Experience &the Ego

The kind of experience I’m talking about is a ‘full’ transcendent experience, an experience involving all aspects of being human: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, an experience that makes us feel whole, complete, different and strangely exhilarated.

 

We routinely have experiences that emphasize one or the other of the four aspects and down play the others. But a ‘full’ transcendent experience, one involving and integrating all aspects of who we are simultaneously is rare.

 

That’s because our inner gatekeeper, the ego, can not manage and control a ‘full’ transcendent experience. Full transcendent experiences overwhelm and threaten the ego, so it avoids them, instead focusing us on a single aspect of our being, usually the mental or physical, while avoiding the spiritual and emotional aspects. And the ego is right in its fear, for ‘transcendent’ means transcending or bypassing the ego.

 

To have a ‘full’ transcendent experience, the ego would have to willingly surrender, which it is loath to do. But we can help it surrender by staying in the now, relying on loose/tight both/and thinking, realizing we’re with ego when we find ourselves blaming, excluding, judging and punishing, and choosing spirit’s grace, compassion, love and peace instead. We want to show the ego its ineffectiveness and train it to if not, surrender then at least let go and let God a bit more often.