Episode 37 – The Ego’s Last Stand – When the Ego Becomes Spiritual

Early on her spiritual path, Amina asked a friend where you could buy spiritual clothes, and wondered whether she could still wear make-up. Now Pål-Esben asks her a far harder question: when she sits down to meditate, is it really her meditating, or is it her ego?

In this thirty-seventh episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the ego’s last stand: what happens when the ego becomes spiritual. They explore why the ego is no enemy, false awakening and spiritual bypassing, the three phases the ego goes through on the path to oneness, and the hidden biases that steer us on autopilot. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• Spiritual clothes and make-up, and why the ego is not an enemy but the soul’s user interface
• Moving the ego from ruler to adviser, false awakening, and why the storms of life show where you really stand
• Spiritual bypassing, the pink cloud of love, and groups where you have to smile no matter what
• Phase 1, the obvious ego: resistance to change, projections and psychological transferences
• Phase 2, the sacred cows: belief systems and dogmas, and the filtering mechanisms of deletion, distortion and generalisation
• Confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, the bandwagon effect and the status quo bias
• Phase 3, when the ego becomes spiritual: longing without an agenda, humility, and the question “Who is it that’s meditating?”
• Gallows humour about the madness, and the moment the ego has nowhere left to hide

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Pål-Esben: Hi, Amina, and a warm welcome to a new episode.

Amina: Hi, Pål-Esben. Thank you, likewise.

Pål-Esben: Thank you, and a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. Today we’re continuing our conversation about the path to real spiritual enlightenment, awakening, oneness, or the path to the Sahara. It goes by many names, as we’ve discussed in the ten previous episodes on the path to oneness. Today we’re going into a topic I find incredibly interesting: “When the ego becomes spiritual”, in other words the ego’s last stand and its tricks on the path towards oneness. The ego is a topic that often comes up when we start on a real, profound path of development, and there are many, many misunderstandings here. Can you tell us a little about your thoughts on the ego before you started your process of development? I’m thinking especially, since I don’t have much to do with the esoteric world: what goes on in the esoteric world around the ego?

The ego in the esoteric world

Amina: Oh, OK. When I started on my alternative, spiritual path a few years ago, my impression was that the ego was something we weren’t supposed to have. It was wrong, stupid and silly, and we weren’t supposed to live from the ego, only from the soul, whatever that is. That gets a bit difficult if we don’t have an identity here, but that’s how I thought back then, and many people around me thought the same way. At the same time, all along the way I’ve come across circles that have said: “No, no, of course we have to have an ego; it’s just about taming it a little, so that it isn’t the ego that’s in charge.” To this day I come across both in the alternative world. Some have also become the ego’s protectors: “Poor ego, now we have to stop running down this ego, which is doing the best it can.” So we’ve got a few warriors like that too.

I talked a lot about the ego at the beginning of my spiritual process of development, but I didn’t really understand what I was talking about; it took quite a long time before I began to understand what the ego is about. Right at the beginning of my journey I thought that when you’re spiritual, you have to look a certain way. So I was actually looking for that ego spirituality myself, as I can see in hindsight. I asked a friend where you can buy spiritual clothes. And what are spiritual clothes, anyway? Can I actually wear make-up? I was very preoccupied with the idea that now I had to stop wearing clothes like these and stop wearing make-up, everything had to be organic and natural, now I had to look like the forest. And then I caught myself: “Whoa, Amina, wait a year before you give up all that and get yourself spiritual clothes, whatever they are. We’re not just going to swap out our identity. Check how you feel after a year.” I’m glad I did that. But of course there are many things along the way that I haven’t caught myself in until afterwards, so I’ve fallen for a few things too.

The soul’s user interface

Pål-Esben: Yes, as we all have. Welcome to the club. I’ll tell you a bit about my own later. Before we talk about the ego’s last stand and last trick, which is super clever, we need to clear up this idea that the ego is an enemy. Because the ego is definitely no enemy. Our soul decides to have experiences within this limited reality, with its limitations of time and space. It goes into the centre of itself, its dream, and in that dream you believe you’re awake, and that what you see is real. In reality it’s an illusion your soul creates, as part of the construct built up by the meta-souls. That’s a long story, but in this dream you get to experience what isn’t possible for the soul in its free state: the taste of strawberries, love, falling in love, hatred, jealousy.

