The Missing Puzzle Piece: Part 1

From: Retrain Your Ego, Chapter 2

If you’ve ever watched the 2003 film adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan where Peter is trying to recapture his shadow which has somehow become detached, you’ll remember he chased his shadow all the way into the ‘Real World’ from ‘Never-Never Land’ and ended up in Wendy’s bedroom. Wendy helped Peter to recapture his shadow and sewed it back on so it couldn’t escape again after which she and her brothers followed Peter and ended up in ‘Never-Never Land’.

Fortunately for us, our shadows tend to stay where they are and don’t try to escape! The point is, though, we can’t do without our shadows, can we? Wherever we go, our shadow-selves go also. Does that put you in mind of something else we can’t seemingly get rid of? If you said the Ego, then you are spot on.

Do you also remember seeing those cartoons where whenever someone was faced with a decision such as whether to eat chocolate or drink another beer or tell a lie and so forth, then up pops a little Angel and a little Devil on their shoulders? You still see them from time to time, although not as often as you used to. They represented our Conscience, didn’t they?

The Angel would be saying something like:

‘Don’t do it, you know how bad you’ll feel when you next weigh yourself.’ 

And little impish Devil, on the other hand, would say:

‘What total rubbish! It tastes so good it would be a shame not to have at least a little nibble. C’mon, what harm can that do? You know you want to!’

The cartoon character would be agreeing with both in turn and end up completely confused and so it would go on until the Angel’s advice would eventually be taken and all would end well.

Now, I don’t know if you ever noticed, but the Angel was usually on the right shoulder and the Devil on the left. Notice anything about that? Think of the Critical and Creative Minds and where are they said to be. If you said Left Brain Hemisphere and Right Brain Hemisphere respectively you are correct!

Now isn’t it interesting that the Angel should be on the right shoulder - or Intuitive and Creative side - whilst the Devil is over on the left where the Critical Analytical, or the so-called ‘Monkey Mind’ resides? Also, when we are connected to or are interacting with Spirit it’s usually via our Creative Intuitive Mind or Right Brain, isn’t it? So, if that’s the Right Brain sorted, who’s in charge of or who are we communicating with via our Left Brain? The Devil perhaps? Ah, but who or what is the Devil?

The term Satan literally means Liar, so it’s not a name. Lucifer is only used in the Latin Vulgate as far as the Bible is concerned, otherwise the term Satan is used or, as in the Greek Septuagint, Morning Star or Shining One is how it’s translated. Let’s not forget that the whole Bible was severely doctored when it was translated into Latin in the Fourth Century at the Council of Nicaea and has been periodically altered by several Papacies and others ever since.

Incidentally, there wasn’t even a depiction of this so-called Satan character until Dante painted his Inferno in 1472 which certainly, gave the Holy Roman Church something new to scare their parishioners with, not to mention an extra revenue stream! Our Egos are absolutely not little devils, personal or otherwise, but are an integral part of who and what we are whilst we are here in this University of Life.

In this chapter I’m going to explain how it all comes together and how I reach that conclusion, starting with what I personally believe and understand the Ego to actually be. Don’t worry, what follows isn’t some dry and dusty academic definition from a psychoanalytic point of view, I don’t have those qualifications. I do have a healthy interest in how people tick and tock however and have gleaned a few things over the past decades which are not totally relevant for what I’m about to share, although they have helped.

My intention is to help you view your Ego in a new way, a different way from all the negative stuff surrounding it, which is propagated by psychiatrists, religious teachings, inspirational speakers and even by mystics and spiritual teachers especially since the 1960s.

Our Ego gets a bad Rap, exactly in the same way Eve, she of Eden fame, also gets the blame for all the ills and negative stuff in the world. That sounds like a bit of a correlation, don’t you think? Eve Bad-Ego Bad, Adam Good-Spirit Good. Stuff like that gets my little cogs a-whirring and I probe deeper, mainly through research, meditation and conversing with my Guides, and I get Insights.

In early 2023, I had an Insight regarding what our Egos are all about, why we have them, what function they fulfil and so on. As you now know we are all Energy and we all come from One Source, therefore I could only surmise that the Ego served a more positive function than we are usually led to believe.

That Insight came whilst I was meditating on the Two Greatest Commandments and the Wholehearted Love we are supposed to have for our Source, Ourselves and Others. In particular when we Love ourselves wholeheartedly then surely that means our complete Selves - including our Ego. Therefore, my question at the time was: So why are we treating our Ego like dirt and something to get rid of if it is an integral part of us?

The Insight was that we should be showing our Ego the same Love we show for the rest of us and others, because if we don’t then we are not expressing Wholehearted Love!

The next part of this Insight was the confirmation I received a few months later from Anita Moorjani in her second book: ‘What If This Is Heaven?’ where she shares the deeper effect of her remarkable Near-Death Experience and in Chapter 10 of her book Anita shares how she believes her Ego was her friend as it helped her to deal with and get through her Cancer recovery.

The very next day whilst listening to a Dr Wayne W Dyer presentation on Audible the penny really dropped, that Satori Lightbulb went off yet again because usually whenever Wayne referred to the Ego in his lectures, he would normally turn it into an acronym and say Edges God Out, but on this one occasion he referred to the Ego as Earth Guide Only.

Boom! Fireworks went off in my head, bells rang, and I instantly knew I was meant to hear that for, just in the very next sentence, Wayne reverted back to his Edges God Out acronym. This had been in answer to a question I had asked of my Guides regarding whether I was on the right track in believing the Ego was a Friend and not, as usually promulgated, our Enemy.

At that point I was in the process of stripping out a lot of unnecessary material and reorganising this book and so on as there was a lot of information but not a lot of structure. I had been meditating and cogitating for days, maybe a week or more, and experimenting with different themes and was feeling a little stuck. The Ego Insight was the ‘Missing Puzzle Piece’ I needed and how it just slotted in with the overall theme was, and is, perfect.

Until Next Time,

Namaste,

Jeremy R Scott