by Matt Kahn
Four Types of Inflammation
While intuitively guided in my exploration of ego, I’ve come to recognize four basic types of inflammation. The first one is called righteous inflammation. It is characterized by an ego structure that feeds on needing to always be right by making others wrong. Even in the presence of one who is saying something totally correct, the ego that is righteously inflamed must make another point in an attempt to be even more right than the other. This type of ego lives to have the upper hand and final word—even if both parties agree on the topic at hand. The theme of righteous inflammation is, “I’m always right.”
One of the aspects of a righteous ego is skepticism. This occurs when an ego is convinced that the way it sees the world is the way everyone else should see it. In an attempt to subconsciously keep the inflammation of righteousness alive and active, this person remains skeptical of anything other than their specific point of view.
The second type of inflamed ego is called victimized inflammation. This is the kind of inflammation in which an ego believes it is always a victim of circumstances. From this perception, even when life seems to be going right, something always happens to turn it upside down. A victimized ego holds very tightly to its judgments, beliefs, and opinions as the reasons their life is regularly in chaos. This type of inflammation is commonly fed by beliefs in superstition. Oftentimes, the more spiritually themed a superstition happens to be, the more it inflames this type of ego structure. Whether a belief in light versus dark or pitting good against bad, a victimized ego typically acts as an instigator of turmoil that is guaranteed to be hurt or heartbroken by the way others respond to it. Even if others do not respond at all, a victimized ego uses such feedback to feel invisible or inferior to the world around it.
When caught in the inflammation of victimhood, it is quite difficult, though not impossible, to see your circumstances as divine catalysts of universal will. A victimized ego cannot grasp that everything in reality is there to help it transform. This is because a victimized ego is fueled by stagnation, refusing to grow in a world of endless change.
If the theme of righteous inflammation is “I’m always right,” then the theme of a victimized ego is “Life isn’t fair.” When in the grip of victimized inflammation, everyone and everything outside of you is the source of your pain, which prevents a larger cosmic picture from being recognized.
The third type of inflammation is called entitled inflammation. This occurs when a person believes it is their right to have whatever they want, exactly when they want it, even at the expense or to the detriment of others. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong or problematic in believing that you are worthy of receiving all that you desire since worthiness is an aspect of your highest truth. However, when the personality becomes inflamed, an innate sense of worthiness becomes exaggerated. In entitled inflammation, the ego tends to believe that everyone must fulfill their every whim and demand with little to no regard for the well-being of other people’s experiences. As you can imagine, the theme of an entitled ego is “What about me?” Even when served by others, there is never an end to the requests and demands of an ego that believes it controls the characters in its life.
The fourth type of inflammation is called needy inflammation. In this type of ego, no matter how much attention is received from others, it never feels like enough to be properly filled up. Despite how intently someone listens, there is always a lingering sense of being invisible, unrecognized, undervalued, or unheard. In needy inflammation, it’s easy to feel misunderstood. No matter how much time, interest, and attention you receive from others, it only makes this type of ego hungry for more.
Whether active in you or someone you know, needy inflammation can be quite draining for those held in the grip of it. Needy inflammation brings to life the true meaning of the term “energy vampire.” When inflamed in this way, no matter how much reassurance you get from others, you are always afraid of being abandoned, left out, or losing everything you’ve been given. As a result, the theme of needy inflammation is “It’s never enough.”
While you may recognize yourself or others in these descriptions, it is common to embody combinations of those aspects or to flow in and out like the changing of weather patterns. I’ve even seen ego structures that are combinations of all four aspects at once. Even at that stage of inflammation, there is always a possibility of true heartfelt relief when loving yourself becomes your recurring response to any question or concern.
In each of these aspects of inflammation, there is always a kernel of truth. However, when your personality gets inflamed, things get quite exaggerated. For example, in the natural state of your true innocent nature, it is not righteousness but rather the wisdom of the Universe that wishes to spare others undue suffering by providing insights that could help change their lives. Having a desire to point someone in a better direction as a way of assisting in their journey is a wonderfully inspired impulse. Yet, when your personality is inflamed, you go from wanting to uplift the lives of others to always needing to be right by making another wrong in the process.
Even in victimized inflammation, there is truth to the experience of feeling as if everything is personally happening to you. This is a reflection of your true innocent nature experiencing the ups and downs of life from a close, intimate perspective. It’s always important to remember that your seat in the theater of life is within the body of the main character. This means your front row seat exists as “I AM.” There is, in fact, some truth to the direct experience that everything happens to you. However, when the personality is inflamed and your perception of life is exaggerated, it appears as if everything in the world is conspiring against you in a relentless and overwhelming way.