Into the dream the soul brings a certain skill set: qualities, memory, dispositions. We take these with us into this game of chess, as I call it, this illusory reality we believe is real. That means every human being has a unique, real identity, coming directly from the soul and the higher self. But to be able to have experiences in the four-dimensional straitjacket, the soul needs to take the next step as well. That’s why the ego is here: so that the soul can operate in the dream at all, with the dream’s set of rules, which are so far removed from the soul’s nature. That’s why the ego is created as part of our basic psychological structure, so that we can get along with people, experience fear and anxiety and love, and find our way in this slightly mad world. The ego is the user interface between the soul and higher self and our material, four-dimensional experience in the dream, and so it’s an absolute necessity for our experience.

When we’re born, the ego hardly exists; the connection with the soul is very close. Gradually the ego gets programmed and fed: “Aha, that’s a woman, that’s a man. All women are like this, all men are like that. We can do this, we can’t do that. We just don’t do that in our family.” Over time the systems of rules go onto autopilot, and somewhere between the ages of 7 and 14, as we’ve talked about before, the connection with the soul is more or less cut off, since the ego and company, who are in charge by then, are a hundred percent focused on the dream being real: “This pen is real, Amina is real, the grass is real, and it’s green too.” Gradually the ego takes over completely. That too is by design, from the soul and the higher self: “I want to experience the second phase in the dream. The first phase is being born, the second phase is the disconnection. I want to experience how you solve problems, grow and learn, with an ego that actually holds the power.”

From ruler to adviser

Pål-Esben: The art, when we begin a spiritual path of development or a path of personality development, is to understand that yes, the ego is absolutely necessary. In a way the ego is our friend, but the art is to take it from being the soul’s ruler to becoming the soul’s adviser. That’s the start of a real spiritual path of development: when we understand that the ego isn’t an enemy, but that we need to, as you said, tame it and help it find its place as an adviser, not as the master who runs our life. And in the esoteric world you typically have two camps. One says the ego is an enemy we don’t want. The other thinks the way we do: that we need to take care of the ego. Because without an ego your soul can’t be here; you’d end up straight in a mental institution, in a psychiatric ward, since you couldn’t relate to the simplest things in the world.

The problem we’re going to talk about today is the ego’s last stand. It comes when you think you’re on the verge of a real breakthrough in your development, for example when you start to think: “Oh, now I’m starting to become enlightened.” Then it’s the ego that’s steering the process, and not you. The ego’s clever mechanism of deception tricks many people who believe they’re on the right path of development, while the ego is steering the whole process: the longing for silence, the longing to meditate, the longing in your wish for liberation, to set yourself free. And then we have a tricky problem in freeing ourselves from the straitjacket in order to find our Sahara. Namely this: as long as the ego is the master, we don’t stand a chance. It’s the trickiest part of the primordial shamanic path to oneness, the path to the Sahara, the path to real spiritual awakening. That’s why we say “when the ego becomes spiritual”, and talk about the ego’s last stand and the last trick in the ego’s arsenal. It’s a fascinating topic to observe in my students, because you see it straight away. I’ve been through this madness myself.

Especially as an academic, you’re perhaps marked by a far, far stronger ego than average, because you think you know much more than you actually do. Many times I’ve come across academics who are specialists in an academic field and who also believe they’re specialists in life. In the academic world you get drilled, and at the extreme end you see doctors and psychiatrists who are often ignorant and arrogant towards anyone with different opinions. You go to your GP and say: “Oh, couldn’t you do a test for vitamin D? Because I’ve read that vitamin D is so important for the immune system to work well.” “No, you don’t need vitamin D, that’s just nonsense. You get plenty of it from your diet, so I won’t even take a test for it.” Oh well. Unfortunately that’s what many people come up against.

