Stories Part 6
April 30, 2025
Stories Part 6
The ego’s story of us is about being well protected, loved, and doing what it envisions. The healthy ego keeps us in balance. Instead of being self-absorbed, its story includes others’ needs and will put them first. The unchecked ego, however, tends to be all about the self, and it values others as means to an end. The healthy and the unchecked ego states spin two different types of stories, but both have one big thing in common — their stories are built on their concept of an ideal life.
The ego’s story is altogether different from that of the soul’s. We do not plan the soul’s story. Our soul knows what it’s here to accomplish because it is connected to our spiritual destiny. Yet we are more attuned to the ego mind’s ideal for us; when we are connected to our soul, we are in touch with our spiritual purpose and its story.
Looking at our spiritual destiny takes courage because we must be honest about why we’re here on earth. In most religious traditions, the soul is on earth to find a closer union with God. Union is achieved by employing the values and principles of love over alternative ways of meeting life’s challenges. Learning what we need to know and removing all that obscures our true nature creates our soul’s story. This necessitates relinquishing the ego’s ideal and going with what the soul needs to progress.
We must explore rough edges, blind spots, avoidances, terrors, and repeated mistakes. We must accept the things about our inner drives, will, and desires. These include the things that deter and limit us, but that we never seem to have time to correct. For many of us, it isn’t easy to face these things, so we unconsciously repeat them. These are the things the soul must burn away before we can claim more of our true nature, our essence. The soul’s journey is not only about burning away, but about reclaiming. Without the needless suffering we can more readily experience abiding joy, celebrate and embody mountaintop experiences, where heaven meets earth.
Many of us are hypnotized by the ego’s story, but we are here to fulfill the soul’s story, not the ego’s. So, when we face the things we never wanted to face and understand what we need to understand, we then embody them along with the ecstasies of our soul, to fulfill our soul’s story.
The ego’s story is fed by its ideal, whereas the soul’s story is reality. If we want to know more about our soul’s story, all we have to do is look at our lives until now. What have we endured that brought us closer to the Divine? What gifts and celebrations bring us in closer union with the Divine? These are the major themes of our soul’s story. There are times when the ego’s story and the story of the soul are the same. These are the times when the ego’s ideal is also the soul’s story. But often, the soul’s business is not what the ego planned. Instead, it uses the ego’s plans to help us realize what we could never have realized if things had gone as our ego planned.
Is all this to say that we need not have an ego ideal? No. The ego ideal provides satisfaction, and it is often very aligned with the soul’s story, but more than that, it provides the issues by which we realize those things about which we were unconscious. The ego’s strivings set the stage for the soul to help us realize more of the truth. The ego and the soul are actually partners, and eventually, the ego serves the soul.
Spiritual practice: What have you had to undergo that brought you closer to the Divine? What have you been gifted with and celebrated that have brought you into a closer union with the Divine? As you write these answers, you may want to consider that you write the major themes of your soul’s story.
Self-inquiry: What is your ego’s ideal for you, and has it come true?
Dear God,
I pray for the consciousness of your story. Amen
