This article is formatted and spaced as it is for a reason.  Please consider reading it very slowly, pausing at the end of each line.  The reason why the world is where it is now is that we have been trained to think with our heads only.  Please think through the following with your heart.

Ego is the imaginary terrorist.

A great lesson of the world right now

Is that the terrorist is not who it seems to be.

We look outside for the terrorist,

But it is we who harbor terrorism in our imaginations.

In the world, the terrorist is the one who is pointing the finger at others as being terrorist.

Our most worldly-powerful governments, our biggest religions, our bankers and corporations who pretend to serve us are the terrorists.  And they are all pointing the finger at somebody else.

They all say, "Be afraid of them."

If we paid any attention to the history of our governments, our religions, our big corporations and the controllers of our money supply/value, we would see that we have allowed terrorists to seize apparent control of us.

If we paid any true attention to why our lives are the way they are, we would easily come to the conclusion that we have put both the “external” macro-terrorists and the apparently “internal” or ego terrorist in positions of power to run our lives.

The answer to this “internal” and “external” terrorism is not in escape from it but in simply choosing to see it for what it is and then calmly refusing to identify with it.

What more will it take for us to wake up to our loving power?

How many more oil spills need there be before we wake up to our collective power?

How many more broken relationships will it take to help us learn to be more loving?

How much more disingenuous behavior on the part of our governments, religions and corporations will it take for us to see that they do not represent us?

The imaginary ego that exists only as it is fed is our terrorist.

We feed it as we attempt to escape from our experience by busying ourselves with addictions and other distractions.

We feed it when we respond to life with fear or with the intent to dominate another.

We feed it by feeling unworthy or inferior.

We feed it by trying to become more arrogant or powerful in a way that has nothing to do with becoming more loving, nothing to do with the true power that is based in Love.

The ego is a great teacher.  It is teaching us that it is imaginary...and destructive if we feed it.

Let’s gently starve it with Love.

That's what we are all here to do, for in that doing we can realize what we are, collectively, at depth:

A connected Being infused with the true power of Love.

With all the changes going on in our world, often it seems that our natural choice is to respond with fear, anger, sadness or the feeling of powerlessness.

From catastrophic world events such as the current oil spilling into waters in the Gulf of Mexico to family matters that have to do with feeding our families, it seems like we are experiencing crisis and challenge with increasing harshness and frequency.

Life is seen as an ongoing hurricane of emotions, financial pressures, and what may appear to be endless evidence of our inability to find peace with our own selves and each other.  Escalating pressures seem to face us more forcefully.  Many turn to addictive distractions in a vain attempt to deal with daily life: drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and carb addictions, reading escapist fiction, and numbing ourselves with mindless television.

Collectively, we are in the process of discovering that these distractions are not worth the price we pay for indulging in them.  After the hangover wears off, the bills still need to be paid.  When the high wears off, the pressure is felt again to either deal with life as it is or to get high again.  Life can become a seemingly endless cycle from anxiety to addictive indulgence to higher levels of anxiety.

For some, dealing with life may not be about addictive distractions as most people think of addiction.  We can let off emotional steam by regularly treating our loved ones in a mean-spirited way, stealing from a neighbor or employer, or finding some other way to artificially feel better about ourselves at the expense of others.

Just living from day to day can become a crushing weight upon your shoulders, a kind of living hell.  You may not feel that you have either the time or the energy to take the steps necessary to pull out of your cycle of pain, to deal with life positively and proactively.

Collectively, we are a society of avoidance addicts.  As we identify ourselves with our ego, the frequency with which we indulge this addiction expands in scope.  It can be seen as a way to self-medicate, a way to deal with the pain so we can feel better.  Whether it is shoveling excess food into yourself, sticking a needle in your veins or getting drunk, the satisfaction of avoiding the life that is yours is always short-lived if you are self-medicating in a way that hurts yourself or others.

