I’m aware that some of my blog titles aren’t exactly tempting. I mean, most of us have got shit to deal with right? Especially if you are reading a blog about spiritual healing. What I’m trying to do is to use experiences in my own healing journey so far, and observations outside myself, so that others may be able to see how to start a healing journey that really works.
Trauma in any form can do one or a combination of things.
It can lead to a very overdeveloped ego. An ego that can be so strong it may even prevent the owner from seeing mental illnesses they posses and how they affect others.
It can shut down certain energies in the body leading to physical ailments
It can keep us in a state of “being the victim” i.e. its everyone else's fault that this has happened to me and there's nothing I can do to change it.
An excess of heavy trauma can lead to personality disorders and mental health problems
Traumas can lead to other ailments like addictions
The ego (Judge, Monster, shadow self) can really become so blinding to the objective truth. This is because that truth can be very unpalatable. As I’ve explained before I think that part of the ego function may well be a defensive mechanism from pain. We don’t, in general, like to look at our short comings… This is part of the reason why the ego is often caught looking OUTSIDE ourselves. One of it’s main functions is to judge others and ultimately ourselves.
Within me, I had identified this ego as myself. This voice in my head that sounded like me. In fact it’s just a messy construction of coping mechanisms and how we have dealt with unpleasant situations and how we have been programmed from a young age.
Once we are taught to realise what the ego is and how it operates, we can start to detach from it. One of the things I want to write about here is how being attached to our egos affects our perceptions, of ourselves and others.
I’ve often referred to ego as a “judger”. It’s often there in our conscious minds making all sorts of judgements on a regular basis. What this does is immediately skew our perceptions on people and situations. It tends to close us off from the objective truth.
The purpose of being objective is super important on the spiritual path. It would be very difficult to heal while still being subjective, because you cant even see what the problem is to begin with.
I’ve also written about how quickly that inner judge can turn on us. I would say that self judgement is cataclysmic for mental health. When you go on believing that inner judge, you wind up feeling so little for yourself and losing so much power by your own ego, life can really become super unpleasant.
So really, the first thing on our spiritual path of healing must be a dissolution of the ego, or at very least the heaviest elements of it.
I’m not writing this as if I have lost mine. I still get a little upset and offended should any of my deepest triggers be touched upon. For example my biggest thing was, and still is, just not being good enough. It’s a stupid thing really, looking at that though for a minute, what is “good enough”? Good enough for what? The ego tends to build for us unreachable goals. That’s why the spiritual path is constant work on releasing these ego traps.
A quick example was for me last week I received a very minor “correction” at work. It ticked me off a fair bit as I really thought I wasn't in the wrong to do what I did. However, years back, before I started this work I might have reacted very differently. In this case, I was able to keep objective, see my colleagues point of view and also realise that in this case it was likely that his ego was involved. What I’m enabled to do now is to see all this. My perceptions are not skewed so much and I wont judge myself (or my colleague). Not like years ago when something like this may have left me feeling like I cant do anything right.
Egos can really lead us into the craziest of situations. I observe that romantic partnerships can be a hotbed for this type of scenario. It’s very easy to feel like our loved one is attacking us when they are just trying to say how they are feeling. I must admit, I regularly fall into this trap. I can easily tolerate coming under fire in most situations now, but the whole thing can get quite elevated when it involves our significant other. I believe that in this case the stakes are higher so the emotions surrounding any disagreement will be stronger.
Again I say that cutting down the ego will let any personal interaction become smoother. This is because we stay objective, our perceptions are not skewed, we can see the REALITY of the situation.
Sometimes our egos trick us in other ways. Often on the spiritual path we buy into the concept of being nice, doing good. There is nothing wrong with this of course. Until doing good things becomes detrimental to ourselves.
My encounter at work with a narcissist (and I mean this in the clinical, personality disorder way) really blew my mind open to what a runaway ego can do. There are indeed people out there that will use and abuse to the N’th degree. Therefore we’d better all pay attention to our ego and perceptions, otherwise our interactions with people in the world can leave us damaged and hurt.
As a brief example from my own life, I’ll write a bit about an experience with a long term friend. I may devote a whole blog post to it another time as the story is quite shocking. Something I haven’t quite got over myself yet.
He had supposedly been suffering from vague but serious health conditions for many years, so myself and my family would regularly go and visit and help. In the years that I commenced my real spiritual work, my perceptions of him began to change and I did start noticing what I’d call a few “red flags”.
My reasonable and kind nature had kept me doing 95% of the effort in our relationship and then I felt it fair as I believed his woeful stories about his health. My ego was also strongly involved though, I often succumbed to the emotional manipulation and the ego going “you're a bad friend if you don't go to see him”.
It got to a point where I felt I was being used. Despite having a very objective conversation with the man, the friendship dwindled and failed. We don't speak any more. It was still quite a devastating loss. I was shocked.
Had I not done the work I wouldn’t have noticed these ego traps and red flags and I’d most likely still be putting myself in situations that I was no longer comfortable with. Would still be suffering the abuse of emotional manipulation.
To sum up. I couldn't have made a lot of changes I have done with the burden of a strong ego. The ego traps us and gets us into a lot of trouble by changing our perceptions of ourselves and others. So therefore, the lynchpin of spiritual work is to work on dissolving the ego. Then we become objective. It really has its own rewards, despite them sometimes being difficult to see.
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