Ego/Soul

Quaking

There is no warning thunder

in fact      no warning at all

Suddenly arroyos are groveling

towards end of a trickle

a slow sliver of seep

into something more powerful

than heaven's tears

We are tired of trauma

of tears shredding our gullies

of rasping fingernails against life

We are so angry      we are stone

we are so incensed by society

by everything of importance

you can hear our howls

through caves drilled

into our very hearts

We are unwillingly ready to spill out

and it will be terrifying to us

let alone to you

Desert rests      like mother between birthing pains

before the storm     that will change us all

to where we hardly remember sift of sands

remember what we thought of import

what you see in paintings of deserts

and skeletons of saguaro bodies

stiff in apprehension

That is us

We are trembling at our very center

when enough feels like enough

Be careful     we quake

©Carol Desjarlais 2.18.19

When a woman finally knows enough is enough, she can be a raging torrent in her changing or leaving.  A woman knows when she is done.  She knows when it is over.  Logic must reign.  

So often we let our Ego reign.  Our Ego is not us.  We are an accumulation of body, mind, heart and soul, at our very core of being.  The Ego is a pseudo us.  Some of us tend to see more of what Ego wants us to see.  Our Ego is a place of compensation.  It is the place that collects incorrect data in order to boost your thoughts, only your thoughts.  It is the place where your lizard brain rewords things, to try to control what you think.  Typically, the louder your Ego, the less self-esteem you really have.  There are ways to tell if you Ego is talking, rather than authentic soul.

If you find that you think more of what others think of you, then you are listening with Ego and reacting/acting from that place.  If you seek gratification outside of self, your Ego will be gratified because it makes it stronger.  Ego is not deep.  Soul is deep.  Seek things that deepen soul not pride.

If you find yourself waiting for others to change, that is Ego waiting.  Your soul wants you to change your soul.  Trying to fit into others expectation, trying to change others is simply Ego.  If they happen to fall into your manipulation, they will still never fit what you want, satisfy you, for what you want is ego not change self.  Wanting to change Self is soul.  

If you find you are more "I" centered/MEMEMEMEME-centered, then you are acting and reacting from Ego.  Watch how you react when someone feeds your ego.  Does it make you feel moody?  Yes yes, negative moodiness comes from Ego.

Manipulation and competitiveness comes from Ego, as well.  Trying to attract people, places, things, can become a game of competition.  Do you find you do turn on the charm in some occasions, around some people, places, and things?  Do you find yourself getting more and more territorial?  We give off body language as well as verbal.  What social cues do you use?  Becoming awre of these things will help you discern Ego from Soul.

Some of us control from Ego in so many small, and what we think is significant, ways.  Keeping the game in your arena helps you control situations.  This is pure Ego.  Do you make others wait?  Do you control ways people can contact you?  This means that relationships will dwindle.  Even though Ego tells you you are, somehow, protecting self, you are merely pushing people away.

It is funny that we may not know we are pushing people away.  We all dislike  feelings of rejection, abandonment, etc.  Yes, we have sneaky ways we allow Ego to do just this to others.  In the end, then we will have reason to feel abandoned and rejected, for others give up, eventually and we have propagated our own rejection and abandonment.   Rejection is part of being down here on earth.  But we have to realize when we are the control, or, rather, our Ego has been in control, many times.  Ego hates rejection, by the way.  It will be very angry and stomp its feet and throw stones.  In the background, it was us who manipulated our own rejection, and not from a place of soul.

Look, sisters, sometimes we have epiphanies.  Check even those;  some are Ego's joy at having conquered another MEMEME/I arena.  When life becomes what we do not want it to be, when you find yourself contemplating more past than future, then you are not living your today for you.  You are living your life for Ego.  All relationships live in the Present.  If it was in the past, it no longer is and should not have thread connecting to the new you and the new relationships.  Older relationships do and can thread into today's relationship with old friends.  But every meeting, every renewal of friendship carries some yesterday to it and, hopefully, Ego has kept the good parts and not the negatives and it is a growing blossoming thing. 

Sometimes we are connected to the happy things of the past.  When I went to my childhood hometown, I was flooded with happy memories, not the negative ones I had been clinging to all my life. It is best to let the unhappy memories be known, by revisiting those memories with a new perspective - the perspective of an adult, not the child or teenager.  Yes, it might have been awful, but that is no reason to keep it sharp and keep it muddying up newer happy moments.  Memories, at the end of our days, is all we will really have, so we need to console the old hurts and focus on the good things. What we focus on, the moment before we lose our memories completely are not the unhappy ones.. Lord, have mercy.  Let them be sweet, and heart-filling, and full of love and grace.  

Ego will want us to change outside things in order to fit what IT wants.. not that you soul wants.. IT.  Acceptance is huge.  Accept that what happens in the present carries a lesson to be learned, not heading for relearning, and relearning and opportunities to relearn again and again.  This time, get it!  Get the lesson, understand the patterns of returning challenges for what they are - opportunities to learn the lesson it will provide.  Ego will hate this.

Seeing others as extensions of Self can be healing and empowering, but seeing negative people, people who manipulate us, people who hurt us over and over again, might not be the ones to think are extensions.  Ego wants to see others in connection to itself.  It is full of expectations and hidden agendas.  It will have you choose a relationship where it fits your Ego not your soul.  Realize that our Egos are not healthy.  They are the lower part of self.  Remember, Lizard brain... flight/fight reactions.  Do not become attached to those who are extensions of our shadow selves.

Another aspect of Ego is that it is judgmental.  And, it is one to justify any of our shadows.  I am what I am and I am not changing...that is a beautiful sounding mantra to Ego.  Soul would never justify dark actions, nor uncomfortable things, that soul would take in and scrutinize through soul and affirm the rightness or not rightness for itself. False assurances from Ego will never hold water, rough storms, normal everyday problems that need to be let go of by the time your head hits the pillow at night.  See, at night is the realm of ego.  It can have you dream horrible dreams to affirm itself and its reasons for chaos-making.  

Really study, meditate on Ego and Soul and figure out for yourself, through soulful study and search, which is which.  If your life has been chaos after chaos, then what you are looking at is some Ego chaos-making.  Yes, it is still part of us, but was necessary but the Lizard Brain needs to be updated.  We need to know flight and fight incidents, yes.  It is what allows a human being to lift a car off an injured pedestrian.  It is what helped that young heroic woman push a vehicle off some tracks (albeit she has a wounded hand where the train hit her).  It is what makes us stop and pause when danger is near.  It tells us when to run from danger.  But, it has not been as necessary as it was in cavewomen days.  It has not been needed as much as we have evolved.  So, it started niggling into other ways of control and may have overstepped its bounds, and we have let it.  Time to take control of ourselves, of it.  By knowing it, we can control it.  Let soul ( and intuition) take over more.  Blessed Be, sister-friends.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.19.19