Obstacles to Spiritual Growth
Did you ever notice that when you seem to be making the most progress on your spiritual path, the external world seems to conspire to confound your progress with all sorts of obstacles. I could come up with a number of theories to explain this phenomenon, but I suspect what’s really going on is the ego is simply asserting its bogus authority over our lives.
When I refer to the ego, I’m speaking not of the Freudian ego, but of the concept of ego as described in The Course in Miracles or The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle: a thought construct that masquerades as the “Self,” but which is merely a collection of thoughts. The authentic “Self” is that field of awareness that lies beyond the mind. The ego is understandably threatened when we get closer to the Truth of what we really are—after all, if we figure out the ego is just a bunch of thoughts we took seriously when we should have laughed, all its power dissolves with that realization.
So it makes sense that the ego gets to work, generating thoughts that attract that which we do not desire, which then creates a lot of distraction and messes in our external lives for us to deal with instead of spending our time and attention on the inner world where the path to our true Selves resides.
I like Eckhart Tolle’s approach to the ego-generated noise that mucks up our vibration: Simply notice the thoughts that parade through our minds. Don’t bother to judge them, simply recognize them as thoughts. Remember what you resist persists. So no resistance, just observation: There it is…a thought flowing by… The ego and the resistance that gives it life collapses upon your observation.
When we get better at recognizing the ego-sustaining thoughts at work, we can began to relax in confidence that we are in charge, rather than the reactive ego. Life gets better and better.
