Love Trumps Ego

We all have areas in our lives that are ego driven and we have all protected islands of love. Often it is hard for us to separate the two. We have certain feelings for people and circumstances, have to do things out of necessity like earning money or raising our kids. The mom who loves her children and wants their best when she encourages them to excel at school, the spiritual aspirant who not only aspires to find God, but also wants to be a spiritual bestseller. Or the already attractive girl who aspires to make it in show business and who uses plastic surgery to boost her chances of success.

For most of us the question, so what exactly is ego and what is love, never really arises; we just do what we do because it feels right. It is hard work to bring all the stuff to the surface and you have to be incredibly honest with yourself and persistent if you like to succeed. Why should you, I would ask as well. So what, you want to be a hot shot at work or in society, want to have the hottest body in town, or want to extend your own ego by sending your kid to Harvard. God bless you if you know what you really want; just go after it with everything you got. Even if you are a spiritual aspirant, living out your true desires can be better for your soul development than repressing them in the name of spirituality.

The point is you do not need to worry, life stands ready to show you who you truly are independent of what you do. Life heals and love trumps the ego over the long run all the time. You may have heard of the story of the tiger mom who pushed her children to the limit to make them the best they can academically be only to find one day that she had to ease up because her children were revolting. Yup, that is the wake-up call you receive, go any further with your 'good intentions' and your child will take psychological harm. The child has signed up for this job on a soul level to teach her mother a lesson to choose love over Harvard. Or take the spiritual traveler who wants to make a career out of his calling. He may one day find that the publishing business is as cut-throat as any other and may have a choice at hand between his honest thirst to discover God and his drive to make a name for himself in the spiritual community. Every person he will meet along his journey will make this choice obvious to him. In the case of the girl who wants to be a famous singer, a model or a movie star to express herself, it may well be that her body revolts, abused by the latest plastic surgery, which makes her realize that there is a choice between her success and the love of her own body.

The constraints that you will encounter in your endeavors to find a place for yourself in business, society and relationship will define you. There is no right or wrong. For every Tiger Woods there is a Nelson Mandela. Both are special in their own way. Do you want to have fame or a purposeful job? Only you can know what is right for you. The good thing though, you cannot make a mistake whenever soul development is your ultimate goal. No matter what you do, no matter what direction you take, there will always be a soul sibling showing up just in the nick of time, encouraging you to choose love over ego. You can miss love once, perhaps even twice, but eventually everyone gets it that there is no alternative to love. Life heals, all you have to do is to embrace it and choose love wherever you go and you will be Home before you know it.