Have you ever been in an argument with someone or taken a stand on an issue and later realized you were coming completely from ego?

After the heat of the situation had passed and you had calmed down, you found yourself reevaluating your position and it began to dawn on you that you had been mistaken. Where does that recognition come from?

A wise person said many centuries ago that one of the tasks of divine consciousness is to function as a “counselor,” in the sense of a legal counselor, who reproves us when we are missing the mark, convicting us of the ways in which we are betraying our true self.

Another insightful person long ago also said that in our heart we always, always know the truth of a situation. We can feel it. The truth of something is as natural to us as breathing if we simply allow ourselves to become still enough to "see" it.

That’s the issue of course: becoming still enough, quiet enough within ourselves, to be able to feel our inner being, which is one with the universal divine consciousness. This is why it’s often only when we cool down after getting worked up that we realize we were arguing or taking a stand over something that wasn’t at all representative of what we truly feel or who we really are.

Of course, we will not all have the same opinions or see things in the same way. What is important is that we don't let our ego take over and then become personally attached to and therefore defensive of our viewpoint.  The more aware we are of our inner Presence, the quicker we can catch ourselves when we shift into ego.

There is within us as it were our “true North.” It’s an automatic self-correcting capacity, if we allow it to be. Even people who aren’t particularly attuned to their higher self have this facility, though they don’t tend to live from it on a consistent basis. This aware faculty invites us to self-confront and make a correction whenever we begin to veer from the path that’s true to us.

Honest self-confrontation drives spiritual growth.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of this happening in your own life. You make a statement that comes from ego, and an argument or fight gets underway. But even as you are vociferously defending your position, there’s a whole other dimension of you that isn’t involved in the verbal combat but is quietly and somewhat bemusedly observing you as you charge down a blind alley.

Here you are, arguing forcefully and perhaps loudly, and all the while an aspect of you is watching you as it were "make a fool of yourself!" Of course, it's the fact none of us is a fool at heart that enables us to spot when we are temporarily making a fool of ourselves.

This capacity to see ourselves as we really are and identify when we are betraying ourselves comes from our divine consciousness. It’s our true North, alerting us that we’re being drawn off course by our ego.

At such a time, we often speak of ourselves as “not myself today,” or we say we were "out of it." We even describe ourselves as “beside ourselves” with anger or jealousy or some other egoic state. These statements all point to how common it is for us to lose touch with our conscious center and enter into unconscious behavior.

Opportunity for Self-inquiry and Sharing:

A.   Can you think of a time when, a little while after an argument or debate, you cooled down and the realization came to you that you were completely off-base?

B. If you have had an experience of actually catching yourself in the middle of an egoic statement or argument, and realizing you are in ego, briefly share it with us if you would like to.