signs of a spiritual ego compiled from various sources (Nouk Sanchez, Mary Shutan, Mateo Sol and others):
- Spiritual righteousness (overidentification with intellectual knowledge, engaging in debates, or zealously defending the “Truth” or knowledge from the need to be right)
- Teaching more than listening and learning (trying to convince or convert others, to “wake” them up, to “save” them, or to give them unsolicited advice)
- Spiritual vanity, pride, superiority or entitlement (seeing others as less than, lashing out at “asleep” people, dismissing the pain and emotional wounding of others, not reconciling race, class and privilege)
- Spiritual escapism (seeking bliss states and higher highs to avoid incarnate human life)
- Spiritual nihilism (belief traps of meaninglessness or “all is illusion” as justification for selfishness or lack of heart)
- Spiritual codependency (lack of self-responsibility, avoiding accountability or everyday tasks in life)
- Spiritual victimhood (I am highly sensitive, an empath, or a starseed, I don’t belong here) or wearing the mask of positivity (love and light “bliss bunny” that morphs into “you started it” or “I was here first” in an instant when challenged)
- Spiritual superego (creating more “shoulds” or mental rules about what to eat, drink, watch, listen to, use as rituals, and how to behave “more spiritually” than others)
- Lack of gratitude for others as teachers in their own right (students are teachers, too, and everybody you encounter is a reflection for you, so both of you can evolve)
- Lack of radical self-honesty (I don’t judge), self-awareness (I don’t have a shadow), self-observation (I don’t have an ego, I’m enlightened, I’m a shaman or any label that creates separation)
- Lack of genuine emotional vulnerability, transparency, authenticity or curiosity (about themselves and others no matter what spiritual stage they are at)
Shutan said these days most spiritual aspirants don’t have a physical teacher or someone to reign in their egos. This is why there are quite a few people who believe that they are at the end of their path when in reality they are just beginning their journey. The spiritual path is about constant unfolding.
How do we deal with it?
Matt Kahn (“Everything Is Here To Help You”) observed that when you wake up out of ego, you normally don’t go from ego to the soul. There is a rest stop, which is “spiritual egoland.” You can get stuck there unless you escort the ego into its next stage of evolution, which is integration into the light of your soul’s being, so that you can be as grounded as you are expansive. He explained:
- A spiritual ego learns spiritual insights and thinks they know the world. The soul learns spiritual insights and only knows themselves.
- Knowing more doesn’t necessarily guarantee your evolution. It just plants the seeds of your evolution. So what does all this knowledge teach us?
- It teaches us that it’s never enough! He said if you knew more than you know right now, you’d be exactly the same, and that is what destroys the spiritual ego.
He went through a spiritual ego phase in his early years, but has since realized that there is so much more to this that he totally doesn’t know anything. Nowadays he teaches people how the soul plays the game no matter what character it is playing in this lifetime. The soul asks:
- How will you respond? What is your behavior like towards yourself and others?
- What if your life had nothing to do with anything but looking at your behavior at any given moment?
- What if everything in life is to help you practice responding differently?
- That’s what your life review will be about. You’re going to see how you responded to different people, places, events and things and what difference it makes.
He said that cultivates your soul in physical form. It’s not about how other people’s egos react to you, but how your soul responds to them in any given situation. When people don’t have to hear what you know, they can just watch and learn from your behavior. When in doubt, you may ask yourself:
“What choice is my heart asking me to make — no matter how unpleasant or unpopular it is to my ego?”
Final Thoughts
I hope this post gives you a better understanding of the spiritual ego, which is part of our journey as spiritual aspirants. When we learn something new and get excited about it, it’s natural for us to want to share it with those around us, like a salesperson of sorts. That’s how my blog started. I admit that I like to teach what I have learned. 😉
But all that knowledge isn’t worth a hill of beans unless it makes a difference in how we treat people, including ourselves, our loved ones, friends and strangers. As Matt Kahn noted, you have to allow your responses, your words, your actions to come from your highest values, where your divinity is talking to their divinity, while their ego is talking to your ego. That’s where the rubber hits the road on the spiritual journey. Just remember we’re all works in progress without exception.
We live in a multiverse structure, in which a teacher at one level becomes a student at the next higher level…again and again and again.
“Who you are is an Individuation of Divinity. Why you are here is to demonstrate that.” – Neale Donald Walsch
Note: All emphasis and images are mine.
