Ego Dismantling
One important ascension theme is ego dismantling. Ego dismantling is the process that happens when the seed of authentic self sprouts and begins to grow, causing the inauthentic self (and the many structures it is entangled with), to begin to collapse, dissolve, and fall apart around us.
For the unprepared personality self, this experience is, admittedly, terrifying, and can feel like a death process. The confusion, crisis, and deep pain for the personality as it is reformatted is generally referred to as the dark night of the soul.
It feels like a death because it is a form of death, at least from the point of view of the parts of us that are formatted into the ego. What the personality does not realize, because it is usually ill prepared by our materialist & spirit-suppressive culture, is that this is actually a wonderful thing, a liberation from the source of our misery.
I have been in an ego-unraveling process for a long time, but it began accelerating sharply around 2012. The dark night of the soul is a process that, in my experience, is greatly supported by use of the arts, to express the many shifting feeling states, dark emotions, and points of view that come into focus at different stages.
One emotional note that came up a lot for me, and continues to, is the curious mix between outer world loss and inner world liberation. There is a part that grieves that old point of view, the previous self’s innocence, even as something indefinably wonderful is clearly dawning from the inside.
This song, which I wrote in 2012, captured and memorialized some of that paradox for me. The version I share here is the version I now play with my band Team Bright, and which I self-produced as a part of a learning project in 2016, when I allowed myself to make an album completely on my own, in spite of all the inferiorities I faced (knowledge, equipment, skill, etc). The psychological journey of the album-making process is for another article.
My invitation to you: if you’re experiencing some form of dissolution, loss, and crumbling of what you used to think of as your life or self, express that curious, likely painful experience in a work of art of some kind. As always, I suggest an attitude of exploration rather than accomplishment, as the creative presence within us does not like to be corralled into some kind of an ego project. Rather, let the process that is taking place speak to you from its own voice.
May it be helpful!
I’m free now to be by myself, to enjoy my own company. I’m free now to master my own, I’m free now of your love for me. There is no time and no place, still I remember what I lost.
As for you, I predict you will too someday. You always did prefer the past.
I’m free now to float down the river, I’m free now to handle my crew. Free to follow the birds. I’ll make my own interpretations of the signals surrounding me. There is no time and no place. Still I remember what I lost. As for you, I suppose you will too someday. You always did prefer the past.
I’m free now to lay my hands on the land, and I’m free now to direct my plow. I’m free to follow the word, I'm free to be by myself, and listen to my own guiding voice. There is no time and no place. Still I remember what I lost.
As for you, I predict you will too someday. You always did prefer the past, and sooner or later I'll be the past.
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Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford Smith