And how was it for you, dear Amina? You’ve been through these slightly tricky things. And you’re still at this point in your development, where this is one of your biggest challenges. And you’re not quite conscious of it yet, because it’s so cunning.

Amina: Yes, well, I can’t say I’ve learned it all here and have all the answers, because I’m still learning a lot about myself and the ego and the soul and what I was. So what’s your question actually, Pål-Esben?

Pål-Esben: There we have it. Dear listener, Amina has come a very long way on the path towards her Sahara, towards real spiritual awakening. As I’ve said before, she has begun to have her first extensive experiences, and she’s now gradually experiencing what it’s like to stand with one foot in her Sahara and one foot in the grain of sand, in her daily life. Those are the first steps on the staircase of that process, which is exactly what we hope for. So Amina is in the middle of this most insane part of a human being’s spiritual journey of development, and what we’re going to talk about today is one of her biggest challenges. Since she isn’t quite conscious of all this yet, what’s steering her is still woven into her way of thinking, acting and seeing things. I hope you can take a bit of joy in the madness, Amina. Just so you don’t get stressed when I ask you questions.

Amina: Exactly, the ego is thinking: “What’s he after now?”

Pål-Esben: No, I’m just asking.

Amina: I’ve got nothing to hide here. That’s fine.

False awakening

Pål-Esben: So, dear listener, just so you know: we’re now really in the last phase of the path to the final, permanent breakthrough. That’s to frame this conversation a little. So, Amina: one of the biggest pitfalls on the path towards spiritual enlightenment, real spiritual awakening or the Sahara, is what’s called false awakening. We’ve talked about false gurus before, and today we’re going to say a bit about this problem. False awakening happens when the ego, instead of being put in place as the soul’s adviser, finds subtle, sly ways to strengthen its position by dressing itself in a spiritual identity. It can give an illusion of progress, a feeling of having reached a higher state of consciousness, without the inner transformation actually having taken place. That’s why this is so tricky for everyone moving through the last phase of this kind of path of development.

We find signs of false awakening in people who are convinced they’re enlightened without being anywhere near it. You’ve read 500 books on enlightenment, you recognise certain things from what you read, and you believe you’re like that too, perhaps without having done any particular work for it: “I feel it just the way that book describes, so I must be enlightened.” I don’t know whether the literature calls it false awakening, but I do. As a dyslexic I’m not able to read books, and here that’s actually an advantage: all of this comes through my own experience.

False awakening often shows itself in wanting to come across as spiritual or special, or in feeling superior to others: “Don’t you understand this?” These illusions can make a person lose their bearings completely, stuck where they are and totally blocked. That’s one of the biggest problems with it: it robs us of a real process of development, because we believe we’ve arrived before we’ve even really started.

Amina: Yes, I can really recognise myself in that. There are many times I’ve done and said things, and then I noticed it straight away: “Why did I say what I just said, and why in that way? Was I actually trying to put myself above someone in this conversation, because I know a bit more about this topic?” I’ve been through many of those processes, and I still am. I’m still curious about why I say what I say and do what I do. I don’t have quite as much of the inner whip any more, but I think it’s important to keep the curiosity with you all the way, especially in settings like these. Really in all kinds of settings, but now we’re talking about this.

Opinions: constructs about what we don’t know

Pål-Esben: Of course. At the start, when we gather information and discuss with others, we normally try to put forward our opinion or belief about things. In perhaps 90 percent of cases we hold opinions, think and believe things, and then we try to convince others that we’re right; we believe we know better than the people sitting around us. At the extreme end we see it in TV debate programmes, where they yell and scream at each other for having different opinions. And now we have to remember: having an opinion or a belief about things means that you don’t know. You’ve built yourself a construct about something you don’t know. And then you identify with that belief and that opinion, and fight tooth and nail for “I know best, and you haven’t got a clue”. That’s one of the ego’s exciting circus acts. I remember this myself as an academic, especially before my burnout: back then I was very much into convincing others of my opinions, because I’d identified with them and believed they were the only right ones.

