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Unity Quest® is about helping you to first become aware of your ego and to discover ways to transcend it by sharing ideas, experiences and resources. This is the next step in the evolution of individual human consciousness. We have developed this site to help you find and walk your own path. Here, you'll find excerpts from our book, as well as new ideas and stories to help you with your journey of conscious evolution. We're seeking to create a community of awareness, so please join the conversation.

SHIFTING YOUR EGO ... from the Unity Quest Blog at http://blog.unityquestbook.com

Claire Nuer, founder of Learning as Leadership, said “Learning about the prison of our ego takes a lifetime, but the shift, the decision to leave the prison, requires just one second. Once we really see what we no longer want, sensing it at a cellular level, we see very clearly that there are two contexts we can choose to create: one of destruction or one of humanity. Each time we have a decision to make, we can assess whether we prioritize a humane or a destructive context. Life becomes much simpler and clearer.”

The only way out… is in! This is our life’s work. It is not our career, our family, and it is certainly not any possessions we have accumulated or lost. Most of us live ego centered lives and are caught in a struggle between DOING and BEING. This struggle often manifests itself in feelings of alienation and emptiness. We said before that identifying our ego is the first step to awakening to our true self. With the mind made ego in control, 99.9% of our decisions are reactive and unconscious. Dreams and life events bring us face-to-face with our ego. Then we have a choice. Hermes over 3,000 years ago said, “as within, so without.” That ancient wisdom is the core of shifting our ego.

Self reflection and deep immersion retreats mentioned in the last blog post are powerful tools to help identify and face our ego – but these must be experiential by nature. Knowledge is gained only through direct personal experience. We must know our ego sufficiently to be fed up with its control over our life. You see, the ego eclipses our true self. The quest to transcend our ego starts with our HEART… nowhere else. To begin outside the heart invites the ego to block our progress. Our goal is to transcend the ego and then to give the ego its proper place in living in our world today. Transcending the ego reveals our true deeper purpose.

After facing our ego, our experiences generated feelings of disgust and horror, awakening and awe, along with more than fifty other feelings in between those polar opposites. Shifting our ego into its proper place requires going through (not around) those feelings. This takes internal drive and motivation to stay focused. We say there is a dual focus.

First, we must become the observer of ourselves critically aware of our thoughts, words and actions. Are we seeing our feelings, reactions and behavior in everyday life transform? Critical awareness is used to achieve a clear understanding of the motivations driving our thoughts, words and actions. This motivation becomes an intention the drives us unconsciously. Our task is pretty simple with critical awareness: to discern whether our thoughts, words and actions everyday are egoic or non-egoic.

Second, we need to let go of previously unconscious ego-driven intentions that drive our lives. In order to shift the ego, the key is to accept life’s perfection as it is. Give up expectations for anyone or anything to be different than who or what they are. We are not at all saying to become secular or removed from doing our part in our family, communities or the world. We are not promoting a continual navel searching lifestyle. We are also not saying that everyone is perfect as they think, speak and behave today. We don’t control, cannot force, and do not own others’ lives. We are responsible for our soul, mind, emotions and body. Letting go of the fear and expectations of specific outcomes for self and others shifts our ego.

Claire Nuer went deeper still with why we must shift our ego when she said, “if I look at my own behavior today – with my colleagues, my daughter, my husband, mostly with my husband – when I know that I am right, or when I fear that somebody is going to "make me wrong," what do I do? What do you do? Every day in subtle ways we "kill" each other with our thoughts. We kill with our anger, our prejudices, and our strong attachment to being right.”

Tonight, before you go to bed, assess where you destroyed yourself or others by leaving the ego in charge. Make a commitment to do a little better tomorrow. Also, assess and remember where your thoughts, words and actions shifted in a positive way, creating humanity in those life moments. Each day, as we observe ourselves and commit to be a better human BEing, the cumulative effect shifts our ego.

TAKING THE EGO TEST

Sunrise over Cerro Torres, Patagonia

Condor over Colca Canyon, Peru