When we become aware of the desire to experience our highest potential when it comes to being human and this life experience, it is valuable to take the journey of self-discovery and explore all facets of ourselves — from the obvious, like our personality and preferences, to the less obvious, like our Shadow and Ego. Along this journey, we are encouraged to heal ourselves because part of this physical experience entails experiencing emotional wounds, which cause us to live in fragmented states and block our Godself — that highest potential and expression of being.
Whatever spiritual tradition or teacher it may be, we can learn a lot about the pitfalls associated with living from our ego and are instead guided to live from the heart. Naturally, we cannot stop living from the ego if we are unaware of it and do not understand it or how it works. In our quest for self-realization, it is easy to overlook the magnitude of the ego and how frequently and easily it sabotages our life, whether it is our health, relationships, or anything else. In doing so, it prevents us from dealing with our wounds, which can keep us perpetually searching or stuck on our spiritual journey, and furthermore dissatisfied with our life experience.
One of the leading experts in our world today who teaches about the ego, our wounds, and the mind-body connection is Lise Bourbeau. Lise has been one of my favorite teachers for years now, and inspires me greatly, both personally and professionally. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Lise in the past via video to talk about the metaphysical nature of disease and the mind-body connection of cancer. Her work strongly resonates with me and I was excited to learn that in the spring of 2017 she released a new book, which specifically deals with the tremendous obstacle of the ego on our path of spiritual evolution.
This summer I had the pleasure of reading this new book, Ego: The Greatest Obstacle to Healing the 5 Wounds and feel it is one of the most vital and valuable books for our time that any of us can read to better understand ourselves and the suffering and pain associated with our life experience. The content points to timeless truths that many ancient spiritual traditions have been trying to share with us for millennia, but it does so in a very real and practical manner. It helps us get right to the root of the problems and offers solutions for dealing effectively with the Ego and healing our wounds.
To further explore the importance of these topics and help more people, like yourself, learn about this valuable content, I invited Lise to share more of her insights via a written interview, which you will find below.
Evita: While it may be obvious to most people that a large part of the human experience involves suffering, most people are completely in the dark about the true nature and cause of that suffering. Can you help readers understand this latter mystery?
Lise: The main reason why people are unconscious of the degree of their suffering is because they are not attuned any more to themselves. They are too busy with DOING, THINKING and HAVING, instead of BEING AND FEELING WHAT THEIR SOUL NEEDS. They are too busy earning money, being perfect, doing anything to be loved, trying to find happiness outside of themselves. The human race has forgotten that they are GOD with the power to create their own life from within. So instead of listening to their heart (their godself) they listen to their ego.
Evita: There has been a lot of negative information passed around about the Ego today, causing many people to fight against it or reject it. Can you share your approach for understanding the Ego via this new book, Ego: The Greatest Obstacle to Healing the 5 Wounds, which highlights its importance?
Lise: There is no need to fight or reject the ego because it makes it worse. The more we fight, the more we give it energy. We have created our own ego and we are responsible for letting it get stronger and more powerful. Actually our ego is created with mental energy which means ego is only memory. So over the thousands of past generations and the thousands of lifetimes that we have gone through, we have accumulated a lot of memory. The ego is the memory of what is good and bad. So every time we hear our little inner voice tell us “it’s not right”, or “nice” or “supposed to be this way” or “acceptable”, it’s our ego speaking out of what it has learned. The ego has no idea what is the life plan of its master or what the needs are of its master because it strongly believes that HE/SHE IS our master, and it is the only one that knows what is good or bad for us.
Evita: If the Ego is meant to help us, why is it so good at sabotaging our health, happiness and inner peace?
Lise: Our ego is convinced that it has all the answers for us because it’s only referring to what has been learned in the past. It is never in the present moment and it is never listening to our real needs. The ego is like a robot, always repeating the same thing. I like to compare it to letting someone else decide everything for us. Let’s imagine a woman who thinks her father has all the answers for her. She has gotten in the habit of wanting his advice for everything since she was a little girl. So the father will give her the advice HE thinks is better, referring to his own likes and dislikes, and not to what his daughter actually needs.
This is why that girl cannot be happy, cannot fulfill her life plan because it’s impossible for the father to know exactly what his daughter really needs. She might need to make some mistakes in order to learn something but the father will not let her do it. That father has good intentions and is convinced he is helping his daughter, just as our ego is convinced it is helping us. But that girl will only be happy when she decides to be her own master. And her father will only be able to let go and allow his daughter to make her own decisions after she has thanked her father for wanting to help her all these years. She must reassure her father that she knows his intentions were good, even if they did not make her feel good. She must add that she is now able to make her own decisions because she knows that she will be able to face the consequences of her decisions. Her father must feel that his daughter is now really ready to assume the consequences because so far he was sure that she could not face them.
Evita: In this sense, just as we come to follow the advice of some external person or party that we have come to trust, we strongly begin to rely on our ego, thinking it is us and we are it. How can we know when we are acting out of our Ego and not from our heart or soul?
Lise: As soon as we are not feeling good — any kind of ill feeling, be this physical or psychological. This is a sure sign that we have allowed our ego to take over our life. There are many signs, and here are a few more specific ones:
- Any kind of guilt or fear;
- When we want to be right, we argue;
- When we criticize ourself or others;
- When we qualify anything as bad or incorrect;
- When we believe we are what we do or what we own;
- When we justify ourself or we lie;
- When we regret the past or we fear the future;
- When we think we have the power to make other people happy or that they should listen to us.
On the other hand, when we listen to our heart and our needs, we feel good.
Evita: This brings us to the topic of pain, suffering and dealing with our wounds effectively. What would you say is the most significant part in the process of healing our wounds?
Lise: First, we have to become conscious of every time that our ego takes over, because ego = activated wound. So as soon as we feel guilty, for example, we know that one of our wounds has been activated. Then, the most important part of the healing process is acceptance. Accept that our ego had no idea that it was hurting us, and that it was preventing us from becoming aware of our wounds. We must accept, without feeling guilty or bad, that we have allowed our ego to take over, and that we have even contributed to making it more powerful over the years. This means we recognize and accept the human part of ourself that did not know any better before. It means loving ourself, accepting ourself as a human being with faults and weaknesses, instead of being angry at not being aware of our power to create our own life. I am now convinced that we must accept being what we do not want to be, before we can be what we want to be.
Evita: Why is healing our wounds, perhaps, the most important and beneficial thing we can do during this life experience?
Lise: That is because it is the only reason we keep coming back to Earth, life after life. Our only reason for BEING, and being here, is to remember our godself. The only way to achieve this is to remember that we are always creating our own life and that all experiences, good or bad, are only different ways to learn to love ourself and others. As we listen less and less to our ego, our wounds lessen to the same degree, and we will keep coming back until we can go through life with complete acceptance of self and others.
Evita: Thank you so much Lise for sharing all of this wonderful guidance and taking the time to write all of your books, which offer so much wisdom, information and support for seizing our highest potential, healing deeply and living fully.
And thank you dear reader, for being here in this moment and sharing this space with us. For more information about Lise or her work, please visit: LiseBourbeau.com or ListenToYourBody.net and you can get your copy of Lise’s new book Ego: The Greatest Obstacle to Healing the 5 Wounds via your preferred online book retailer, like Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.