Equally with entitled inflammation, when rooted in your natural state of innocence, it is under the power of your own divine authority to receive all that you dream, wish, and desire. In every breath, you have every right to have more prosperity than can ever be imagined, to have fulfilling committed relationships, to travel around the world, and to see the most breathtaking creations that have ever materialized into form. In your natural state, there is a healthy level of cosmic confidence that allows you to stand tall and fully own your life as a unique expression of spirit in action. Yet, when your personality gets inflamed and your view of life becomes exaggerated, the innate confidence of being worthy becomes an imbalanced desire for the world to work for you at anyone’s expense.
Even in needy inflammation, there is also a truth to be seen. At the core of your being, there is a deep-rooted desire to connect with others as unique ways of encountering your own divinity in different forms. There is a desire to connect, to be heard, to hear others, and to express uniqueness throughout your life. But when your personality becomes inflamed, a desire to express and connect becomes neediness, an inferno of hunger that cannot be extinguished. No matter how much is received from others, only more desperation is created when the personality is inflamed.
By exploring ego in a more heart-centered way, you can have greater patience and compassion throughout your daily encounters. Instead of ridiculing or persecuting the characters within your life, you will be able to see the light of divinity dancing in a play of exaggerated perception. While the ability to see at this cosmic level may be limited by an inflamed personality, any amount of time spent incubating in a cocoon of ego prepares you to awaken a greater truth for all.
The Calamity of Comparison
Even though the ego is a byproduct of an overstimulated nervous system, it may be easier to understand it as an inflamed personality structure. To walk around asking yourself whether your nervous system is overstimulated may not be as effective as recognizing throughout the day the moments when your personality becomes inflamed. When this occurs, whether momentarily or over a long period of time, you tend to perceive life through an exaggerated lens. This causes you to interpret the world through categories of distinction. As your view is obscured through judgments or compari
son, there is an unconscious tendency to define things as either good or bad, less and more, or even light versus dark.
While the act of comparing is natural in modern-day society, it doesn’t necessarily make life any clearer when everything in view is stringently defined by similarities or differences to other things. Imagine liking someone because of the ways they remind you of people you admire. Instead of embracing their attributes as an individual, they are either accepted or rejected based on who they resemble in your experience.
There are even TV sitcoms highlighting the calamity of comparison in hilarious fashion. One example may depict a main character who finally meets the woman of his dreams but is then tortured by the fact that she shares the same name as his mother. Now every time they are together, his ego believes he is on a date with his mom. Perhaps as the main character attempts to put the association with his mother aside, the woman of his dreams says familiar phrases that cause him to imagine his mother’s face on her body. This occurs routinely until the character cannot take it anymore, much to the amusement of the audience.
Another example commonly seen on sitcoms is creating tension between a main character and a close ally who unknowingly befriends the main character’s secret arch nemesis. This sets the stage for the main character to give their ally an ultimatum: either to help them seek zany forms of revenge against their sworn enemy or become another enemy of theirs. While it is easy to be entertained by the embellished actions of TV characters through situations their egos create, it is far more painful when a tendency to view life through veils of comparison remain unnoticed in you.
When the personality is inflamed, you can become territorial with the people, places, and things that define your sense of worth. While this can make you an ally to those close to you, it can equally create endless enemies out of those who unknowingly invade your territory. Whether it’s competing with new characters at work, feeling even worse about your favorite team losing on home turf, or judging others in response to how those you love have been mistreated, the territorial nature of ego can be easily overlooked when confused with the value of loyalty.
While it’s wonderful to be a loyal supporter, this becomes more like a territorial power play when you stand up for something that causes you to lash out at others whom you perceive are on the opposite “side.” Even if playing the role of a supporter, when someone you love is heartbroken, you cannot assist in their healing by adding more judgment toward the person in question.
When your personality is inflamed, a willingness to love quickly becomes an impulse to blame in response to the way you or someone else is feeling. Because ego can only exist as an inflamed personality for as long as the nervous system is overstimulated, it cannot see life as fresh opportunities that don’t have to be like or unlike anything else.
As your nervous system unravels out of patterns of overstimulation, there is no instinct to judge through comparing or contrasting at all. Instead, there is more an innate willingness to welcome each day as its own incarnation of brand-new experiences. Even when those in your life are facing the despair of adversity, there is no need to adopt their enemies as your own in order to listen, support, and encourage them through an unexpected moment of change. When your nervous system is relaxed, you resonate with encouraging others as they heal instead of igniting the fire of antagonism.
No matter how betrayed or heartbroken anyone seems to be, there is no healing when time is spent assembling an army to judge or persecute the ones who seem to cause such pain. While there can be a false sense of power in bringing egos together with a common enemy to take down, your world cannot become a peaceful, joyful, and happy place to be until a tendency to fight becomes an opportunity to uplift those who are hurting. This occurs by loving what arises. Whether loving the one in pain, accepting the one who desires revenge, forgiving the one who is good at holding grudges, or having compassion for the one who seeks conflict in an attempt to have the final word, each aspect is only here to be acknowledged as never before.
