With big decisions looming ahead of me I found it hard to fall asleep last night. I don’t remember my dreams but I know they were fitful. I woke up late morning, still tired from the struggles of the night. My spirit was damp and my heart heavy. I didn’t want to dream but I also didn’t want to wake up. I felt depressed and sluggish. My morning gratitude felt more like a habit than a genuine feeling.

Magda had already gone to work. I was alone with the cat. I felt no motivation to do anything. I made a simple breakfast and went back to my favorite green recliner in the bedroom. I just sat there as I sipped my morning tea. In the depth of my shadow, feeling my worst, I was focused on my short comings and failures. Although, the part of me that is secure in the Divine Order of All things calmly observed the mayhem of my ego, my feelings were all wrapped up in beating myself up.

My wise, compassionate and generous life companion, Magda, called to check on me and I told her that I was having a hard morning. She reminded me that I could take the time to just be and let all these feeling percolate and their messages come to the surface. I stayed on the recliner listening to an enjoyable book when I fell asleep again. This time I rested and when I woke up, I felt better. The wave had passed and I could now look at what I understood from the experience.

After my mother passed away a month ago, I have been processing the experience and have decided to that in the next 4 months I will study and practice the teachings of Abraham-Hicks, the “ELF –Eternal Life Force” and the “Spiritual Entrepreneur” by Lauren McLaughlin, “The Power of Intention” by Wayne Dyer and “Mind is Your Own Business” by John McLaughlin. One of the most important messages in what I have learned already is understanding the importance of the role of ego in how I perceive reality and how I feel about it.

From Lauren and John McLaughlin, I learned a technique to name my ego. This was a very powerful exercise which helped me to examine the characteristics of my ego objectively. In order to name her, I had to pay attention to how my ego manifests in my life. “The Perfect Empress of Everything” is the name I chose because it is a very accurate description of my ego. In the process, I realized that when “Her Majesty” dominates my reality, I am held accountable to an unrealistic level of scrutiny to be “Perfect”. Among other things, The Empress also feels a sense of entitlement, ownership and responsibility for making the Change Thrivers Concept an international success. She is invested in being the well recognized teacher of the change thrivers message and leaving a legacy of good work behind. Anything short of that is failure.

The desire for success is of course perfectly legitimate. It provides an important goal for my ego to attain. The problem comes however, when my ego takes the center stage and gains dominance over how I perceive myself and how I feel as a result. My feeling of depression this morning was signaling that I did not perceive myself at the level of success that the Empress had envisioned for this far along the journey and therefore I was judging myself as having failed. It was important for me to allow myself the time to face these feelings long enough to understand what they were telling me. But I didn’t want to stay there.

Talking with a dear friend last week, I learned another very helpful method for shifting my feelings and raising my energy level. I begin by paying attention, “Am I feeling calm?” if I do, I am in the flow and open to my Source. If I don’t, then I am in resistance and pinching myself from the ever-flowing Source Energy. Resistance only comes when my ego is in charge and tries to control things and when she is not getting her way. When I feel bad, I am in resistance and to be in the flow I must shift to feeling good. When I reach a better feeling place like gratitude, I raise my level of consciousness and I can choose to surrender my fears to my Source.

In his book on the Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer quotes, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change.” Once I realized that I am feeling bad because I am not measuring to my ego’s expectations of me and I had a choice to see this in a different way, my ego lost its energy and her grip on me. As soon as I changed the way I perceived myself, my feelings began to change. Instead of seeing myself through the lens of my ego, I chose to remember that “I am God’s own perfect creation!”

As I began to prepare dinner, I thought about Dr. Dyer talking about the six ways that ego can keep us from connecting to the power of intention; the Creative Power that binds everything and everyone together. One way to pinch the flow of intention into my life is to see myself as my accomplishments. Today I felt separated from my Source because I bought into the belief that the success of Change Thrivers was all up to Me and I forgot that All things happen in Divine Order.

*One of the twelve daily affirmations that you can find at www.unitynow.com