What is really going on beneath this fear we all have of letting go of our ego? It’s the misunderstanding that to give up our ego is to give up existence.

Please read or listen to After the Ego in the order presented.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Here is an orientation regarding some of the Pathwork Guide’s word choices. Because as you read along, the Guide will regularly change up the word he uses, even though he is still essentially pointing to the same thing. Included are other words the Guide uses to refer to our ego and the awakened state.

1 The function of the ego in relationship to the Real Self | Podcast (including Introduction)
What is the endgame of being human? Where are we all heading? What’s the point of life? Our goal is always one thing: to become our Real Self. All the many teachings from the Pathwork Guide are approaching this same task. Each comes at it from a different angle. As we work in this direction, it will help if we understand how our inner self, or Real Self, differs from our outer self, or ego. What is the relationship between these two?

2 What blocks the ego from connecting with the Real Self | Podcast
We may have a deep sense that there are more possibilities available to us. But we can’t seem to reach them. Worse, in our alienation, we’ve become frightened of our Real Self. This fear goes beyond the individual fears that arise from our mistaken beliefs and our personal childhood traumas. So then what really is going on beneath this pervasive fear we all have of letting go of our ego and allowing our Real Self to unfold and carry us along?

3 The ego’s cooperation with or obstruction of the Real Self | Podcast
It’s time we find the common denominator behind all our fears so we can start unwinding the unnecessary cycles of fear, frustration and pain. Then we will come to see how we’ve been hiding from life because of our fears. We’ll discover that the nature of all our fears is that we misunderstand the function of our ego and how it relates to our Real Self.

4 How unconscious negativity stops the ego from surrendering | Podcast
We have been looking at the relationship between our ego-consciousness and universal intelligence. No matter which direction we come at this from, it always adds up the same: The ego has to learn to let go of itself. But a boatload of intellectual knowledge about the role the limited ego plays relative to the Real Self won’t help us much. We must find a new approach inside ourselves that makes it possible to let go in a healthy, harmonious way.

5 Living with polar opposites and finding the good in being selfish | Podcast
Unhappiness is an indication of sickness. For when we are unhappy, it is our Real Self—our spirit being—that’s talking to us. It’s sending the ego, or outer personality, the message that something should be changed. We are going about things the wrong way. This message arises from a desire to return to health, where we will be happy and in a state of well-being. If we can approach everything we think and feel with this view, it will benefit us far more.

6 Self-identification through the stages of awakening consciousness | Podcast
Our human minds are geared to think of consciousness as being exclusively related to the human form. We think it’s associated with the brain and a byproduct of our personality. This is not so. Consciousness does not need to be attached to a fixed form, so it’s everywhere. As evolution follows its course, energy and consciousness become more and more mobile and vibrant, so things move faster. In the case of consciousness, it gains in awareness.

7 Inner and outer experience | Podcast
Usually when we hear the word “experience,” we think of an outer experience. This, however, is not really the meaning of the word. The real meaning is inner experience. To wit, we can have outer experiences of all varieties, but if our inner experience is inhibited, the outer won’t mean much. So we can do many things and learn everything our brains are able to master, but if our inner experience is dead, all these experiences will add little, if anything, to our life.

8 Commitment: Cause and effect | Podcast
The only reliable gauge for how we are doing on the plan for our lives is this: How do I feel about myself, my relationships and how my life is going? If there is strife, we must uncover our intention to remain mired in negativity. Then what comes next—after we are truly ready to let it go—will be to exchange it for positive intentionality. The key is that we must have a complete understanding of what commitment means, on the one hand, and cause and effect on the other. At first glance, these two things may appear to be unrelated to our negative intentionality, but they are all intrinsically linked, and we’re about to learn why.

9 Moving the mind to push the divine light spark into the outer regions | Podcast
Just as we have parts that make up our total personality, we are part of the make-up of the universal consciousness. Yet we all fear bridging the gap between our separated ego—our own little consciousness—and the big all-encompassing consciousness, out of the misguided notion that if we do so, we will lose ourselves. But this is completely untrue. So then what is the aim of creation? Exactly to bridge this gap. “But why does this gap exist?” is a question we repeatedly ask ourselves. Let’s explore this.

