This is a word that has only appeared once throughout this guide, yet it underlies much of the work performed by every practitioner of when-which-how and every seeker of emotional self-mastery. Those times when you are in the most difficult emotional situations are the times when your ego-personality will resist your efforts to initiate the expression of the virtues.
Earlier, we discussed the pain of the moment, when it is just too painful to gather your heart energies to engage the practice. There are other times, however, when you rub up against the core button issues upon which your egoic life rests. When these issues emerge in your lives, the ego-personality will use every weapon in its arsenal to prevent the encroachment of the heart upon its territory.
The emotional pain you feel in the moment of that realization involves your decision to activate the heart virtues and to do the exact opposite of what the ego-personality would dictate. Your decision to join with the forces of the heart and the higher self, is the beginning of the end of your ego’s domination of your life. The pain you feel in the course of that battle is the sacrificial tearing down of the ego’s defensive walls.
The sacrifice involves the surrendering of the ego’s resistance to change. Change is often met with resistance, and it is the ego’s resistance to change that creates the pain. Most importantly, this is not the sacrificial death of the ego, but rather the sacrifice of its defenses, which resist all perceived threats to the ego-personality’s existence. This is not the sacrificial death of the ego, but rather it’s transformation into a dedicated instrument of the immortal soul in service to First Source and It’s plan for the human species.