What if for just one day you chose to see life in a completely different context.  For the next 24 hours, what if you chose to see everything that occurred in your life as your teacher?   If you look at everything that happens to you for this one day as an opportunity to become a better person rather than as a monstrous weight upon your shoulders, life takes on an entirely new meaning.

For one day, you can choose to respond to the challenges in your life by asking yourself three quick questions when you experience a tough time emotionally.

1. What is happening right now?
2. What emotions am I experiencing?
3. Can I allow these emotions? (Then take three deep and long breaths.)
4. What can I learn from this to enhance my life and to be of service?

By seeing your life as a teacher, you open up new possibilities for yourself.  If you see life as an endless series of burdens, you just create more burdens for yourself.

Viewed from the spiritual perspective---the only perspective that really matters in the long run---we might come to understand after a while that the only reason we are all here is to learn how to love more effectively and consistently.

For just one day, consider carrying these questions with you, giving yourself a little time out just as you would to a misbehaving young son or daughter.  What can we learn about ourselves in claiming this quiet time with ourselves when we ponder life’s challenging moments from the perspective of learning rather than feeling victimized by life?  We learn how to love.  This learning is the process of spiritual empowerment.

Notice how it works when you carry these questions as shown above with you for a day.  You might just find that it serves you to keep them with you beyond just this one day.  As you become more and more willing to be with what is, as you treat yourself more kindly, and as you learn to trust your life as your greatest teacher, you may also find that the world becomes more of a friend than a bully.

From the perspective of anyone who is paying attention, the world seems to be going into the tank.  We are being brought to the brink of destruction by the institutions we have allowed to run our lives.

Our governments are controlled by corporations.  We let big business poison our foods.   Local governments are allowed to poison our water supplies with the main ingredient in rat poison, fluoride, or with fluorosilicic acid.  We let farmers “hormone-ize” livestock for profit enhancement purposes, without listening to what the scientists tell us about how those hormones are messing up our moods.  We let our government go to war with other countries’ governments preemptively, as if an initial attack is morally justifiable.

Drug makers tell us the solutions to our problems can be found in little pills.

Religious leaders implore us to choose their god for current and eternal salvation.

Governments pretend that they can solve our social ills, and that they can make us safer by wasting our soldiers' lives and a trillion dollars of your money on war with two small countries on the other side of the ocean.  Meanwhile, we let 10,000 people starve to death every day in our world community.

How stupid are we?

Most of our religious leadership practices the opposite of what they preach, arrogantly claiming superiority over other religious entities while reminding the faithful of their god’s unhappiness with our collective inferiority, unworthiness and damnable behavior.

Our food producers feed us poisons, approved by our governments: health-killers like aspartame, brain toxins such as monosodium glutamate and tension creators like excess sugars in darn near every processed food.   Without a care as to the long-term effects of genetically modifying foods and seeds, producers rush these products to market in the name of profit and control, humanity be damned.

Our medical institutions bleed us while withholding low-cost, effective modes of treatments and stifling the promotion of natural, more humane products.  While nature created many simple products loaded with health benefits---hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and water, to name two---our governments and medical institutions conspire to keep the great power of these gifts to us under wraps because there is not enough profit in selling them.

Most popular media lies to us or give us half-truths while they concurrently provoke us to fight with each other, to judge, to damn, and to be fearful that there is absolutely nothing we can do step off the path to destruction or total despair.

Our experience will soon be so beyond denial that we will be forced to surrender to either our more powerful loving nature or to the essentially minimal forces that we have empowered by collectively staying asleep.

Institutions as the Mirror of Ego

The corrupt behavior of the institutions we wish we could trust serves a very important purpose in our communal evolution:  Our governmental, religious and corporate institutions are a microcosm of the human ego as we collectively identify with it today.

What is the purpose of this mirror?  It is to show us ourselves by the unproductive examples that stare us in the face every day.    Sooner or later we will get it: we will drop the false power of ego and embrace a more loving way of being.  One way of doing this is to choose to be aware of how we treat each other and how our institutions are treating us.  We learn and grow by paying attention to what is in front of us, and by then responding in a more loving, truly productive way.  That we allow our institutions to treat us so poorly is an indication of our sense of collective sense of unworthiness or weakness.  Let’s snap out of it.