10 The three states of consciousness | Podcast
We can organize the states of consciousness into three different groups. We start out in the least developed state, which is the state of slumber. In this state, a being does not know it exists. There is no self-awareness. Animals, plants, minerals and inanimate matter are at this stage. In the second state, there is self-awareness. This is where humans are at. Being aware that we can affect the world around ourselves makes us accountable for our attitudes and the way we think, act and respond. This third and final state is the highest level of consciousness. We could call it cosmic consciousness. Such a state is beyond the state of being human.

11 The era of new consciousness | Podcast
There is a surge happening in our world, leading us toward spiritual truth. New values are pushing their way through old walls of resistance. Let’s look into what this cosmic force means in terms of a spiritual community, our individuality, and our personal healing and growth. What is this new consciousness about?

12 Creating from emptiness | Podcast
Now is the time for the arrival of a new era. As we do our personal self-development work to purify ourselves, we become steadily more ready for the arrival of this awakening force. Its arrival is unprecedented, as there has been no other time in the history of humankind when this force has been as available as it is right now. What we’re talking about is a tremendous, creative force that is highly beneficial and which could help us thrive in an entirely new way. But if we block it, even if only partly, we put ourselves under great stress—psychically, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Let’s now discuss how important it is to be receptive to the energy and new consciousness arriving with this force.

13 Changing from outer to inner laws in this new era | Podcast
In the era that is just ending, the mores of societies were based on duality. This was a testing ground for us. Every time we turned around, we were facing conflict over something or other. That era has now come to an end. Now we can reach a deeper level of truth, for now we can see that what harms another, harms us, and what harms us, harms another. At this stage in the development of this planet, we can’t maintain the old structure any longer. We will need to discover a new vision in which we are able to perceive the truth: We are one with others. We will need to search for this new vision, which lies beneath the limited vision the ego is so used to.

14 The pulse of life on every level | Podcast
In a very practical sense, we are now moving out of duality. During the era of duality, there was a lot of diversity on the outer levels, while conformity and unity was more often within a person. This had a way of wiping out true individual expression. The age of unity now ushers in a different picture. Outer differences will go away as they lose their importance. We won’t attach our personal identity to our nationality or our religion. What will gain importance in the new era will be our diverse divine expressions. Let’s now turn our attention to how the pulsation of life and consciousness works behind the scenes to support such an unfolding.

15 Cause and effect on various levels of consciousness | Podcast
In our current state of consciousness, living in this three-dimensional world, we often find ourselves to be, in many ways, halfway. Our world is not all bad, but it’s also not all good. Our personalities too are not all bad, but also not all good. We don’t live in heaven, but we also don’t live in hell. Our lives represent both extremes. We’re also halfway about cause and effect, or more correctly, in our perception of cause and effect. What changes as we develop is not the object of our perception. What changes as we grow is our vision.

16 Three aspects of the divine new influx | Podcast
In the new era we are now entering, the influx of energy will affect outer events, often in the most obscure way. Something that appears entirely undesirable—a negative occurrence—will be shown to be, in reality, a necessary event. It is what will move us to establish new values and reestablish life in a way that is based on the spiritual premises of truth and love. Another way to say this is that destructiveness has advanced so far it can no longer be molded, changed or transformed. It needs to be destroyed before we can build a new and better structure. Let’s look at three specific things that accompany this new influx: communication, exposure and group consciousness.

17 Inner space, focused emptiness | Podcast
At this point in time, many people are as comfortable with the term “inner space” as they are with outer space. But most people think of inner space as merely a symbol of a person’s state of mind. This is not the case. Inner space is actually a real world—a vast reality. It’s not easy to understand how it’s possible that inner space could in itself be a world—the world.

The difficulty lies in the limited time/space continuum of our three-dimensional reality. We perceive everything we touch, see and experience from a limited perspective. But when we reach a certain point of development on our path of purification, a new vision wakes up, sometimes gradually and sometimes more suddenly. Even when it seems to happen suddenly, this is only an illusion. All awakening happens as a result of taking many steps on a spiritual path and fighting many inner battles.

Ways to learn more

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