Ep #21: Ego Death

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Hello my amazing friends. Well, I decided I could get one more in before I hit the road, so here’s another episode coming still from Louisiana before I hit the road for Sedona, California, and everything on the west coast. I’m very serious about never knowing the date and the place and all that stuff. It’s kind of a little problem.

Matter of fact, Aladdin came out at theatres this weekend. I really want to go and see it because I love anything Disney puts out. They are like, stellar in all of their productions. And I’m like, who is Aladdin? What did he do? Is he a hero? Is this someone I need to know about? And my grandkids laugh at me because they’re like, “Grammy, why don’t you know anything?”

And I really don’t. None of these – I don’t even – Cinderella, Snow White, like none of these things, I don’t know where I was at. I just didn’t get to be a kid. And so I think I’m making up for it and Moana is my hero, one of my favorite things to talk about. Back in the day, in the past when I was growing up, it was the lives of the saints. That’s who I could relate to and what I was reading and what I understood and all that – I don’t know, I was plenty entertained with that stuff. It’s so weird, but I’m loving it.

So today we’re going to talk about ego death. What? I am like, intrigued with this and I know it sounds kind of morbid. I put that on Facebook. I was like, you know what, this is a bit morbid but I really do love it because it’s that final step before becoming – I welcome it with open arms. I love supporting that space. I probably was meant to be a death doula. I could so easily do that.

I’m intrigued with earth and death. I’m just, I don’t know, always been kind of drawn to it. I’m not afraid of it. I’m very familiar with tragedy, trauma, death, and these things my whole entire life. I’ve been around it. It doesn’t scare me. I actually see diagnoses, death, divorce, these traumas as gifts. Gifts for the awakening.

My favorite clients to work with are those who have already suffered greatly because they have an understanding and they have this endurance and fortitude and grit to stay with this coming undone process when it gets painful because they already have experience in what it’s like to endure, to be there, to stay present, to not run, that wisdom of no escape kind of thing.

So here’s the deal; change is hard and dying to perception is change. The willingness to give up the way you see things, the way you think, and open to the opportunity of thinking in a different way that maybe people in your environment and surroundings don’t think like, it’s pretty freaking scary. You feel lost, ashamed, confused. It’s pretty powerful.

There’s nothing more unsafe for a human than to feel like they don’t belong, than to feel like they’re not connected, to feel alone, and there’s a lot of shame that comes with that. I remember when I was going through this myself. I was doing a lot of reading, a lot of personal development research and I went to the priest, I have a spiritual director I hired, licensed counselor, psychotherapist, psychiatrist.

I tried mental health programs. Seriously, I stopped my husband on the road one day and I said I can’t go home. He said, “What are you talking about?” And I was like, I just can’t go back there. I’m going to die. There’s something majorly wrong here. I went to the doctor today, they upped my medication and I just don’t know. I couldn’t even leave through the lobby. This is a true story.

I left through the doctor’s backdoor. I had been crying so much and I was such a mess and I was so ashamed and I asked him like, can you send me somewhere? Can you do something? I don’t know how I’m going to survive this. And he did. He called this mental health place and made me an appointment for one o clock the next day.

And so I told my husband, I was like I’m going, I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong, and like, I closed my business. I remember one of my faithful clients, she said, “You could be sick in the head and not sick in the bed.” Ms. Caroline Foray. I remember this so well. She got me. She just knew. She understood more about life than some of the people I had been talking to, and I remember that was so funny.

And I was like yeah, you’re right. And guess that’s what this is. And so I told him I can’t go back home, I’m closing the business, I canceled all my appointments and I’m going to this assessment and maybe they’ll keep me. And I did the assessment and they said, “You don’t meet criteria, you can’t stay here.” And I was like, oh my god. I can’t even get into a mental health facility.

Now, today I know better. I know that was grace and thank goodness I didn’t because what I know now is I could have been so psyched up on so much medication. But the reason they wouldn’t keep me is because I was suicidal. I wanted to die more than anything else. I wanted to die probably more than I wanted to live, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know a way out.

I didn’t know what to do and I had this belief, like all of you have probably heard about what happens if we commit suicide or – I don’t even think they call it that anymore, but anyway, there was so much stuckness happening that I was like, if a Mack truck would just run into my lane and hit me head on I would be so happy, and I have actually considered maybe turning to the right and going really fast and smashing into a tree head on with no seatbelt.

I thought those things and I mentioned that to her and yeah, still didn’t meet criteria with my insurance. So I was like well, tell me this, do you have a hotel? Because I’m not going home. Because she offered me – I could do outpatient for six weeks or something like that. And so they – those from the local area, you may love this.

I went to the Red Roof Inn, right next to the Honda place in Lafayette and I stayed there. Craziest thing. I heard a lot of noise outside, I look out the hotel room and the kids are there from my school with half PLA or one of these FA things, I don’t know. I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Can I not get away?

