Table of Contents
Ego Vs Soul
Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.
-Bob Marley
To understand what the ego vs soul means, lets first learn what the Ego even is. Not, it’s not that delicious toaster waffle my son asks for daily!
Ok, so seriously. The Ego. What is it, and why is it necessary?
For those of us who consider ourselves spiritual, there is a point in all of our lives when we become aware of what lies beyond the ego. You may call this expansion, awakening or tripping (wink!) The process is by and large the same.
In spiritual communities, we often find ourselves resisting the ego. When thoughts or emotions which are associated with ego come up, we often judge ourselves and feel ourselves to be low vibrational. Interestingly, the ego is actually a prerequisite to a physical conscious existence. It can be likened to a passport or driver’s license, a mandatory requirement to function in a physical environment.
It is for this reason the ego is misunderstood. Naturally the spiritual person attempts to separate themselves from the physical and material desires and the ego feels like an involuntary pull back towards these things. I
t is almost as if the ego is a source of sinful thoughts in the mind! Really the ego functions to keep you grounded, and forms the foundations for having a personality.
Have you ever wondered why this is? That we only hear about ego vs soul, and not ego and soul being needed to work together?
The magic of self awareness, when combined with having a mortal incarnation will naturally result in forming some sort of self identity. This self identity is influenced by all sorts of factors such as upbringing, zodiac signs, past life memories and many others which influence what we call the personality.
The personality is the expression of our soul in the physical realm (and see why having good self-identity, or self-love, is so important to manifesting).
It would be quite unnatural for a soul to just incarnate from physical body to body, without a physical personality. Imagine! That would be like an immortal ghost switching vessels, while carrying on the exact same single perception forever.
In order for the soul to grow it needs the potential to experience more dynamic and varied experiences, hence why there is an ‘amnesia’ between incarnations.
The possibility to experience many different perceptions gives the immortal soul the ability to have an infinite number of experiences. You may be a saint in one life and a mafia boss in the next. Many people find this quite alarming, as they feel as though something is ‘lost’ at the end of an incarnation when the personality is dissolved.
Not quite. It is more accurate to state that the personality or ego is added. In this sense we can actually see the soul as something similar to an immortal, grand, living archive.
What we spiritual practitioners attempt to do, both knowingly and unknowingly, is to expand ourselves beyond our illusionary ego and experience life in a more unbiased, holistic way. In a sense you may say we are attempting to hold a perspective from the position of the soul, so as to observe the ego and consciously work with it.
A lot of times when we are doing our affirmations or healings, we attempt to consciously remould the ego to better serve our purposes and desires.
The shortcoming of the ego is that it is limited in its perception, which gives way to biases. In fact, you may even see the entire personality as a complex system of biases. If someone wrongs you, the ego will justify being angry. This is a bias you may have towards vengeance as opposed to forgiveness.
Someone who has expanded their consciousness will be acutely aware of this bias, see the other option, and work towards shifting the perspective towards forgiveness. This is what characterises the spiritual path. Not rejection of the ego, but an accepting of it and a conscious working with it to the aim of positive personal growth. It doesn’t have to be ego vs soul, rather, ego and soul working together.
We may see how this potential for personal growth provides valuable experience that the soul would never be able to have if the phenomena of personality didn’t exist. There would be no bias whatsoever and the soul would learn no lessons, the mind would have no desires, the body would have no profound experiences.
You would simply be a conscious expression of love. An extension of nature and something of a God trapped in a mortal shell. While this sounds nice and all, it can be objectively perceived as boring and undesirable.
Ego makes things profound. It is because of ego’s mortal perception that death is perceived as sad and life is perceived as meaningful. It is for this reason that break ups hurt, and romances are exciting. This, amongst an infinite number of other things, are where the value of the ego is found.
The trick is however, not to let your mind be unconsciously driven by your ego or personality. This is unfortunately what causes a lot of tension in our society and interactions. Those that are driven by ego instead of driving their ego will find themselves constantly unconsciously projecting their biases outwards.
Mistakes are of course understandable! There are tons of biases we find in ourselves without even realising. Through our continued expansion we become more and more aware of the ways our ego manifests and gradually become more eloquent expressions of ourselves.
The Immortal Soul
So we know the soul incarnates from personality to personality and body to body to gain experiences and perhaps grow- but why? In other words, what is the meaning of it all? I cannot possibly give any definitive answer to that question, however by understanding how the soul progresses through the Universe we may perhaps draw our own conclusions.
