We spend so much of our lives moving, doing, striving, and trying to achieve. We project our goals wants and desires onto life, and call that "living". If you're anything like me (and I bet you are, because on a soul level we are all more similar than we are different) you've had certain drives and pursuits for as long as you can remember. Being ambitious and having a purpose aren't bad things, but have you ever stopped to dissect where our desires initially came from? Would you be surprised to know that you weren't fulfilling your goals, but your egos? The ego is the driving force for almost every one of our choices unless and until we awaken to that fact. But wait, "I'm a Mother, a Doctor, a Firefighter...(insert own selfless title here), these are GIVING roles, no way my ego has anything to do with it!" That's your ego talking, because it is getting defensive. The ego gets a bad rap, but the poor thing is misunderstood. The ego has one job. The one job is to protect its sense of self, at all costs. It does this by looking for ways to feed itself and by avoiding any change or challenge that will disrupt its comfort zone. The life-changing thing to really grasp is, we AREN'T our egos. Sure, our ego is a part of us, but so are our thumbs. We don't spend our precious time and energy identifying with our thumbs, and doing everything we can to make sure we, as a thumb driven person, are satisfied. The ego wants us to think we are one and the same, or at the very least, are cojoined twins who can't survive without each other. The truth is, we can survive without our ego, but it can't survive without us. We feed it. We validate it. We stroke it. Take that away, it withers. Before we became adults and accepted titles, we had internal labels for who we thought we were and how we wanted to be seen in the world. The titles are as broad and varied as each individual. "I am a....giver, teacher, helper" or "I want to be admired, respected, loved". As I said, all good. No problems with any of that. What I submit for your consideration, is whether the role and title you are playing and wearing today, is really you? At some point in life many of us begin to feel like we are wearing a suit that doesn't fit. The problem is we have designed our entire identity and life around this suit and have worn it for so long we can't tell wear the suit ends and where we begin. We are out of alignment. Our body, mind and spirit are not unified. The body by default, listens to the mind (the mind is the ego), but what about the spirit? Sadly, our spirit is often overlooked (it's the Jan of the Brady girls.) Ironically, the spirit us hugely important. It is the part of us that comes fully alive with excitement, that can feel and be love, that makes our heart sing. The question to ask yourself is, "what does my spirit want?". To answer you need to be willing to strip away all of the titles, the "shoulds" and the ego-talk, and tap into what really lights you up and makes you feel alive. Not what you THINK will make you feel alive, but what actually "sparks joy" in you, right her, right now. Once you figure that out, and start feeding your spirit, two magical things start to happen. The first is that the body and mind ease up a bit and start to let the spirit lead. The second thing that happens is that universe begins setting things up to keep giving our spirit more of what makes it expand.. When we stop feeding our ego, The Universe starts feeding our soul. It can't be any other way!
