Ego and the Human Experience, Part One

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was both good and bad, I guess. I’m so happy for my daughter, Michelle, and her now husband, Nick getting married Saturday, but I wish I could have been there. Michelle has never been one for the traditional, though, so an elopement was definitely her style. No worries, though, because we’ll celebrate by having some sort of reception later.

Sunday was not particularly easy for me. It was one of those “missing Erik” days that have been less and less frequent but still rear an ugly head from time to time. Sometimes I just can’t believe he’s dead. I just can’t believe it, and I so wish he weren’t.

I think one thing that triggered this recent downturn was something that occurred while we went camping. I believe I told this story, but I’ll repeat it in case you missed it. I was sitting outside in a chair and noticed my hands were in my lap, wrists turned well inward and palms pointing away from my body. To my horror, I realized that this was the posture Erik was in when I found him. It’s called decerebrate posturing and occurs when the brain is severely injured, which, after having a hollow point bullet pass through it, you’d expect in his case. I can’t shake that image, and I’m sure it will take some time for me to find my footing and move forward.

Since his death, my motivation has been decimated in that I seem satisfied doing absolutely nothing unless someone else or a duty on my to-do list pulls me along in one direction or another. For instance, Rune went to the track all day yesterday, and while he was gone, I suffered from utter paralysis. I didn’t have the desire to do anything. Sure I could have called up someone and gone to the movies. I could have taken a bike ride, taken Bella for a walk in the neighborhood or gone for a mani-pedi. Never mind. That last one has never been me even before Erik’s death. But I could have cleaned out my pantry, read a book or gone to the park, but no, I didn’t really want to do anything but sit and watch mindless TV about the upcoming Iowa caucus. Dreadfully boring. I couldn’t even muster up the energy to put on my earrings Sunday morning.

Many of you have lost someone. Have you experienced days like this? If so, how have you coped?

Enough whining. Let’s talk about something that seems to be getting the best of me in these moments. The ego. But first, please join host, Amanda Grieme, as she interviews our wonderful and incredibly gifted medium, Kim Babcock on the Dear Prudence radio show at 2 ET today. Call ins are welcome. Let’s show some support for this amazing human being! Click HERE to listen and call in to 858-947-1909.

Me: Good day, Jamie Butler!

Jamie: Good day, Elisa Medhus!

Me: Erik Medhus, how are they hanging?

I walked blindly into that one.

Erik: Low and long.

Jamie and I laugh.

Me: Why? A mother doesn’t need to—why? No, why? No, no! That’s not an image I want to keep in my head for very long. Okay, somebody wants me to ask about the human ego. I’m not sure what questions to ask about it, but I’ll let you take the floor and see what you have to share.

Jamie (chuckling): He straightens his collar. It looks like it’s been pulled on like it’s not just perfectly, uh, you can tell it’s been picked at in some areas. He’s wearing jeans today.

Erik: The human ego is necessary for internal dialogue.

Me: Oh, interesting.

Erik: Imagine if we didn’t have the ego to identify self. Then we would simply talk in terms of All, not I. So we would move from being naturally egocentric to geocentric. A lot of the—

(Pause)

Jamie: What did you say?

Erik: A lot of the Asian cultures are geocentric and don’t really have terms for “I” or “self.”

Me: Really?

Erik: They will gesture to who they’re talking about and what would be happening, and that’s how one would know what’s going on. Even in the States, in terms of giving directions, we always give them based on an individual viewpoint like, “You’re going to go up this road, and you’re going to hang a right. Then you’re going to hang a left and see a store and it’s up there.”

Jamie (laughing): He was driving you to a sex shop, by the way.

I laugh.

Me: Cyndies!

Jamie: See? I’m the best filter there is! That should be my new title.

Me: I know! So, when you crossed over, in your new, wonderful book, My Life After Death, you talk about how your perspective changed from egocentric to geocentric. Just so that the rest of the class knows, can you explain what that looks like?

Erik: That’s like geocentric, when you’re giving directions, you base it off of the directions north, south, east and west. “You head north, and then you go east up here, and then you go north again.” In other cultures, that’s very clear, but in American terms, we don’t have language like that. We’re individual-oriented instead of being oriented to the greater poles of Earth. When I—

Jamie: That didn’t make sense. Do it again.