One thing we cannot leave out when discussing the process of incarnations is the concept of karma and energy. It is possible for the soul to acquire what may be called energetic blemishes which manifest themselves between incarnations. This is also known as karma and in some cases can be called trauma.
Our general understanding of trauma is that it is something of a severe psychological affliction caused by a certain experience. While this is true, it ignores the energetic significance. Trauma stays in the body energetically. Remember how we said after an incarnation things are added? This includes trauma, extreme biases and unresolved issues.
The soul desires growth by nature and in a wider context you may say that it desires perfection or purity. These extreme biases and traumas, to one that aspires towards the light, represent lessons which have not been learned.
Here we will note that the soul must either aspire towards purity of light or purity of darkness. Pure darkness as we understand it can be called evil in overly simplistic terms, but really is a simple choice as to how one wants to refine the soul. The soul desires this growth or perfection by nature as it is said to be a fragment of God or Source, aspiring to return back to God or Source.
The whole Universe is said to be the emanation of a single Divine Source which infinitely duplicates itself, creating fragments which find their way back to this Source through this purification-through-incarnation process. How the soul does this is down to the free will of the soul, and by extension, the free will of the infinite incarnate personalities. (It is advisable you take a deep breath, as this may be a lot to process!)
In this way we can see the manifestation of ‘evil’ as a perfectly valid (albeit difficult) phenomena of free will, just as purity or light is. The choice between the two, is what characterises the function of our physical existence.
Now, somewhere along your interstellar journey (as it is said Earth is one of many available worlds for incarnation) we likely made a choice of the good/light/purity, as nearly all of those who are spiritually awakened have. Every subsequent incarnation will be an attempt towards refinement of that choice, or direction.
Returning to the issue of strong bias and trauma, these will be blemishes on your path towards purity and are opportunities for further refinement. Thus, these biases and issues will be carried over and retained between incarnations- although in different forms depending on context.
The way we can use these hard experiences is working with the ego vs soul to orient ourselves positively. If someone hurts you, forgive them. If you make a mistake, forgive yourself. If someone is struggling, help them. Through developing ourselves along the path of good in the incarnate experience, our soul -the other side of the coin of life- becomes more refined and evolves along the chosen path.
Following this, after the end of a life, subsequent incarnations will be planned by the soul, which are considered appropriate to the type of refinement that is needed. For example, if there is a huge issue in a past life to do with a specific race, you best believe you will be dealing with that race in another life until it is resolved!
The more refined (or evolved) the soul, the more refined the appropriate incarnation. It is said that higher dimensional beings are entities with souls that have evolved very far along the path.
Ego Vs Soul-Living Life
Now it perhaps becomes contextually clear what spiritual people and communities are attempting, and why the ego is often so fiercely suppressed! It may be an unconscious aversion to biases which are unhelpful to the soul. We may also note here that the purity that we speak of is complete, flawless, unconditional love. Those of us who perhaps have some ties to institutional religions may see some correlation here.
But wait a minute, shouldn’t everyone learn this information? How are people going to progress? Well you find that people are perfectly capable of learning and progressing without actually consciously understanding the function of soul and Laws of the Universe.
The beauty of life is having the opportunity to form a sense of self and experiencing that authentic significance which comes from lived experiences after the amnesia process.
The people that benefit the most from this information on the ego vs soul are perhaps those of us who, in the pursuit of the path of light, desire to be better equipped to help others from a position of understanding.
When we look at our children, we are actually looking at very old souls, bursting with potential, preparing to experience the next stage of an everlasting journey of refinement and evolution. We cannot talk about ego vs soul without looking at the purest of souls!
Isn’t the miracle of motherhood simply amazing? Mothers alone have the responsibility of creating the physical bodies which are inhabited by these souls. They provide the opportunity for a physical experience and by extension, soul evolution.
Our society often forgets how profound and powerful women are. Before we even talk about raising children, the selflessness of childbirth is staggering. When it comes to the ego vs soul, there is no better or more beautiful merging of the two than motherhood.
Final Thoughts On The Ego Vs Soul
Now to summarize the ego vs soul, we can make life as simple or as complicated as we want. In fact, this entire blog can be replaced with three words: just be nice. There isn’t much more that we need to think about or do, however the mechanics of it all sure can be interesting! Ego is not your enemy, however if you want to live a life of conscious creation, it should not be your master. Above all else, love is always the answer, no matter the question.
Have you ever considered the ego vs soul and its implications in your life? Do you feel like you understand the ego vs soul better? Share your comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the ego vs soul.