Collectively, we still think we are the ego.  We see power as the ability to manipulate, deceive, dominate or enslave.  We always want more of some things and less of something else, never allowing ourselves to be content with what we have.  This, too, is the way of life for those who control our governmental, corporate, financial and religious institutions.  They want to control everything, no matter the price paid by the larger body of humanity.

We wear masks, just like our institutions.  Our government pretends to be the greatest benefactor on the planet when it is actually its most ruthless controller and imperialist.  It likes to tell us that we are the richest nation in the world, but the truth is that we’d have to sell every square inch of this country to pay our national debt.

Our religions wear the mask of love, while most of them promote divisiveness and spiritual neediness.  Our silly addiction to religion has the world in lethal, potentially apocalyptic conflict.  Despite this, our leaders continue to encourage us to exercise the “freedom” to promulgate philosophies that arrogantly suggest adherence to one of several“true” religions as some kind of ticket to either worldly prosperity, a better seat in heaven or at least escape from an eternity that would otherwise be spent in a burning pit.

Our institutions fear the loss of power.  Discontent on the part of the citizenry or flock of “sheeple” is met with entrenchment and new rules for control.  What does your ego do when you make a loving resolution to shift out of some unconscious behavior?   Ego wants control, at any price.  It doesn’t matter who gets hurt, just that control is increased or maintained.

Ego says: “An eye for an eye”.  Gandhi rightly observed that living that makes the whole world blind.

Like the ego, our institutions prioritize loveless power.  While they are willing to subvert morality in the name of control, the ego-controlled citizen makes it important to have a bigger TV than the folks next door, or a shapelier girlfriend—even if she’s got to have plastic body parts.  We have been indoctrinated to think that what we have, how we look, and who we can control are more important than being who we really are.

The perverted ego that so many see as what defines them places no practical value in love, seeing it as a facet of powerlessness.  We either avoid love altogether or we approach it schizophrenically:  When it comes to love, we tell each other: “Come closer further away.  I am intrigued but afraid”.  We gussy-up our words to our love partners when this is what we really mean: “I’ll love you as long as I can control you” or “I’ll love you as long as you pay all the bills”.  And we tell ourselves: “It’s good to have a lover waiting in the wings in case my main relationship dissolves.”  This is the way of the ego.

What is the alternative to allowing our institutions to dominate and enslave us?  The answer is the same one that would apply to understanding the alternative to identifying with the egoic mind.  The answer is a “four-letter word”, to some: Love.

Love exerts its true power when we identify with the heart. It takes trust and courage to make the shift out of ego identification.  Like the “Little Engine That Could” shifting into identifying yourself as some combination of your heart and soul is simply a matter of belief creating reality.

Those attached to ego extend the reign of fear.  Embracing Love is the ultimate solution to the often apparent chaos of the world.

Change is happening at light speed.  Each time someone makes the shift into a life committed to love, the world evolves just a little bit more, becoming a more loving place.  As more and more do it, we take larger and larger strides toward a world in harmony.

Our institutions have been showing us the futility of clinging to worldly power as they mirror the stupid ego for us.  This is a gift.  If collectively we refuse to soon unwrap and productively apply this gift, we will destroy ourselves and our planet.

I’m betting on us to survive and thrive, to become the loving world that is our destiny.  Spiritual empowerment will spell the end of anyone feeling terror.

Each response to every experience makes a difference.  You make a difference.  It’s a revolution that we are in the middle of right now, one of Love.  The “weapon” of Love is more powerful than all the bombs and guns on Earth.  As we collectively come to realize the power of Love, any worldly forces aligned against it will fade away.

That’s the way it will be.  All we have to do is to collectively choose the true power to more and more often  lovingly be with what is.  If love is not at the foundation of something, then that something has no real power.  Artificial power is temporary and spiritually draining.

What brand of power are you claiming?

Push your pause button and consider.

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