But once you’ve started a real process of development, this changes. When you’ve gone through the three phases on the ego’s path of development towards oneness, which we’ll talk about later, you change completely. You no longer have any need to prove anything at all, or to express your opinions. So when I talk to people who come with their ideas, “Yes, that’s how it is, Pål-Esben, that’s how it is”, I just smile at them. Why should I say a word to someone who expresses their opinions as if they were reality, and who thinks they understand when they don’t? Unless they ask a question: “Pål-Esben, I think it’s like this and that, that’s my understanding of it, what do you think?” But very few people ask like that. If you’re in a discussion with friends or others who aren’t students: how often do you find that someone with lots of opinions on an esoteric topic stops and says, “This is my understanding of it, what do you think?”

Amina: Whoa, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that.

Pål-Esben: No, you experience it exceptionally rarely, because people haven’t reached the point where they’ve begun to understand what we’re going to talk about today. They simply identify with the opinion, the belief, what they’ve read, and the only interest of the ego and the intellect is to force that opinion down the throats of the people sitting around them. Because if others think the same as me, says the ego, then I feel safe, then I feel on top, then I have power. All of this runs completely on autopilot. So when you start reading about The 7 Golden Keys in my book, you begin with Golden Key number one: creating consciousness. Unless you’re conscious of something, you can’t do anything about it. And how do you practise increasing your consciousness? Well, you start asking yourself questions. That’s one of the challenges: the ego stands there as the ultimate master, and you’re not conscious of it. It’s worst when you become so-called spiritual and believe the ego no longer plays any part, because after all you’re spiritual, you talk about angels and blah, blah, blah, while your behaviour still shows that the ego has a hundred percent control. Very fascinating to experience. As my student, you’ve been strongly encouraged to ask questions, and you’re one of the really good ones at it. I think that’s also natural to who you are.

The storm shows where you stand

Amina: Yes, it is. And I see how important it is, with all the things I come across in life. Some of the bigger things I bring up with you in conversation: “How did I really stand in relation to the theme of forgiveness in this situation? What’s actually the truth about me here? How far have I really come?” Because that’s where the truth shows itself. All the knowledge we’ve acquired, and that we say we live out, shows itself in these details. And when life really comes at you, it’s when the storm hits that you see how spiritual you really are.

Pål-Esben: Yes, and it’s the only place that shows where you stand, at least in the first phase of the ego’s development: how you behave with the people around you. That’s where the core lies, in the details. That’s where a human being shows who they are. The ego says that spiritual enlightenment is, among other things, about being spiritual in other people’s eyes and showing it: that you can recite one of the chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, or one of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or say a mantra and explain what a mantra means. But real awakening isn’t about being spiritual. It’s about experiencing a deep inner freedom and peace, completely freed from the ego’s needs, from the ego’s validation of whether things are good or not, from the ego’s control. When you’re in contact with what we call oneness, or your Sahara, there’s no ego there, no time, no space. You’re literally one with all that is, and there the ego can’t exist. It isn’t even logically possible, or theoretically possible, for that matter.

So when a human being lives out their life in a way that shows the ego is in control, that’s one of the most important blocks to freedom. For most of us this happens unconsciously, because you believe wholeheartedly that the egg is a spade. You identify with what you believe in, and then the process of development has come to a complete stop; you fool yourself by trying to do spiritual things. That’s where many people stop. Because this is super complex stuff, and most of the mechanisms fly completely under our conscious radar, on autopilot. Just as you were encouraged to do at the start, as the first phase: to begin asking yourself questions. Was this really love? Have I really forgiven my partner for saying something hurtful, or am I just going around bearing a grudge? You started asking yourself questions all the time. That’s where we started, to expose this autopilot the ego steers us on. Because then you see that you’re often completely different from what you’d like to believe you are.

Amina: Yes, it’s no fun.

The little devils on autopilot

Pål-Esben: And then you have to make it a bit fun along the way too, so that you don’t sink completely into suffering. Because that’s my experience: “Whoa, this was really rotten”, because you come face to face with yourself, and you see your own crap. And it lives in all of us.

