Do you sometimes have a great inspiration to do something big, magical, and creative? Something worthy of you? Isn’t that an amazing feeling? Expansion, feelings of power and joy and possibility.

But then what happens? Do you think about it a lot but can’t get started? Find excuses to keep putting it off? (“I’m not quite ready” is my favorite.)  Or do you start, but pretty soon you’re stuck? Does the wind go away and your sails collapse?And maybe a few weeks or months later do you find yourself wondering, as I have, “Whatever happened to that great idea of mine?”

Why do you (or I )some days feel expansive and full of trust and confidence, but the next day barely  feel able to crawl out of bed?

These inconsistencies happen to all of us. But why? . . .

The reason is that we have two different programs running simultaneously. Sometimes one takes over and sometimes the other one does.

I’m talking about Higher and Lower Consciousness .

We basically have two different sources of direction, with very different agendas. They are each trying to communicate their message to us, and they are frequently in conflict with each other.

Lower Self Instructions

On the one hand, we have what I’m calling ‘Lower Consciousness” or our ordinary ego-mind. It has agendas based on what IT knows.

What does the ego know or believe?

It knows scarcity, lack, and danger. The ego is made up of things like emptiness  and insecurity, so its message sounds like “I don’t have enough, I’ll never have enough, I’m not enough.” And then there’s fear, telling us “I’m not safe.” And ignorance– the ego is not aware that its view is distorted or partial. It believes these things are all true!

So when you’re getting your operating instructions from the Ego, they tend to be practical and security-oriented, and they tend to be materialistic, and cautious. How can I get more money? is a very popular one, especially these days.

When you’re getting your operating instructions from the ego the mood or feeling-tone usually has some fear or anxiety in it. There’s usually some clutching and contraction around what you want or are going for.

Sometimes it leans the other way, though, towards inflation and grandiosity, when we’re coming from greed, or the desire for power, or some pumped-up fantasy. But these are all defenses against feeling lack. Any exaggerated expansion on the ego-level is a defense against the ego’s intrinsic sense of lack.

Higher Self Instructions

There’s a whole other set of directions coming from your Higher Self. Your Higher Self has a different agenda from your ego. It does not know fear or lack or craving because it knows itself to BE enough all by itself – it doesn’t need anything to fill it up.  And it knows that it is always safe (that YOU are always safe).

When you connect to your Higher Self, you have a through-line to the Divine Source, itself. When we identify with the ego we cut ourselves off from this source, and feel that we’re on our own, separate, isolated, needy, like an abandoned baby.  When we reconnect to our Higher Self we have access to the support of Source itself, as well as to its wisdom and love.

When you get guidance from your Higher Self it may come in the form of desires, promptings, longings, knowings, visions – that show you your highest potential, or your next step. You may feel the yearning to experience, express, create, and contribute something that is uniquely yours, that is a central part of your purpose, of why you took form at this time. Or you may feel the peace to just BE, knowing that you do not have to strive or prove anything to be worthy.

When you contact your Higher Self’s guidance your feeling-tone tends to be peaceful, inspired, expansive, empowered, confident, radiant, grounded and supported.  You are actually experiencing some of the essential qualities of your true essence.

So who you take yourself to be and how you experience yourself has everything to do with whether you’re identifying with your ego-self or are able to connect to your True Self.

What are some ways you find useful for connecting to your Higher Self? I’ll be teaching some of mine in coming posts.

What are some ways you’ve found to work with the tyranny of your ego? This makes up a big part of how I work with people – freeing them from the “trance of limitation” we all live in most of the time!

I’d love to hear from you.