Align your Ego-Strength with Love

A Tibetan singing bowl and a smaller bowl of hammers rest on a fluffy white surface. One bowl is on a graceful orange cushion, while there is a rain stick nearby, tied with orange and blue bands.

The Summer School retreats have come to an end and it is heartening to see how open, enlightening, and loving our time together was. It was a spiritual homecoming for the participants, awakening to their being, feeling more at home within themselves, and experiencing the radiance of their essence. Feelings of freedom, love, authenticity and wholeness are important to deepen the relationship with our humanity and the values we pass on to the world around us. The weeks were full of value, in the most literal sense of the word.

In all the retreats, questions came up about the ego, self-love, the burdensome side of the world and the value of spirituality. Especially questions about the ego, which is often seen as the culprit of conflict and disharmony. It is always painful to see this, because the ego is a healthy aspect of being human, fueling one’s survival, decisiveness and creativity. What strikes me is that many people often do not allow the powerful I-energy – which can indeed be combative, just as it also keeps foreign substances out of the body – to come into contact with their heart energy. This force is an energy that is freely available, but it takes on its form and value depending on what it is connected to, giving access to a form of creation.

When you reject the ego because you are afraid of its power, you are using that same power to reject it. After all, it takes power to reject your ego, or to hold your ego back by suppressing it. Some people become disempowered for fear of being too selfish and then become anxious, depressed, or feel defeated because they are unable to handle their lives in a different (better) way. As a result, they feel they have failed, but it is precisely the ego, one’s survival force, that has given the power to block or criticize oneself. And such processes cause anxiety because in your mind you hold images of “how should I be different” instead of giving yourself trust that you are a good person who is evolving.

Indian lotus arches, passages frame a view of a lush tree standing in a courtyard with a person in the distance. The architecture testifies to detailed craftsmanship and historical elegance.

Fear, inferiority, disappointment, struggling with imperfection, and so on, are also ego forces, so powerful that they can paralyze everything and make you sick. A NO has as much power as a YES, but the former closes doors while the latter opens them. It may not be the right door right away, but you can discover that and then, if necessary, open another YES door from there. This process is called development and it is never ending, because that is life.

When you feel a NO within you, when you connect your ego-strength with a NO, you may feel powerless because of the rejection that accompanies it, but it is not that you lack power, because a NO is certainly a power. That’s why it's a pity if you resist the ego when you want to live more lovingly, and thus make your ego and your love into opposites. Because of the tension that arises between the two, you become gloomy because you get stuck in a suffering attitude of “I mean so well and feel so much love, but I cannot succeed in this world or in these circumstances.” This is why loving, well-meaning people can often seem powerless.

Spiritual development is a development in which your ego power, when connected to your heart or to love, becomes subservient to your love. This softens your intent, but this is very different from losing your power. Do not be afraid of your ego. Meet it, welcome it, and feel what you wish to connect it with, that is your freedom.

A golden Buddha statue decorated with wreaths of flowers, with orange, yellow, white and red flowers. The stone background has a decorated circular design. On either side of the Buddha statue are 2 small buddhas decorated with a wreath.

You create a division within yourself (and thus in society) when you see your ego as bad and your love as good, and thus as opposed to each other. The ego is your strength and you can allow it to work with a deeper intention of yours, such as love. It is your freedom to allow your power to align with any intention. Your ego is your life force, your health, a wonderful mechanism and this force can be connected to your intentions.

The ego can cause a great deal of aggression and misery through its primal, self-preserving, blind power, but you may feel that you want to use your power more broadly by linking it to deeper intentions. The ego or 'I' force is never bad, it is your survival force, so at first it will try to keep out anything it perceives as threatening. When you are ill, you are very happy to have a lot of ego-strength to defend you against any unwanted bacteria. But this primal energy is not refined enough for relationships and can get in the way of deeper and more intimate relations. Rather than closing yourself off out of fear or throwing yourself open in a single loving gesture out of enthusiasm and then being overwhelmed, allow your ego-strength to merge with your longing for closeness and love, to feel where you do and do not want to protect or defend yourself. Combining strength and love means that you do not automatically keep out everything you do not know, or blindly let in everything and everyone out of a longing for love. Instead, you allow both to come together, to work in harmony, and to live both powerfully and sensitively out of love.

* Translated from Dutch using DeepL (AI)

Anandajay with white scarf draped around his shoulders and neck, with green nature in the background

Anandajay (which means “blessing from the heart”) has been dedicated to integrating the spiritual essence into daily life for over 50 years. He has developed twelve teachings (spiritual practices), 50 music albums (mantras, pujas and ragas) and twenty books (written in Dutch) to bring you closer to the natural basis of your existence, your spiritual authenticity, and its wholesome, joyful essence, so that it can also be your shining, spiritual guide in your life. He expresses the core value of his work as: The Light of Being.