I had all these personal help books on the bed and like, I was going to figure this thing out. Some of the craziest stuff. That’s why I speak about all of it. This was a long time ago but I remember when I got home, my daughter, I had a calendar hanging up in her room and the day that happened she said, “Mom went nuts.” I was so ashamed and it really was. I really did. I dropped my basket. I really did go nuts.

I didn’t know what else to do. I was praying like lord, please. I knew that I knew that I knew there was something more to this and I guess it was – maybe I had falling into some type of martyrism or sainthood or trying to do everything for Christ like and not sin and be perfect and everywhere I turned I couldn’t get accepted.

I couldn’t get accepted by the church, I couldn’t go to communion because my husband was married before, I couldn’t die when I tried, when I OD’ed as a teenager, and I couldn’t even make it into heaven. And then I tried to put myself in the mental place and they don’t even keep me there. It’s like everywhere I would turn to try to get help I could not get help.

And it was just rejection over rejection over rejection, and I remember reading about – they were saying I think Theresa or Saint Theresa – is it the flower one? You may know. I know for sure it was Saint Theresa. And in the actual reading, everything was mystically happening the way the book was written.

I was like, kind of freaking out and that’s when I went to the priest and I was like, I don’t know what to do. Everything I’m reading and doing is happening in my life but it’s in another realm, it’s not here, and it’s just – I think I’m going crazy and I was crying and crying and crying. And I was talking about like, so painful not to be able to go to communion or be part of my church that I was so faithful to and so trying to stay in alignment with and it was like, I can’t get out, I can’t kill myself, I can’t stay in, I can’t be accepted, and it was just constant hitting walls.

And you know, he even said, he says I think reading the Lives of the Saints would probably be the best direction for you and he’s like, I humbly say, I’ve not experienced something so tragic as you with the loss of a parent or the rejection, neglect, abandonment of a parent to know the depths of what you have searched for in god and what you have found, and this is a mystical experience and I was like, I get back to my home and I’m reading, picking up where I left off in the book and that’s exactly what she says is like, her counselor discharged her or released her and I was like, oh no.

I turned the book off like it was on Kindle. Never opened it again. I was like, don’t even want to know what’s going to happen next. It was so – I’m telling you. If any of you have had spiritual experiences, mystical experiences, you’ve experienced some sort of ego death because that’s what it takes to get there.

And I remember praying, lord, I hope this has a purpose. Just tell me that it has a purpose. I can endure, I can stay with it, I can hold on if it has a purpose. But let this not be wasted. This suffering, this pain. It was so painful but I knew that I knew that I knew there was more, and that’s what I want to tell you today is just to keep holding out.

Even though I didn’t have the proof, I kept going. It was tough. It was really tough watching myself go through it, watching my own thoughts and you know, I now know this is what I call Christ consciousness. It’s like the difference between Jesus teaching us how to be a human and Christ rising and teaching us how to be mystical beings and how to experience this – I don’t know if it’s this spiritual awakening, this connection, just that there is more than just the physical human world.

And this Christ consciousness, this inner knowing, this guidance, this is the part that I never quite understood why the perception and the understanding of religion was like, staying with the crucified Christ. Like, this suffering and the dying and dying to self and everything was selfish. It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

And I was like well, Christ rose so that we can be free, so that we can follow, so that we can follow the example of, and that we can have more. It’s this – I don’t know, my brain just had a hard time understanding it but what most people will say is that this is like a mental breakdown, a midlife crisis, and I thought that myself.

I questioned it. The truly being the messenger, the deliverer of this great news, this new news of how life can be, this spiritual life, this life of wholeness. You know, we are just a soul having a human experience. This bodysuit, this personality that’s on top of us, the true essence is that Christ, like life, it’s that internal, and ego death is the part that we have to die to, the part that’s not in alignment with this true essence.

So I remember asking like, is this a mental breakdown? Is this a midlife crisis? Is it mental illness? My mom must have been depressed because she left. She had six children and she left them. She didn’t take care of them. She would like, run around and she would go and get pregnant and she worked in the bars, and then she got killed and she like – I remember asking all of this.

Am I sick like her? Is there something wrong with me? Or is it spiritual thing? Is it a dark night in the soul? Is this something that I need to continue to endure? Is this the path to light? I knew enough to question these three things, and I had a hysterectomy at 29 years old, so yeah, I was imbalanced. I was disconnected.

It was like my head and by body were not connected to each other. So was it a combination of all of this? Heck, who knows? I can tell you this now, that I was on so much medication that it was really hard to tell because I wasn’t emotionally connected, because the medication was numbing out my emotions and I am a feeler.

