MQ: Practice awakened observation in the next interaction you have with a person with whom you share a relevant relationship. Observe who you are being in the exchange. Observe, also who the other person is being in their interaction with you. Can you see if the unhealthy ego-mind has that person locked into specific personas that he or she is using to support a particular self-image? Are you perhaps watching yourself or a part of yourself that overlaps with one of his or her personas for mutual benefit?
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: The more attention you pay to the little-self in you, the more its reflection will show up in your relevant relationships.
MQ: Are you shocked, surprised, humbled or overjoyed? Is the little-mind goading you into denial, defense, or self-righteousness? Have you also been building and sustaining relationships at the ego’s bidding to support your self-image? Acknowledge any tension or opposition you may be feeling now for what it is: a manifestation of malevolent ego in resistance to your awakening.
P: But, this doesn’t mean that all interactions with that person will cease?
MQ: No, not at all. You can still maintain a relationship with this person, but in such a way that it is no longer relevant to your awakening.
P: I understand. And, what if they begin to show interest in awakening also?
MQ: That would be wonderful. After all, to consciously cocreate a new world, you are going to need all the help you can get!
Nefesh or Ruach2/Animal or Spirit
MQ: In this acknowledgement, know too, that many emotionally potent relationships are a reflection of a force that is simply not who you are.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Your choice to be free from your attachment to the ego-mind also frees the world from the ego in you. This is an awesome achievement!
Devora’s Story: Devora was a passionate and caring woman, well loved for her calm, ease and compassionate directness. Because of her passionate interest in awakened from concealed conditioning, she worked diligently for many years to build a retreat center in an opulent suburb of Tel Aviv for residential courses on a wide variety of spiritual disciplines. Devora’s only son, however, with whom she had a relevant relationship, ridiculed her on a weekly basis because she was unwilling to listen to him bemoaning his seemingly pointless life, gossiping about his friends, and complaining about his lack of joy and contentment. He also critiqued her about her life’s work of providing a venue for spiritual development. Over the course of many years, Devora had tried to explain her passion to her son, but he refused to listen. He always insisted that she was being unrealistic and demanded that she live in the ‘real’ world, like other mothers he knew. Though she felt great compassion for her son, his relentless critique of her desire for authenticity and responsibility caused great anguish and disharmony between them. Then Devora realized that her awakening to the ego-mind also called her to interact as the same unified person with every person with whom she had a relevant relationship. She saw that the malicious ego had been swapping masks in her to suit the relationship with her son. In her own case, Devora had to become the ‘verbally abused mother’ so that she could sustain a relationship with her son whose primary interest in his relationship with his mother, by the evidence of his years and years of ridicule, was to sabotage her interest in sharing the glorious possibilities of an awakened life with other people. Devora realized that the continual emergence of her full potential was presenting her with an awakened choice: to support a repetitively conflictive interaction or to continue to pursue her dream, as free as possible from all defiant and derogatory commentary, by making this relationship irrelevant to her own awakening.
P: What are you trying to get across here? Did Devora give up the relationship with her beloved son because he chided her for wanting to be free from conditioning?
MQ: No, she did not completely abandon the relationship with her son, but she made her son’s commentary irrelevant to her own awakening by significantly reducing the amount of time she spent with him. Devora was choosing between nefresh and ruach, between ego and spirit.
P: But is not variety in our personalities the spice of life?
MQ: Yes, and that’s the wonder of diversity. But an unconscious switch of personas driven by your attachment to the ego-mind is not the same thing as consciously changing how you express yourself according to the level of consciousness of the individual with whom you are interacting.
P: Such a conscious shift is often misinterpreted by those at lower levels of consciousness. For example: An awakened person can be a pure joy to a peer, but to a person still stuck in the ego, sometimes such an individual can come across as quite rude and insensitive.
( © - "The Uncommon Path" by Irish author Mick Quinn.)
Our Amzon sponsor link
is.gd/YlIR 
