With this kind of love in your heart, you are willing to give whatever is necessary. Your thoughts are not about wanting to dominate or control the other person. There is only the loving pleading of your higher self wanting to give all that you can to the loved one. Marriages often fail because one of the partners stops giving. If both were willing to give 100 percent to the relationship, there would be more than enough to provide for a successful and happy marriage.
When only one partner gives 100 percent, it is a sacrifice. It is important to distinguish between giving and sacrificing. A sacrifice is generally for something. The sacrifice is only made to achieve something. When you are sacrificing, you are giving to get, and you are in ego’s mode, which programs you to believe you are so important and special that you deserve something for your giving. Ego wants you pumped up and believing that giving indicates your superiority—as if your generosity sets you apart from others who are not as munificent as you.
If you give because you feel that you have to, you are not authentically motivated by your higher self. It is the ego at work here too, telling you that you are so much better than the recipients of your giving. Ego even considers giving grudgingly, which is evidence of superiority.
But giving as a means of fostering tolerance and love through your sacred self is different. This kind of giving occurs when you contribute to the needs or wants of others with no expectation of return or acknowledgment. It is the same kind of giving that the mother extends to her baby. This is the kind of giving that tolerance nourishes. It is the kind of giving that happens as you learn tolerance for yourself and for others.
As you cultivate a sense of giving, you will experience that giving is receiving and receiving is giving in all its tautological splendor. One of my favorite passages in the New Testament describes this kind of giving. In Luke 6:35, Jesus says: “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”
Mindfulness of others’ needs is one of the most blissful experiences that we can know. Recall how exciting it was to give presents to parents, grandparents and siblings. It equaled and may even have surpassed your excitement about receiving gifts. You were receiving when you gave.
It is your sacred self that encourages you to give unconditionally. It is your ego that wants a reward. But that is only because this is what ego knows as long as you continue to reward it for keeping you separate from your loving presence. Give your ego the experience of knowing the love and tolerance of your higher self and you will automatically begin functioning the same way in your outer life.
Intimacy. When you respond to the encouragement of your ego, you find that it is constantly necessary to exercise some degree of authority over others. This is what ego demands because it believes that is how it gets the power it requires. When this occurs, all possibility of intimacy evaporates.
Intimacy is the way of the higher self. This does not mean merely engaging in close sexual encounters. Showing intimacy is a way of communicating and being with another person, which sends a clear message of unconditional loving and caring.
Ego fears all such encounters and is extremely active when opportunities for intimacy present themselves. The ego is so overwhelming in this area that the mere thought of committing to another in unconditional love can be more frightening than open-heart surgery without anesthesia!
“Watch out, they’ll try to own you if you become too intimate. You’ll lose your freedom!” are the kinds of statements ego bombards your thoughts with. The ego knows all about ownership and dominance because it is doing this to you all the time. Ego dominates you and fears being dominated, and it equates intimacy with domination.
To be intimate is to be tolerant and to accept another unconditionally. It means showing kindness and respecting the needs and wants of the other person. If you fear this kind of human contact, ego is threatening you with the danger of intimacy.
When you learn to travel the sacred path, you discover that love is the least threatening experience there is. Love asks nothing and demands nothing. It calls for giving, sharing and being vulnerable, with God as your inner guide communicating infinite love.
Showing intimacy is a way of communicating in which you are able to extend love to the other person without needing to be right or to make the other person wrong. When a person you speak with feels accepted, loved and listened to, after a conversation you both have enjoyed intimacy. If you had to make them wrong to prove your point, or if you judged them in any way, you succumbed to the demands of your ego.
If you are in a partnership with someone and you find yourself shunning intimacy, you can be sure your ego is actively discouraging your sacred self. The fear of your knowing your higher self means that ego will do whatever it has to in order to keep you from intimacy. Convincing you that you are superior is a way to prevent you from the vulnerability that intimacy requires. Thus you will go from one dominant/submissive relationship to another, avoiding intimacy.
These are the fundamentals of becoming more tolerant and allowing your higher self to transcend the authoritarian and dominant impulses of the ego. These ego-directed behaviors crop up in a myriad of ways, some of which you will recognize in this next section.
YOUR AUTHORITARIAN DOMINANT EGO AT WORK
Excessively using self-references and always bringing the conversation back to yourself. Rather than drawing someone else out and exploring their feelings, you use every excuse to have the attention focused on you.
Taking a hurry-up approach to life, which leaves no time for contemplation or quiet time. Always needing to be ahead of the driver in front of you, racing through caution lights rather than slowing to a stop, constantly using telephones and pagers, even at theaters and restaurants—these and many others are behaviors that keep you in control and leave no time for gently being in the lives of others in meaningful ways.
