Nine of us today. Three videos each different, one showing a force of nature in an elderly woman who who really lived life and embraced death Another who told us happiness is not in anything perceived but in oneself. The third told us to increase happiness by thinking of a good event, embroider it and hold in the mind to imprint on the brain.

Then we read this paper.

In certain spiritual schools of thought, we have been conditioned to think of the ego in a negative and limited way. However it is an erroneous mentality to think of the ego as something that’s unwanted and to get rid off for spirituality purpose. The ego exists for a purpose and it’s an integral part of spirituality and the totality of being. To remove the ego is like removing the left hand and keeping the right. It’s a ridiculous concept that shouldn’t even be thought of at all. Spirit and ego go hand and hand for complete experience.

The purest definition for ego is the individuated consciousness of Infinite Being. It is who you are as a unique and distinct personality apart from universal consciousness. It is your expressed self that is localized within time and space. It is your existence as a free will entity that can think and act with or apart from higher intelligence. Imagine Spirit as an ocean and the individual wave as ego. The wave and ocean are one just as Spirit and ego are one. One represents the whole and the other represents the part.

Ego has its use for Spirit. Ego is the way by which Spirit perceives reality from one place and one moment. Ego is how Spirit has uniqueness of experience. Ego is also how Spirit expresses in a particular way that is unlike any other. The reason for not being attached to ego or your own personal reality is so that you are free to realize your total Self as Spirit which is unlimited, unbounded and capable of being, doing and having anything. Then are you truly free to live your life fully with the power of Spirit.

Without ego, there is no independence of thinking, which means you as an individual would not exist. You would not be able to have the experience of a unique personality along with personal memories and choices in this universe. So it would be pointless to do away with the ego since Spirit created ego to express and experience itself. The key to spirituality is not to get rid of the ego, but it is to become not limited by it. Spirituality is about realizing Spirit and harmonizing ego with it. We become One and All.

Spirituality is not about power over anyone. It is about self- empowerment, about power with everyone. The ego of a spiritual person is not a problem. It is an essential part of the human system, created expressly by The Creator of all life in order for it to experience self-consciousness from an infinite number of viewpoints. Infinite Being is the all-encompassing consciousness from which the universe was created. Everything in the universe is made of consciousness. Each snowflake is unique, so is each person.

You cannot cut off a part of yourself. The ego cannot be cast away and forgotten. It is your essential sense of identity. Even if someone were successful in casting away a part of themselves, there would come a time when they would have to retrieve that lost part and integrate it back into themselves in a healthy, holistic manner. That is why you always have reoccurring problems in life until you’ve resolved those parts of you which the situations keep bringing up. Psychological integration is wholeness of being.

You are an expression of Infinite Being as it experiences itself from all possible viewpoints. The best way you can serve yourself and Infinite Being, the source within us all, is to live your life to your own, personal, highest potential. And celebrate who you are, because there is no one exactly like you in the entire universe. Knowing this truth frees you to embrace your ego completely and allow it to be freely and fully expressed. You have every right to be who you are because you were designed to be that way.

Your primary purpose in life is to experience life from one individual, unique point of view. That answers the great question in life about what you are here for. You created yourself to exist in this physical world for the purpose of expressing yourself in a particular way and to live life with a unique experience. You are meant to live your life and not the life of another. So you are the best person you were born to be and you have the best destiny that you have given to yourself. Go ahead and live it to the fullest.

There are two extreme paths that a person can go in life. One is the path of extreme selfishness and the other is the path of extreme selflessness. Extreme selfishness is to seek to benefit oneself as much as possible while extreme selflessness is to seek to benefit others as much as possible. But both paths ultimately end up in the same place. Because in order to benefit oneself as much as possible, you must benefit others, and in order to benefit others as much as possible, you must benefit yourself too.

By helping others to the detriment of yourself, you become disempowered from serving them as best as you can. Not only that, you also now need others to help you in areas where you are in detriment. By serving yourself to the detriment of others, you cause your environment to deteriorate and therefore worsening your overall situation which isn’t to your best interest. The best way of being is to serve others and yourself completely. Ultimate selfless and selfishness are one because you are the Self of all.

People who only take from others or only give to others are ignorant of their total Self as Spirit or Infinite Being. We are all here as unique individuals to share our special gifts with each other. Giving and receiving are necessary steps to complete the process of energy exchange between ego and ego within Spirit. Your unique gift is given to the world when you express your unique self here. The best way to help others is by doing your own thing. By shinning your light, you inspire others to shine theirs as well.