It's All Ego

I've been wanting to write this one for days because it's something I learned myself with no prompting from anyone.

I think many of us...OK, OK, I think that 'I'....had a huge spiritual ego when I came back home from India. I may still have a somewhat tattered portion of it even now. See, I was a disciple of the Kali Yuga Avatar. That made me very important. Not only that but I had lived at His feet for over 30 years. None of the people around me could say that. I felt that my words, my ideas were more important than anyone else's because 'The Lord' was pretty much speaking through me. Not in a weird way, not channeling or anything but certainly He was in control of my words and thoughts. Why wouldn't that be true. Oh sure I could be mistaken, I could lose my moorings upon occasion but...I was, I am...His disciple after all. As a matter of fact, I lived INSIDE the ashram for all that time. He wanted me near Him so...Lord only knows what great person I was in another life time to deserve such Grace from the Kali Yuga Avatar.

And that was just my underlying attitude with my family...though it was subconscious I must admit. I never really thought these things to myself or anyone else but...you know ego is so tricky that it fools us all the time. And we must be alert and on the look out for it's ugly head sticking up here and there.

My family has a bit of an ego thing about our ancestry anyway so I had it coming and going. For this reason, Mama always said we were better than other people, I didn't feel that I was but that damned ego is right there under the surface.

This Senior living situation is unique too. You have a bunch of old people who have already lived long lives as important people in their families, mothers, fathers, grandparents. And now we live here together...but separate...all equal now with none of us being better than anyone else. That in itself is difficult but when you have this ancestry thing its more so...Then you add to that the fact that I'm pretty much a Hindu who lived all those years at the Lotus Feet of the Lord Incarnate, and you've got yourself an impossible situation.

So it's impossible but it doesn't really matter because I can come home and close my front door to the world. But what DOES matter is that I stumbled into my sister's house a year and a half ago, feeling that I was going 'to save them all' with my superior wisdom and superior love, gleamed from living with the Avatar. And, of course, I didn't know I had this attitude which made it much more difficult to work with. They didn't think I was better than they were in any way just because I believed in Sathya Sai Baba...and lived INSIDE the ashram.

This is important. Try to see yourself as just an ordinary person, not REALIZED in any way. See yourself as others see you. You know maybe our spiritual work has benefited us in many ways, spiritually...but that's just inside, that's just at the ATMIC level. Let's hope the real difference between us and everyone else is that we can LOVE more, that we can have more compassion and broadmindedness...but let's not get carried away over that either because it develops EGO...watch out for that smirky little head.