Giving orders and demanding perfection from family members and coworkers. You refuse to listen to any contrary points of view. You do things like bark out demands in restaurants as a way of insinuating others are inferior to you.
Being preoccupied with your own concerns, career goals, accomplishments and daily experiences. You insist that others always hear your stories and seldom are interested in theirs.
Publicly correcting the mistakes of others and flaunting your superior knowledge. You correct such things as grammatical errors, improper use of words, factual errors, etiquette blunders, memory lapses and fashion faux pas (and you do it in front of others to impress them).
Withholding intimacy and closeness and blaming the other person for lack of intimacy. You refuse to be intimate and loving if someone does not live up to your expectations. You use any mistake on their part as your reason to withhold intimacy, which really scares the hell out of you.
Needing to win in conversations rather than to communicate and share. You use the time while someone else is talking to prepare your own self-centered reactions rather than listening to what they are saying and responding to their feelings and concerns.
Building yourself up at the expense of others. You use boasting, bragging and self-centeredness as your primary conversational tools.
The inability to give without getting. You keep track of who responds to your greeting cards and refuse to send to those who are not reciprocating. You give to a charity or help another and then are upset when a thank-you does not arrive on your time schedule. You give to get rather than give unconditionally.
Using your standards as an example of how others ought to be. You treat others as less important who have not performed according to your standards of excellence, or who have failed to win the trophies you consider important. You dismiss those who do not dress or speak the way that you do. You judge the worthiness of others based on things like their jewelry or cars.
Dictating to those who are smaller, younger or less educat
ed. You subject others to your control by threatening reprisal, by bullying or by withholding financial support. You use your superior financial position as an indicator of your specialness.
These, along with a potentially infinite list of others, are some of the more common examples of how the need to be dominant and superior shows up in your life. These tools of the ego are used by virtually everyone at one time or another.
In order to go beyond these ego-driven thoughts and behaviors, it is helpful to know the reward system that your ego has erected. When you know what it is that you are getting out of these behaviors, it makes changing them a much more likely proposition.
HOW YOUR EGO IS REMUNERATED FOR THIS DOMINANCE AND WHY IT FEARS TOLERANCE OF YOUR HIGHER SELF
Your ego is your long-time companion and it doesn’t want you to abandon it. Your false self knows that you will not need it to play a dominant role in your life if you become tolerant and shift your emphasis to serving others. Consequently, your ego tells you over and over, “You are separate and better than those around you. In order to prove this, you must exercise some control over their behavior. Be dominant and you will gain the respect of others. Respect from others is how you get validated.”
Your ego needs you to be puffed up so that you will listen to it and believe its false message.
Your ego thrives on your feelings of incompleteness and your fear that you are inadequate. Hence, you will be persuaded to avoid too much intimacy for fear of being revealed. You protect yourself from such revelations by listening to your ego and avoiding true intimacy.
By looking outward at all of the things and people that you need to control, you fill your life with the task at hand. So you fill up your time dominating and controlling the external world, and you have no time left for looking inward. The ego wins when you need to dominate, and winning is very important to your ego.
By being reluctant to give of yourself and be aware of the needs and wants of others, you can keep your attention on yourself. Your ego is threatened when you detach from self-centeredness or look outward to see how you can serve others. Consequently, your ego encourages you to remain self-centered.
If you do give, your ego gets the focus back on you by demanding to be acknowledged and appreciated for being humanitarian. Either way, the ego—not your higher self—wins again, and your sacred quest is pushed to the background.
When you are dominating others, you are guaranteeing that conflict will exist. Conflict is the workplace of the ego.
No one, and I mean no one, wants to be told how to live, what to be, how to think. In short, no one wants to be dominated. When you assume this role, you create conflict immediately. Your false self then goes to work convincing you of your need to win the conflict and demonstrate your superiority.
Your higher self eschews conflict and encourages tolerance and love. Your ego loves the conflict and will encourage it.
There are few things the ego delights in more than correcting the mistakes of others. Ego seizes this double opportunity to point out mistakes and simultaneously feel more important than others.
This is the payoff system for the ego. Now that you understand why you have listened to your ego’s requirements for control and domination, you can start shifting some of those attitudes toward tolerance.
Being an authoritarian person may provide you with those ego-gratified appearances, but they do not lead to a more satisfying, deeper experience in your daily life. Your relationships will always suffer and you will feel a sense of emptiness and of being off purpose as long as you adhere to those ego demands.
By shifting your attention to your higher self, you will discover a more satisfying path.