Amina: I think you once called them these little devils. I think that was your word.

Pål-Esben: Yes, I use words like that.

Amina: And I’ve noticed those many times. Becoming conscious of it, and having a bit of fun with it, has been hugely important for my process of development.

Pål-Esben: Yes, the little devils, or inner demons. And we’re not talking about external entities here, but about your personality, which after all has been imprinted below your conscious radar over many, many years while you were growing up. So it isn’t your fault that you have an ego that’s incredibly strong, and that manipulates you much more than you think. It’s part of the construct, of how we’re built. But then there comes a point where we as human beings can choose to do something about this. And no real spiritual path of development is possible without it.

Amina: Why not?

Pål-Esben: Well. Think about what a real spiritual path of development rests on. By that I mean a development towards closer contact with our spirit, our soul, what we really are; that’s how I define real spiritual development. Can we walk that path while we’re full of anxiety and hatred and jealousy and control? That’s the exact opposite of the soul’s nature. What comes closest to the soul’s nature is connected to our heart, since it’s the soul that lays the ground for the fundamental energies behind the primary feelings, such as love and gratitude. That’s how the soul and the higher self communicate with us: through impulses we experience as creativity and as primary feelings. And it isn’t possible to walk a real spiritual path of development without making this business of the ego a serious priority, priority number one.

The trap: wanting to feel like the soul

Amina: Yes, and that’s where I’ve fallen into the trap a bit. Thinking about the soul and primary feelings and how the soul communicates with us, many times during this journey of development I’ve thought: “I really ought to be feeling this differently now. Here I ought to be feeling primary feelings”, or: “This ought to feel good now.” Or: “My soul knows that death isn’t dangerous.” I remember coming into a conversation with you once and saying: “No, you know what, now I’m sick and tired of being afraid of death, so now I’m going to heal it, I’m going into that ritual, and then I’m done with being afraid of death.” And you said: “Yes, OK, let’s talk a bit about this, Amina.” I’d made up my mind, because my soul isn’t afraid of death, so then I can’t be either. That force and will of mine has wanted to barge straight through and bypass a great many things, which isn’t possible. And one of the topics that comes in now that we’re going to discuss the ego is what I understand can be called spiritual bypassing. Can you explain what spiritual bypassing is?

Spiritual bypassing

Pål-Esben: Yes. It’s when you try to bypass a deep, real process of self-development by using all these big, grand, fine words, or by avoiding feelings and the real inner work that’s needed. An example: you’ve been to a seminar, read a book or watched a YouTube video where you’re encouraged to live in love, and then you’re guided through some guided meditation or other into a pink cloud of love, and then you think you’ve done some spiritual development. But your relationship, and the way you yell and scream at your kids, doesn’t get any better from being in a pink cloud of love. It only gets better when you do the work it takes to be able to communicate in a more loving way. As an example from my world.

Amina: Yes. I came across someone the other day and noticed it: I saw that this person wasn’t doing very well, and they said: “Oh well, it’s a bit much, but everything is as it should be, and that’s how it always is.” And I see it in a great many people. I think many people want to be, quote unquote, good at being spiritual. Because if I’m feeling bad now, I’m not good at being spiritual, since I know that on some level everything is as it should be, everything is right. But when you’re sitting there trying to combine the two worlds: “This has happened with my child, and this has happened with my dog, and I’ve got a serious illness, but everything is as it should be.” Then you have a problem integrating these two worlds in the best way. I notice it in myself too on this path, but we see it often.

Pål-Esben: Yes, and then you can come under pressure from certain groups you belong to, where you’re supposed to smile all the time, no matter how things are. And then you have a mantra: “Every day, things get better and better and better.” Which is nothing but spray paint over rust. And then the pressure and frustration build up inside, because you have to show these masks to the world around you. On top of that, it’s a form of survival mechanism, if you’re having a hard time.

Amina: Yes, it certainly is.