No matter how righteous, victimized, entitled, or needy you or anyone else remains, this merely reveals a world that you came to transform through the grace of an open heart.
Love as the Dissolver of Inflammation
Despite how unreasonable people may act when lost in ego, your personality can be equally triggered into various states of inflammation when judgment is your response to any personal encounter. Whether disappointed by the lack of support in your life or imagining your happiness as the end result of others behaving differently, those situations provide opportunities to further your own love revolution.
Such a revolution occurs by remembering, I’m the one who deserves more love, not less, no matter how disappointed, angry, or insistent I am in needing others to change. Each feeling is here to be loved as only I can love it.
No matter how many times a day your personality is inflamed or how often your actions and words are motivated by ego, the objective isn’t to judge yourself when you become triggered. Instead, you are cultivating an awareness of how many times throughout the day your insistence, temper, rigidity, and demands for external support become invitations to love yourself more often.
Even when you find yourself inundated by the demands of your job or under an intense deadline, it can be easy to be more concerned with accomplishing an end result than tuning in to the wisdom of your body. When you are inflamed, you can feel as if you’re under constant pressure in a race against time.
While it can be easy to point the finger of blame at the relentless demands of life, perhaps your circumstances only seem so overwhelming when your nervous system is overstimulated.
What if opening your heart during the heat of the moment allowed challenges or deadlines to become exciting instead of daunting?
In order to call upon your highest qualities for the wellbeing of all, it is essential to become the source of your own fulfillment. No matter how consistently you’re operating from ego, such moments invite you to realize, I’m not here to ridicule myself or anyone else’s behavior. I deserve more love, not less.
In order to embody this truth as a brand-new way of being, I invite you to repeat the following healing mantra:
Whenever righteousness arises, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When victimhood is apparent, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When entitlement arises, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When neediness remains, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When the finger of blame points in any direction or is turned on myself, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When I am inundated by the stress, pressure, expectations, and obligations of any role or responsibility that I am playing out in my family, occupation, or in any relationship, it is only here to be loved, as only I can love it.
When the need for more, the fear of less, the need for less, or even the fear of more cloud the clarity of my highest wisdom, it is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
Even when I’m feeling guilty, ashamed, hopeless, withdrawn, uninspired, apathetic, judgmental, cruel, heartless, insincere, spiteful, dishonest, callous, pessimistic, passive-aggressive, or even sarcastic, even all of that is here to be loved, as only I can love it.
The Clearing of All Karmic Agreements
Through interacting with those souls in the afterlife, one of the most interesting things I’ve experienced is a soul telling me how much it was run by guilt and obligation during an incarnation. I have often heard, “I remember making agreements in many different lifetimes. I punished and judged myself for trying to measure up to those agreements.”
As they were able to see life from a much broader perspective, their guilt and judgment vanished. I’ve often heard them say, “I now see that I never would have measured up to those agreements. All they were meant to do is to keep me occupied in the very structure that motivated me to search for ways out. Now that I am
free, I see those agreements were never made by me. They were things I agreed to when I wasn’t in my right mind.” From working with many individuals who are dealing with agreements that have been made in various lifetimes, I have seen firsthand the benefits of clearing such agreements. Any agreement you’ve negotiated was most likely created by ego. When your personality is no longer inflamed, you are not subject to the terms and conditions of an agreement. This essentially means that once each agreement made by ego is nullified, you are no longer stifled by the gravity of obligation. In the absence of obligation, you can freely make decisions and even create new agreements from the freedom and will of your own divine authority. Since the agreements made by ego were done in an attempt to guarantee outcomes that have already been orchestrated by the Universe, they have no benefit other than offering relief once they are cleared.
To experience freedom from any degree of obligation, please repeat the following healing mantra:
Whether from this lifetime or any incarnation throughout, I clear, unravel, nullify, and transmute any agreements, contracts, energy cords, imprints, or attachments that I have accepted through obligation, conformity, manipulation, fear, or in an attempt to control the fate of a particular outcome in life. I hereby release these agreements, contracts, cords, imprints, and attachments for the healing, awakening, and transformation of one and all. As of this moment, I am free and clear to make decisions from the freedom and will of my highest divine authority through the power reclaimed as I AM now. And so it is.
It is also common for empaths to carry over outdated vows from being monks and nuns in past lifetimes, including the bodhisattva vow itself. The bodhisattva vow can be misinterpreted to suggest not leaving this Earth plane until all beings are liberated, awake, and free from suffering. When taken at face value, it often cultivates righteous inflammation through a belief in spiritual martyrdom. The true essence of the bodhisattva vow is not a promise to keep but an aspiration to fulfill. In becoming what seems like the first person in the world to stand tall in the beauty of your eternal radiance, you cultivate a vibration of heart-centered consciousness.