Erik: When I decided to leave, it’s not like I began to see myself as being Erik and that I was in my room and that I was going to go out of the room, down the stairs, out the door and drive on the roads. It was more like thinking where I needed to be and I would arrive, and it wouldn’t be measured against “I” or “myself.” The measurement of where I was in space and time didn’t cling to me anymore. It was really fucked up to go through that, because I thought I was losing myself, but I really wasn’t. It was more that I truly understood what I did belong to. I didn’t lose myself. I actually became more aware of myself in being a part of All That Is.

Gidget and Bella start barking.

Me: It’s Kristina’s dog! She barks and then Bella joins in. Hush up, guys! Okay, let’s say you’re in a park and you would say, “I’m sitting next to this oak tree” and geocentric would be like, “The oak tree is in the northeast corner of the park by a bench.”

Erik: Yeah, just east of the bench on the northeast side of the park. Then it would have nothing to do with me.

Me: Yeah, okay. I gotcha. So, how important is the ego for our human experience?

Erik: It’s important. It shouldn’t be snuffed out. We shouldn’t have awards in place for being completely geocentric.

Me: So it gives us that illusion of separation?

Erik: Yes. And that’s what generates your internal thoughts, the thoughts you create, not the thoughts you pick up from your environment or your intuition or your imagination. The imagination stretches far beyond what your norm is. Those internal thoughts that you hand create and manifest—ego is needed to run it against.

Me: What do you mean, “Run it against?”

Erik: Kind of like when you play basketball. You need the square board in the back of the hoop.

Jamie: Oh, yeah. To aim and get it in the basket.

Me: So the ego is important to bounce those thoughts off of? Is that what you’re saying?

Erik: Right. If we didn’t have the ego and we’re trying to have a human experience, inside that human experience, we’re emotional beings, and there’s this whole pretend game of being separate, of being individual. That’s what creates our passion, our drive, our cravings and desires, our fight for life. If we had this understanding that you have when you’re dead that you’re part of All, then the quality of how you protect, guard and harness life would be completely different. It’s like going to an arcade game with three quarters in your pocket or going with a hundred dollars worth of quarters in your pocket. You’d tend to play more carelessly because you can just keep playing.

Me: Yeah.

Erik: On my side where I am now, we can just do that shit again. We’re not haphazard like that. I’m just trying to use the example of the video games. When we lose ego inside of our head it kind of tears down the integrity and morals we need to play the game of, “I’m separate from you; I’m an individual.” It’s the beauty of being human. This is why we do it again and again and again, Mom.

Me: Yeah, we’re here to learn experientially—to have experiences through contrast, and I guess you can’t contrast if you don’t have that separation. I mean, if you want to learn about forgiveness, you’re going to need a separate individual to hurt you or betray you. Is that what–?

Erik: Or to step on your toe.

Me: You stepped on my toe. I forgive you.

Jamie laughs.

Erik: Yeah. We think in spiritual terms we have that “higher self” or “higher consciousness,” right?

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: Higher consciousness links to all the incarnations that we’ve decided to experience to have lessons or contracts—call that fucking shit whatever you want, but when we look at each human life, you can consider your ego as kind of your human consciousness. You have the higher consciousness linked to all the lives that you live, and then you have the human consciousness linked to each individual life. That’s the ego allowing you to pretend that there is this separation and that you need to say the “I” and protect the “I” and have rules and integrity and protection and drive and passion. But when people focus on it too much, we get into a sickness or disease. We get into egocentric qualities, narcissism—

Jamie: He’s saying other things, but I don’t know what they are!

Erik: Oh, fuck it. Skip it, Jamie.

Jamie laughs.

Jamie: Okay!

Me: We probably won’t understand it anyway.

Jamie: It was all variations of being narcissistic, mental diseases where they see themselves as completely separate and can’t emotionally connect to anybody.

Me: Borderline Personality Disorder might be one of those.

Jamie: He was going through several of them.

Erik: It’s when you swing too far into human consciousness, the ego, rather than the higher consciousness.

Me: So you have to be balanced.

Enjoy these beautiful and powerful quotes!