Like the picture I shot on the Drakensberg Escarpment in South Africa, my life seems headed off a cliff into the unknown.
The Source Intelligence I call I AM rose in me in December 2014 and shook me until everything I knew about the human ego and enlightenment (things I had long since I decided I would keep to myself) had come tumbling out on the page. And then, before I knew it, those pages had attracted a new agent. And then, before I knew it, a publisher (Atria’s imprint Enliven Books). And now …
Now I’m dutifully doing what my dear friend and “all things marketing” expert Betsy Chasse told me to do as she wafted out the door on her way to an editing session on her latest film about life coaching titled LEAP: “Hey. Post a blog. Get some content on that new site. I’ll be back in four hours.”
Right.
So here I sit, facing the irony of blogging about the ego, setting myself up (the same self I know is actually a completely non-existent story in my head) as an expert on the ego, heading over the cliff towards becoming a very public advocate for the current shift humanity is undergoing in consciousness from the suffering-fear-and violence-prone limited personal ego perspective to the more humanitarian, connected (and happy!) transpersonal perspective theorized by a bunch of psychologists back in the Good Old Days when the Counter Culture, acid and the Vietnam War were all the news.
Now, of course, the news is full of Trump—one of the most inflated, massively self-aggrandizing egos on the planet—hate-mongering his way to the Ohio Republican National Convention in July.
Posing for my book cover picture, writing marketing copy at home, or camping in Betsy’s spare bedroom here in LA as she drags me through the ins and outs of social media campaigning, I can’t help but wonder, “What’s the difference?
Trump, Hilary, Bernie, me … we’re all individual egos on parade, doing our thing, convinced we know best—using whatever means the human race has devised to get ourselves “out there” in front of other egos so we can convince them to pay attention, buy our books or political agendas, while prompting people to “Follow me.”
Hell, apparently even Jesus did it—but with one BIG difference. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” he didn’t mean, “Do as I say.” He meant, “Do as I do.”
And what did he do? Ultimately he lay down his life, not just his mental persona—the little human ego “self” our bodies and then our society teach us to believe we are—but his physical life as well. All just to get across one important point: the most important thing any of us will ever learn EVER. And that is:
We are NOT who we think we are.
We are not Sally and Hilary and Donald and Cate and Harry and Joe. These are just the masks we wear—the personas we have not yet learned are masks, even though the wisest men and women throughout history have explained the situation to us over and over again.
Certainly I’m no Jesus. But I sure as hell ain’t no Trump. I’m a human being somewhere in the middle with knowledge of both perspectives, the wisdom to know the difference and the learned ability to talk effectively about it.
Through Grace I have been shown what Jesus meant when he said, “My Father and I are one’—the state of consciousness he and the Buddha and many others have wanted us to “WAKE UP” to … the same consciousness psychologists and quantum physicists are starting to describe as part of our evolutionary future … if we survive long enough as a species to get there.
Through experience I also know where Trump is coming from … and it’s not a place or an example we want to follow.
And so here I sit, writing a blog, introducing myself and a book called The E Word, welcoming you to this site, welcoming you to a WAKE UP call in the form of information I was given no choice about sharing … and a journey I wouldn’t have missed for the world even though I have no idea where it’s taking me.
Stay tuned.