I know this from my human design. I know this from my personality, from who I am is that I feel. I have a gift for feeling. I could be in a room with people and feel exactly what’s going on, and actually, that’s the gift that was coming forward in this exact time. I remember being in mass and seeing. I was able to see what was going on in people’s bodies. I was able to feel and I was like, god, don’t give me this gift if I can’t do anything with it.

I don’t know where this is going, I don’t know where you’re taking me, but I was so in alignment with living a spiritual life. It was all I knew. I was having a hard time with the human experience. So the death of the ego is the beginning of real life. It is the beginning of that soul passion. That soul inspired soul-driven, soul-connected life, which what else is there, guys?

Like really, what else is there? If you’re not in essence and in alignment with divine, with your creator, with the whole entire essence and person of who you are, if you’re not in alignment, which your true source, that knowing, what else is there? So again, what I want to talk about is like, ego death and playing the edge between the inner life and the outer life.

Playing the edge between four and five. Playing the edge like that bridge where you kind of like – it’s kind of like putting your toe in the water to see if it’s too cold before you dive all in. You know, playing the edge is just this kind of pushing the limit to see what else you can experience and pull back. And then staying plugged in, staying really grounded and solid in your prayer life, in your spiritual life, in your family, your community.

You know, connecting with people that get you. Connecting with high-minded individuals. And you know, I talked about earlier this hormone imbalance, mental illness, spiritual discord or disconnect that I would call the dark night of the soul. I think you may have heard me talk about this before, but I now see that as dark night of the mind.

The soul does not have darkness. The soul is light. And you cannot be what you are not. It’s like going into the ocean and dipping your mason jar in there and you see the water very clearly, and then you turn it into Kool-Aid or you try to make it into something else, you cannot take the water out. You cannot take the source out.

You cannot take god out of soul. You can’t. And so I don’t think there’s darkness there. I think the problems come from our thoughts, and only thoughts can hurt you because when you think a thought, then it creates a feeling and then you react and respond to that feeling. And so if dark night of the soul is truly dark night of the mind, then you can work yourself out of anything.

And I think that’s what I did here. I just didn’t have that leader, teacher, mentor to walk me through it. I was guided by the Holy Spirit. I was guided through prayer; I was guided through connection because that is where I went to be able to get to the other side. And eventually what happened is I started getting more side effects from the medication and I was on seven different things.

I mean, this was like, years of medicine on top of medicine on top of medicine and you know, going to trying different modalities of healing, and it wasn’t until I really allowed things to fall apart and this ego to die. Like this part of me that was so attached to being liked, to being accepted, to being understood, and you know, it’s really tough trying to be understood in a physical world when you’re being a spiritual being.

When you’re coming from soul essence, time doesn’t even matter. Space doesn’t even matter. It’s almost like this kind of lost in between two worlds where it’s not relatable and that disconnection is what I was seeing because my perception was more about trying to understand that, and I was being the watcher of my own perception as it was shifting.

And maybe it would have been different if I would have had someone who was explaining it to and who was sharing it like what I’m doing with you. Maybe, but it wasn’t. So I have to say it worked out exactly like it was supposed to. And maybe I am the person to share and explain this to you. Maybe I am filling the gap where there was no filling before, and maybe that is part of my calling or my whole job or existence of being here is to be that edge pusher.

That one that awakens. And it’s painful to say that and to feel the fear that come up behind it with that claim. Like one of the hardest things to claim is the real deal about our self, and especially when that essence does feel so alive and so real and so connected, and you know it’s possibly or probably going to be denied by the world.

You know, I’ve been reading and watching a lot on Joan of Arc who I’d never heard about before. Well, okay I’ve heard the name but I never knew who she was, kind of like the whole Aladdin thing. And it was mentioned to me the other day and it caught my curiosity and I was like, what? I don’t know, I need to know more about this. Who is that? What did she do?

And like, what is the essence that she served from? And so I started, I watched a couple of documentaries and I read and I researched, and there’s not a whole, whole, whole lot, but there was enough to understand that what she did not do is give up on what she knew. What she did not do is give up on what she knew, even though she didn’t have the proof.

And maybe that’s exactly why her name became in white, caught my attention, because that’s what I needed to know right now. Putting this podcast out, like these shows created around this concept, it’s not super comfortable. I mean, it is because I’m not having to say it to anyone and I get to just put it out there, but I am truly working on getting centered and grounded, being super clean of my thoughts and my attachments, and really being in soul essence.

Being in god connectivity, connecting with my creator and tapping into this different world that I don’t speak about or haven’t been speaking about. Those who work with me know this because I do work on a more intimate level, but it’s really about giving up being the victim and what’s so hard about that is being the victim is really relatable.

Living in scarcity, talking about how things go wrong, that relatability is a big deal because we feel safe, because when we cannot relate, we feel fear and that’s what’s happening in ego death, that’s what’s happening when we play the edge. We go to the edge and look over just enough to kind of feel where that danger could be, where I’m not so sure, and then we come back.

