When I was a teenager, one evening I sobbed uncontrollably in my bedroom while my stone-faced mother watched from a few feet away. At the time, I was being relentlessly bullied at school, I had no friends, and my family was abusive. There was no source of kindness in my life. I was alone, so I cried and begged my mother to give me a hug, a word of comfort—anything. She blinked at me like I was a curious splotch on a sidewalk and said no, that it wasn’t “who she was”.
When I was thirty-seven, I walked on a beach with my only surviving sibling (P), months after our younger brother (M) died suddenly from a brain bleed following a fall. During this walk, P explained how he knew exactly why M died and what M’s mindset was about his short life prior to dying. P didn’t believe in grieving, or life after death, or God. In his mind, everything was cut and dried and it was time to move on since M was dead and P wasn’t.
Over the past year or so, we have all watched family, friends, and neighbors absolutely refuse to do something as painless and inexpensive as wearing a face mask for the greater good to halt a rampaging global pandemic. We have listened to the same people refuse to get vaccinated for the same reasons my mother wouldn’t hug me and my brother wouldn’t grieve M—they’ve decided they know better, and no one can tell them otherwise.
This group of people who think this way will only alter these resolutions they’ve made for themselves if dragged kicking and screaming away from them, and into doing what the rest of us deems right and good. The funny thing is part of them does actually want us to try and do it. To force them into complying. They’d revel in the chance to play the victim and the martyr. This is because they’re fully driven by their ego. Anything that threatens their ego (which is their true God) is the enemy and deserving of attack.
There’s a very weird catch-22 surrounding this situation.
They won’t change unless we force them.
They want us to try and force them.
And yet…
When it comes to doing what is right and good, it’s almost never the case where anyone is ever dragged kicking and screaming into doing it. It just doesn’t happen. That’s not how any of this works.
No one is going to force an uncaring mother to hug her daughter. No one is going to force someone to feel grief for their lost loved ones. No one is going to force an anti-vaxxer to get vaccinated or to wear a mask. Sure, there may be consequences like being kicked out of a store for not complying, but no one is going to tackle them to the ground and strap a piece of cloth on their face against their will. Would they like someone to try? You bet! Imagine the glorious tantrum that would follow!
Beyond these examples, there is much to be found in existence and this plane of reality in which we find ourselves that is Other. Things that have nothing to do with us or our egos. These things require a leap of faith, a spark of curiosity, a willingness to step beyond the realm of what we consider safe and familiar. What kinds of things am I referring to? God, faith, spirit, ghosts, aliens, parallel dimensions, higher dimensions, fate, consciousness, and all the mysteries of the cosmos.
The ego-driven do not buy into those sorts of things. They laugh at them and mock them as being children’s stories for the idiotic and overly-sensitive.
This is where that catch-22 kicks in.
Liberals will not descend from helicopters and shoot vaccine darts into your helpless family against their will. God will never drag you kicking and screaming into belief. No one will tackle you to the ground and force acceptance upon you that you have an eternal soul and will face judgment when you die. Real life is not a movie where the extraterrestrials cross space and time in order to make a childish, violent, explosive entrance to display their dominance and girthy weapons, only for an “ordinary white man” to swoop in, defeating them against all odds and saving all of mankind from enslavement to the terrible creatures.
For those of us stuck with the maturity of a toddler, there is no cosmic “Mommy” waiting to swat our hand away from the hot stove of consequences to save us. If we reach for fire, we will get burned.
We are ignorant beings. We don’t know everything. In fact, we know almost NOTHING. It’s only when we accept this fact that we begin to have even a glimmer of understanding.
We aren’t the best, the most holy, the smartest, the cleverest, or the most deserving. Humans are flawed and severely limited in their capacity for understanding due to our perception typically being limited by our five senses. We trick ourselves into believing what we see and touch is all there could possibly be. We point and laugh at anyone who suggests otherwise. The whispering of Ego tells us it is the only true God. It warns that we must obsess and slave over the “perfection” of our physical body, possessions, and house while we can, because before we know it we will wither and die, becoming totally extinguished from existence.
There is no way to explain to someone their Ego is wrong. The only way to conquer Ego is from within. They have to do it for themselves.
No one is going to drag anyone kicking and screaming into belief in something more expansive than their own Ego. The only way to become a better person—to grow, change, and evolve—is to choose to become one.
That’s the test. That’s the only way forward. We can only approach higher things by choosing to approach them. Free will means we are each free to be an ego-driven fool for as long as we like. It means no one will take that away from you if you don’t want to let them.
And there lies the tragedy, friends.
This is where the heart breaks.
Because there is no saving them. There is no convincing them. There is no forcing them.
They can only save themselves.
And for the most part, they won’t. They are simply much too afraid to even think of doing so.
We’re in a crucial moment of human development on a scale larger than any of us can imagine. The Age of Aquarius is here, folks. There is no more stalling. It’s do or die. We either evolve, or we perish. If we don’t evolve, the planet quickly becomes uninhabitable for humans. If we don’t choose to do better, we devolve into authoritarianism.
We are supported by the higher realms. They are doing all they can, but we must always remember… they will not drag us kicking and screaming into our own salvation! If we don’t choose to save ourselves, they will allow us the freedom to devote ourselves to a hellish existence full of suffering and mass death.
I’m not here to say what you should believe in. There is no one God out there waiting with arms spread who will save you the way the Christians claim Jesus will save you—forgiving all reckless cruelty as long as you say you’re sorry before heading off to do it again. The same is true for each and every one of us:
We are our only salvation.
No one can save us but ourselves.
No one can choose to do better for us. It won’t happen unless we make the choice to learn and change, and then do the hard work of actually learning and changing.
There is no trick to this, friends.
You need to save yourself. You need to admit when you were wrong and seek out the information as to why. You have to choose to devote yourself to being a good person, and then do the hard work of figuring out what that means.
We can escape disaster. We can evolve and transform our world into paradise. We can eradicate suffering and devote our existence to peaceful creativity. Anything is possible, but it is our choice.
I have a heart full of compassion for those who are enslaved by their egos. It’s a terrible, painful existence where fear blankets absolutely everything, and where the only certainty is that total obliteration is inevitable.
The only way out of this place is the only way most of us refuse to go.
This is my plea, sent out to the world and everyone in it, to please toss your ego out of the way and see everything it’s been hiding from you. Growth is always possible, for everyone. Individually, we will not budge from where we are until we choose to move, but please believe me when I say this world is moving on whether humans choose to go with it or not. It can and will leave behind anyone who doesn’t want to go on the journey. For those who are choosing to stay—stone-faced, arms folded, jaw clenched, and nose in the air—they will eventually go too. It may take lifetimes. It may take eons worth of agony, or it may take mere moments. But someday, somehow, we will all get there. For the universe is patient and time has no meaning.
The choice is ours, and only ours.
Love and blessings, friends.