Can we take a closer look at ourselves and understand that all we are we owe to the evolution of ego. Is this a bad thing, the ego? Not in its fundamental beginning, for this is another experiment that Source wanted to play with. It has, however, gotten out of hand and brought us to this precarious state we are in today. So our species must change or die. There is always room for something new in the grand cosmic game. Conscious Evolution will take care of that. So let’s talk about the ego and where we are headed:
…The ego is dominant in only one species, homo sapiens. For all intents and purposes, you invented the separated ego; it began with humanity and ended with humanity. Yes, there are examples of ego in other primates and animals, but by comparison to the human ego, they are as nothing. One might even say that the ego invented you, or at least it was the chief characteristic in developing your full potential. In this sense the ego was a necessary evolutionary step. Its creation was precisely as necessary as its timely dissolution. In the great scheme of Earth evolution, ego’s ascendance to center stage was a very short-term phenomenon, destined to hasten planetary awakening and then step back into obscurity.
The species’ collective self is both the sum of its parts and more than the sum. All egos are essentially unconscious of themselves, in that they function without appreciative awareness. All true appreciation is generated from the deeper conscious levels, beyond the mind. Nevertheless, ego was necessary for triggering consciousness to awaken. It pushed the species to the very limits of endurance for survival. At this point, a dormant mechanism began to awaken within human beings. This is the collective presence of mind I’ve already mentioned.
The ego is a mental-emotional guard dog for the self identity. Once homo sapiens developed its separated awareness, it began to feel quite alone, cut off from the continuum of Life. Instinct gives every other species an innate awareness that it is not alone.
Again, it was a natural development, in that consciousness always demands an exploration of any new situation. This is part of survival of the fittest and fitness for survival. The greater Life was moving toward its own awakening. When the flow of any fluid—including awareness—is restricted or put under pressure, its velocity increases. Evolution needed a vehicle to house this more rapid movement. The human ego was it.
Separated awareness was a new phenomenon for the planet; it had to be explored and tested. Thus, some 50,000 years ago, members of the human species began to realize their individuality. All manner of challenges erupted; questions and fears arose in the mind as a result. Out of this turmoil, human genius was born. Both fear and excitement arose within individual minds and within the species as a whole.
“As you probably know, the word individual literally means ‘undivided’. It seems a strange paradox to me that when humans individualized they became more divided.”
So it seems. However, the individual is an archetype for the whole species as well. This is in fact spirit coming to Earth—the story of all the diviners, prophets and avatars down the ages. Through this archetype, wholeness is reflected into the single unit. When egos began to flourish, the direct connection to greater reality was broken. This was inevitable, but only temporary. The individuated, small self felt isolated and abandoned. Its reaction, not surprisingly, was to shield and defend itself. Hence the ego came into being. Humanity thus fell into ages of relative unconsciousness.
The defensive nature of the ego came to define its relation to the world around it. Its job was self-protection, which led to greed and aggression. This sense of self could also include family, tribe or nation. Animal instinct transformed into intellect in the human mind and thus triggered a powerful expansion of territorial imperative.
The progression from instinct through intellect into intuition is an evolving principle here as well. The appreciative faculty that my species enjoys is an intuitive awareness, transcending yet including intellect. In early homo sapiens, instinct had jumped to intellect. Intellect, however, by necessity was largely cut off from its former instinctual basis. When the next species—mine—arrived, intellect made a similar leap to the intuitive state and recaptured its linkage to instinct. Said another way, intuition is instinct made conscious through intellect.
“But don’t we humans still have some of that instinct in us?”
Yes. Humans were still guided by instinct in subtle ways. Whenever you would rely on an inner guidance from the cellular level, this was instinct—a precursor to activated intuition. As part of the unending progression, Conscious Evolution provided that the human species would be superceded, so that Life awareness could progress.
Over the last hundred years of your time, the risks to planetary survival had steadily increased due to ever more dangerous means of acquisition in the hands of rampant egos. There came a threshold. The aggressive human species had to be transformed, or else there would be wholesale destruction on the planet; much evolutionary progress would have been lost. Bear in mind that all this was necessary. Humanity was a stage in evolution that forced the hand of consciousness. Evolutionary awakening was finally unavoidable. The new species was christened homo evigilo, or ‘awakened man’. We call ourselves vigilans…
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Potter
Letters From 500 