The Nodes of Life Part 3
May 18, 2025
The Nodes of Life Part 3
One of the first nodes we come upon in our spiritual development is in late childhood. We are four, five, or six, realizing we can no longer be our innocent selves. We are chided for being too honest or shut down for being ourselves. Maybe we were not ashamed of our bodies and ran around unclothed. Then our caretakers may have rushed us into our bedrooms and made us get dressed. Perhaps we told the truth and said, “The emperor has no clothes!” But we were out of line for saying that and reprimanded. In any event, our secure holding environment no longer held us. We learned we could no longer trust our natural selves, and to be wary of the world we thought would uphold us.
As our holding environment continued to dissipate, around ages five or six, we reach the critical mass of discomfort. So to cope with an environment we couldn’t quite trust, we learn to fake it, tell a lie instead of the truth, wear what will bring us approval, and say and do what will be acceptable. We learn to cover our true selves and enter the world of our egos.
Then the scales tip in favor of our identifying with the ego instead of our soul child. The ego is the mental structure that gives us a new way to move through the world instead of our soul child. This new person is more intelligent and knows how to wiggle out of the predicaments that our soul child is so frequently trapped in. This new person has a strategy for just about any confrontation or dilemma.
But later in life we missed our true selves and wanted to return to our bliss. So, our ego imitated our soul child’s bliss. It did it by being correct, helpful, successful, unique, wise, loyal, happy, strong, or peaceful. Each of us puts on one of these egos, and we begin moving through the world as that person instead of as our truest and most innocent selves. We think our ego’s strategies will give us the bliss we had as soul children.
Going from an innocent self to a false self was quite a transition. But we all go through it. It is a necessary rite of passage into our place in this world. Once we lose touch with our innocent self, we completely identify with our ego and it becomes who we are. But there is always a secret yearning to return “Home.” Home is where the heart and soul are, which is also the place where our soul child resides. Home is where we can live in our true nature in which we feel free, full, and happy, and where we want that for others, too.
Leaving the soul child and adopting our ego type is the first primary node in our spiritual development. Why must we flip at this juncture? This is a perennial theological question. One very viable answer is that we all have a sacred reason for coming to earth. Maybe the reason is to work out something with another person, maybe there is an issue in our soul that needs resolution, or perhaps we have a deficiency in our soul that needs to be healed. In any case, we cannot do what needs to be done in our most innocent state. For some reason that we don’t completely understand, we must enter the ego to deal with our reason for being born.
Living as an ego, we encounter challenges that call for solutions, and we give it our all. We use our ego’s strategies, but we eventually learn that they may solve some problems, but they also cause tremendous suffering. In the suffering we learn what can be taught only through those painful circumstances. Then we are ready for another leg of our journey, another node in the stalk of our life.
Spiritual practice: If you had a second childhood as an adult, how would you imagine it to be?
Self-inquiry: Are you in touch with the soul child you were before you flipped? If so, how would you compare that first identity with the identity you assumed when you put on your ego?
Dear God,
I pray that I may return to my soul child and embrace that wondrous being you placed inside me at my making. Amen