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR ALLOWING YOUR HIGHER SELF TO GUIDE YOU TOWARD MORE TOLERANCE
Curb your need to be right. You can accomplish this by catching yourself just as you are about to speak, and asking yourself if you want to be guided by your ego or your higher self. If you truly want to work on this area of restraining your ego, then simply respond to what the person has just said without offering an argument or advice. As you practice this technique, your ego will fade and your relationships will improve.
Practice active listening. Try to hear the emotions within the content of a person’s conversation. Remove your defensiveness or need to fix or explain. Just listen with your heart and paraphrase what the person has said to you. Hear what the other person is feeling and respond to that. You will automatically begin to eliminate your intolerance.
Demonstrate tolerance and love by ignoring what may have transpired in the past. Avoid the inclination to make someone wrong by pointing out the fallacies of their point of view with examples from their past. Let go of the desire to win, and cultivate the desire to communicate.
Give yourself some quiet time to talk with God and to seek the help of your spiritual guides. Doing this daily will introduce you to a more peaceful and quiet way of being. You will find that the energy you previously used overpowering people will be slowly put to use in serving rather than swaying others.
Halt yourself just as you are about to intervene in a family or business dispute. Count to twenty-five and listen. The pause will usually allow the dispute to get resolved without your interference. If it is difficult to restrain yourself, then move out of hearing range.
Learn to allow others to work out their difficulties without feeling that you are the only one who can fix things. Your ego is pushing you to intervene and show how powerful you are, while your higher self wants you to experience peace and harmony. Choose the latter.
Stifle any and all public tendencies to correct others. Make a rule that you will never correct someone in front of others. No one appreciates being publicly corrected.
If you feel the need to teach someone the errors of their ways, get quiet and ask yourself how God would handle the situation. If the person is an adult, gently and privately ask if he or she wants to be corrected. You may be surprised to discover how unimportant it is for many people to know the proper or correct way of saying or doing things. It is usually the person doing the correcting who places so much importance on the correct way.
Try giving anonymously to the needy. If you insist on being recognized for your gift, then you are not giving from your higher self. Give up giving to get!
Be generous and find joy in knowing that your contributions are helping others. Celebrate yourself for giving that is not ego-based.
When tempted to judge others, remind yourself that they are part of the same divine creation as you are. Let go of some of those ego-based judgments of assessing others based on appearances or acquisitions.
See the fullness of God in everyone that you meet and remember that the world of the manifest is not all that there is. There is the Christ in you meeting the Christ in that person also. If you can see it in this way, you will be less tempted to judge them by their possessions or appearance.
If you have difficulty with intimacy, feel the fear and do it anyway. Know that you are having a tough time offering your love, but resist the ego’s demand to withdraw. Instead, reach out to the person you love and tell them how much they mean to you. Do it even if you feel that they don’t deserve it or they won’t respond properly. Take the risk and fight the impulse to withhold. You will feel more loving and fulfilled for having taken that risk.
Your higher self pleads with you to extend your love and be unafraid of being vulnerable. Loving is about giving. If you get back, fine; but if not, you are still lovable.
Remember that no one on this planet wants to share in your conflicts. People want the peace that is the way of their higher selves. Ego loves turmoil and conflict, which is why there are so many conflicts in the world. Ego fighting ego.
If you know in your heart that you are being guided by your false self when you promote conflict, then perhaps you can get a bit quiet and go within just before you are about to embroil someone in a conflict. I have found that when I meditate for even thirty seconds before
I am about to engage in conflict, I somehow manage to get in touch with my higher self—and the need to be right just disappears.
In Man’s Eternal Quest, Paramahansa Yogananda wrote: “God is the repository of all happiness; and you can contact Him in everyday life. Yet man mostly occupies himself in pursuits that lead to unhappiness.”
The activity that leads mostly to that unhappiness is the need to make others wrong and the tendency to dominate and control. Consult God and know that this loving presence is available to you. Abandon your reliance on your ego and all of its false logic, and experience the tolerance, love and peace of your sacred self.
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FROM TOXICITY TO PURITY
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
—MATTHEW 5:3
I will work this day at my purest intentions for the highest good of all.
In Confucianism there is a principle called Jen. This principle refers to the belief that there is goodness, pure goodness, at the center of our being where the self or the spirit can be found. Each person is perceived to be good when they are their true self. The principle of Jen implies that one cannot help but be pure when they are themselves. Lives take on a toxic quality when we ignore our authentic selves and listen to the false self.
To allow your highest self to triumph in this conflict between purity and toxicity, you must let go of any idea that at your core you are evil or a sinner. You need to realize that the central facet of your being is pure, good and beautiful. As Saint Matthew put it so perfectly, this purity of heart will allow you to know God.
Of course, the opposite is true as well. If you practice a toxic life, in thought or behavior, you will be unable to know the divine spirit within you, and your ego will continue to dominate your inner and outer life.
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