Yesterday morning I woke up with this affirmation in my head and immediately wrote it down.
Let’s have a serious conversation about ego and grievances. If you haven’t noticed, these two filters are dominating dialogue on the planet right now. Perhaps the pandemic has magnified them, but they are drowning out more productive mindsets that could be moving us forward.
We all have what we popularly call an ego. It actually has an important role in sustaining us in these forms and ensuring our needs are met.
The ego has an ugly, dogmatic side that holds a rather toxic belief. That belief is that it’s able to ascertain permanent, immutable truths about this infinite multiverse from its narrow perspective.
This massive conceit soon seeps into our religious beliefs, our political stances, and virtually every aspect of our lives.
It has condensed truth, boxed it, and serves it out to the world in a generally self-serving and self-centered narrative. When it encounters other equally valid ways of knowing the world, it doubles down and demands compliance to its view. Worse, it attempts to ensure its moral high ground through demonization of those who disagree. Recognize this in what’s going on in the world today and maybe even sometimes inside of you and me?
It comes out in harsh, non-specific rhetoric that speaks of “us” and “them”; thinking that moves us further from our highest and best aspirations with the firing of every neuron.
We must, as this affirmation suggests, become wiser than our egos. We must have a broader vision and recognize the limits of letting a self-righteous egotism become our way of being?
Grievances are a totally different animal from ego. People have legitimate grievances and those grievances should be adequately addressed. The question becomes what then?
The problem with grievances is they’re contagious and once a mind goes down that path, they rapidly multiply.
A mind stuck in constant grievance is not a mind that can evolve, become enlightened, or contribute to the raising of the planet’s vibration.
A world driven by a popular culture that preaches constant grievance encourages the ego to pick up the grievance’s call to battle and so what the ego does best – selfishly distort the situation.
Soon timeless principles, principles that make human civilization feasible, are sacrificed on the alter of the ego’s momentary demands.
This is not a way forward, individually or collectively. We must find it within us to be wiser than our egos would permit and more principled than simplistic solutions to our grievances allow.
Then we will have a firm foundation upon which to stop the demonization of others, begin their re-humanization, and have minds filled with thoughts capable of moving us forward.
Wherever you are on your journey today, know that I am rooting for you.
Ray
The Affirmation Spot Blog 