And then we just keep playing and you just keep calling in grace and keep calling in grace and staying present, keep connecting to god, keep connecting to Christ, and keep reading, keep hearing things. Stay with high-minded people. Those who are on a higher vibration who believe in abundance, who believe there is enough, who believe there is more.

And I’m going to tell you, if this is happening to you, it is because you did ask for more, because you did ask what else is there, I want more, I want to receive more, I want to be part of more, I want to be shown more, and this is the more. You cannot move into the next layer or level without dropping what you were because you have to drop the perception, otherwise you can’t see. You can’t see in the other dimension.

You can’t get a taste for it or a feel for it if you’re still in the victim story, if you’re still in the fear story, if you’re still doubting, and if you truly are not in that trust, grace, presence, because here it is; these life experiences that our parents and our partners bring to us and this injustice in the world, if you can see it as it just is, it just is the thing that brings you home, it’s the thing that brings you closer to Christ, that brings you closest to god, closest to your passion, closest to your purpose, it is the gift.

The falling apart is the gift. This is how you reinvent yourself. This is how you recreate yourself. And you know, being able to see it, say it, allow it, release it, then you can reclaim who you truly are in essence, in creation. Reclaiming who you came into the this world as. If you listened to the last podcast with the affirmations from Louise Hay, just let that soak in. Look it up, read the book, listen, listen, listen to more about your worth and value as a human being, and see if you can reconnect with that part of yourself.

Here’s another thing. You cannot heal what you do not feel. And if you’re not willing to feel this ego death, this dying to the old self, if you’re not willing to allow that and to feel that, then you can’t get to the land of milk and honey. You can’t live with that. And for some people I get they’ve not had trauma. They are probably not who I’m speaking to and that’s okay.

I love you anyway, and if ever you do have trauma, you’ll know where to come. You’ll know where to get support because I’m not willing to defend this anymore. I’m not. Joan of Arc has inspired me to know that I know that I know, that this, even though I don’t have the proof, this is what I speak of. This is what I know even though I have felt the rejection, I’ve heard the judgments, I’ve heard the blame and it’s super defensive.

When you start dropping this scarcity and the victim and like, I remember I had built a wall and I just wanted to defend because I didn’t want to feel the shame. I didn’t want to feel the wrongness. I didn’t want to feel the fear. I didn’t want to feel that I was unsafe. And so what happened is I was dying to who I truly am. I was dying to what I want to speak about what I feel called to speak about and what I want to share.

I know so many people who are coming out of addiction, abusive relationships, lifestyles that don’t work for them, scarcity, illness, chronic pain, disease, all of these things from not living an organic, authentic, true to themselves life. That they are living in an environment where they’re doing what everyone else wants them to do and they are afraid to start doing what they are called to do.

And I want to offer this bridge. I want to offer this space. I want to offer support and let you know that it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay to not be relatable for a while. When you start stepping into who you truly are, it will attract people. You know, I was walking in the yard earlier this morning and the gardenias, I could smell them from the road and it was like they were just there.

The gardenias were just there standing in essence. They didn’t have to come knock on my shoulder, they didn’t have to beat me up, they didn’t have to start bullying me, start trying to get my attention. They were just standing there in their essence. They didn’t stick their flower in my nose and try to get me to smell and see how pretty they were, or to see how real they were.

There was no proof, there was no convincing. They were just standing there on the corner, and you know what? I found them. They drew me in by their essence. And that, my friends are who we are called to be. To be in the essence of Christ, in the essence of god, in the essence of creation, of the universe, in whoever, whatever you pray to and believe in, being in the essence of who you are as a being, and the right people will come to you.

Your tribe will be attracted to you, your community will find you. You will build your own community. And remember that if you’re feeling isolated and alone, and if you’re feeling like this is painful, just know that it’s only your thoughts that can hurt you, that you can turn that around, you can change that story. Go back to the last two episodes and really ask the questions.

What am I concerned about? What am I afraid will happen? And then add a little turnaround. So if you’re concerned about what people think about you and you’re afraid rejection and loneliness will happen, turn it around. I am safe. I am in the essence of who I truly am. I am reclaiming that wholeness. I am safe because when I say things that are not in alignment, things that cause fear, things that cause pain, I use those thoughts against myself and I no longer choose to do that.

I support myself. I am relatable. I am not afraid, I am safe. I attract abundance. I love creating and being free. I love freely being who I am. Sit in that for a while and just keep it in your awareness and keep playing the edge. Alright, until next week.

And don’t feel like you have to go it alone. We have the Integrative Life Facebook group. You’re welcome to join in. I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear your experiences. Ask questions and leave comments and I’ll check back with you. You do not have to do this alone.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Integrative Life Coach Training for Health and Wellness Practitioners! If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to mind body integration, head over to KimGuillory.com to download your Stability First Meditation today.