For more information, please see:
John Welwood: Toward a Psychology of Awakening, 2000 & Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, 2006
Robert A. Masters: Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters, 2010
Matt Kahn: Everything Is Here To Help You, 2018, Whatever Arises, Love That, 2016 & Matt’s Facebook page & Beyond the Ordinary interviews (with John Burgos)
Gina Lake: In the World but Not of It, 2016
Nouk Sanchez: Signs of the Spiritual Ego – Take Me To Truth. Inc
Mary Shutan: 8 Common Ego Traps: Part Two | MaryShutan.com & 8 Common Ego Traps on the Spiritual Path (and how to Avoid Them) | MaryShutan.com
Mateo Sol: Lonerwolf.com – 11 Traps Sabotaging Your Spiritual Growth
Other sources: How to detect the (spiritual) Ego at play – Wake Up Experience & Spiritual Ego & Understanding the Ego and its Desire to Sabotage your Spiritual Progress – Meditate A Center for Healing Arts
JP Sears: Awaken With JP & How To Be Ultra Spiritual | Buy the Book! & Featured image
Ulla Sarmiento: Spiritual Guide To Our Afterlife, 2019
Ulla Sarmiento: Spiritual Guide To Our Multiverse, 2018 in Paperback and Kindle versions
What Is Spiritual Bypassing? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is Your Spiritual Type? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is Judgement vs. Discernment? – Big Picture Questions
What Is a Fully Immersed Soul? – Big Picture Questions.com
Why Are So Many People Still Asleep? – Big Picture Questions.com
Why Do We Forget Who We Are? – Big Picture Questions.com
Why Is Forgiveness Important? – Big Picture Questions
How Can We Move Beyond Grievances? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Are the Frequencies Of Love? – Big Picture Questions.com
Do We Need Spiritual Tools, Objects Or Rituals? – Big Picture Questions
How To Shift From Ego To Soul Activation? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is In Our Soul Seat vs. Ego Seat? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is Ascension Flu? – Big Picture Questions.com
When Will Humanity Ascend From 3D Earth? – Big Picture Questions.com
Are We Ascending With Our Bodies? Or Becoming Immortal? Or Not? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is Meant By Soul Age? – Big Picture Questions.com
How Detailed Is the Soul’s Life Review? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Are the Stages Of Spiritual Development? – Big Picture Questions.com
How To Bridge Science and Spirituality? – Big Picture Questions.com
What Is the Big Picture? – Big Picture Questions.com
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You are experiencing what some of us seeing worldwide. Recently, Guy Needler said that due to the sudden change of reality we have had, there has been a consistent reduction in the frequencies away from those that were predicted a few years ago. A vast majority of the Earth’s population has subscribed to a different reality, one that has gone out of control!
He urged us to think and stay positive. We are fire fighting right now. Be a fire walker, walking through and over the fires of low frequency. Continue your good work. This is a marathon, a long marathon. We will win back our frequencies, but it will take longer than he expected. Hope that helps!
Thanks for your comment. No matter what “spiritual stage” (or frequency level) a person is at, Matt Kahn’s questions still apply: How will you respond? What is your behavior like towards yourself and others? What if everything in life is to help you practice responding differently?
Ulla, thank you for your kind words and encouragement. I am starting to find more like minded people, the thing is that in the past I have assumed that they were more like minded than they were and ended up freaking them out by opening up about my beliefs.
I have become more gradual with approaching most things in life so that I know that they are indeed what they appear to be before I connect too deeply. I have found my frequency compromised many times by effort in vain when something like a person, job, or any other part of life turned out to not be what it appeared and I therefore connected to a much lower frequency than I intended to. I guess that sometimes we can get attracted to anything that is momentarily higher frequency but is not able to sustain that frequency and when I connect to that I end up getting pulled down by it because my frequency is not as stable as I would like. I approach things that appear higher frequency more gradually and see if they stand the test of multiple event spaces before connecting deeply enough to be influenced by their frequencies.
Maybe the best course of action is to suspend judgement and dogmatic pronouncements (I mean, who really knows what spiritual frame of reference is—at that particular time—best for the individual) … and to allow people free-find their personal position in the continuum of awakening without the fear of being judged … use it as a verb, not as a noun? Use it as love not hate.
Thank you for your insights. You are doing what is correct for you, which is to be vigilant and aware of what’s going on around you. Nothing wrong with that, consider it a form of self-care. You know what you need to do to be higher functioning in this lifetime. Just know that we’re all struggling at times. It would help if we had good company (like-minded people) around us and maybe that will manifest some time soon. Blessings to you.
I sometimes fall into this as a response to the stress of life in general. I have autism and often have a hard time coping with anything that has a high amplitude and low frequency as well as sensory issues with low frequencies. I have found myself telling a barking dog to get it’s low class vibes away from me. I also have difficulty with hearing the same things from loved ones over and over about things like my behavior that I am working so hard on changing. I have gotten to where raising my frequency is more important to me than maintaining relationships. I aggressively push low frequency stimuli away because I don’t want it to rub off on me and lower my frequency.
If my frequency stays in the low range for too long I have erious health complications such as flare ups from ulcerative colitis. A part of me is convinced that if I don’t stay at a high enough frequency then it will defeat the purpose of my incarnation and my soul will withdraw it using the medical conditions. The frequency that I need to stay at has been getting higher and higher in order to stay healthy. I am much lower functioning in the lower frequencies than the general population, I can’t think of much or react effectively when my frequency is low and others really notice. I am doing everything that I can to raise my frequency and keep it raised so that I am less disabled. I am hoping to be not disabled when I reach 5D consciousness, currently I go between 3 and 4 D.
I often fear others lowering my frequency and am working on controlling my subconscious mind so that others don’t impact my frequency so much. Sometimes I feel like a high frequency spirit trapped in a low frequency environment and have difficulty coping with the human condition.