Pål-Esben: You’re so exhausted and not able to tackle the problems, and so you look for some kind of hope: an angel or a pink cloud of love, or whatever it may be. You’re desperate, and you look for a knight in shining armour who’ll come and save you. These survival mechanisms make you do this bypass. Like when one of the big blood vessels into the heart has become blocked: then you do a surgical bypass of the blockage. The same here. And of course it’s the ego and company driving this all the time, on autopilot, below our radar.

Phase 1: the obvious ego

Pål-Esben: So now we’ll look at the three phases we need to go through to get the better of the ego, or to put it in its rightful place as the soul’s adviser. I call them the ego’s three phases on a spiritual path of development towards oneness. Phase 1: the obvious, in other words the self-evident. That’s what we come across right at the start, and what most people are driven by. It’s very easy to recognise: the ego seeks pleasure, recognition, control, success, security. You don’t need to have gone far on a path of development to identify that it’s the ego doing the seeking, because it wants more and more, and it wants to matter more and more. When we long for recognition, it’s very easy to feel it. Everyone can see it.

The second kind of behaviour that marks the ego’s phase 1 is resistance to most changes, which is also easy to identify: we resist doing X, Y and Z, which is what it would take for us to have a better relationship, for example. The third is resistance to everything unfamiliar, which goes hand in hand with the resistance to change. And the fourth thing is transference of projections, that is, basic psychological mechanisms. A psychological projection is when I project blame onto another human being: “This problem is too heavy for me to carry, so I find someone else to blame.” We come across this very often: “That person did it to me, the government does this, the weather is like that, the job is like that, so-and-so is throwing negative energy at me, that’s why I’m like this.”

Psychological transferences

Pål-Esben: Then we have other mechanisms, such as psychological transferences: that people we meet, consciously or unconsciously, radiate patterns that remind our unconscious self of an experience from earlier in life. For example: before your father punished you when you’d done something wrong, he had either a particular posture, a particular aura or a particular movement of the arm, which you as a little child had programmed into your subconscious: “When Dad did that, I sensed trouble; then I was punished, sent to my room, yelled and screamed at.” When, in your adult life, you then meet a human being who unconsciously has the same body posture, the same kind of direct voice, with strong charisma, an authority figure like your father was, who radiates the same power, then the unconscious in you will compare the person in front of you: “Oh, that’s not good, that’s not spiritual, he doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like me, now the punishment is coming.” That’s called a psychological transference. In most people this mechanism runs a hundred percent on autopilot. It’s the reason why you react to most people in a way that has nothing directly to do with what they think, believe and do, but is a consequence of massive internal transference mechanisms that hum along on autopilot and just pop up, without you even being aware of it.

And as some people notice with me: I’m very direct about things. First of all, I don’t care what people think of me; I stopped doing that 20 years ago, and I don’t pull any punches and say what I think, based on my own experience. Some people find that very direct, and I regularly see this transference coming: “Oh, he said it so directly, oh no, that wasn’t said with love. He said that I behave towards my partner in a way that has nothing to do with love, since I yell and scream at my partner when he says something I don’t like. And this isn’t spiritual.” That was a hundred percent psychological transference, because it has nothing to do with what I think, believe and do. You’ve probably noticed that too, when things have been a bit challenging between the two of us.

Amina: Oh yes, yes. Of course. Good heavens, I’ve felt plenty of transferences, and luckily I’ve managed to see them for what they are, actually in the situations between us, or in settings like that. Very often I can get a feeling, and then I get curious: “Why am I feeling what I’m feeling now? Oh yes, OK, I had a boss 15 years ago who said: ‘Yes, but Amina, just use a bit of creativity, I trust you in this setting.’ And then I did, and then I got a real dressing-down. Oh yes, OK, that’s perhaps why I’m feeling what I’m feeling now in this setting, which has nothing to do with that.” And then it goes away. So I get curious: “Hm, where might this have shown up the first time?” The same happens when you see it in another human being and start thinking: “Oh no, what if…” Or: “Whoa, that person is like that.” Or you start attributing qualities and opinions and thoughts to that person, things they absolutely don’t have. And we humans do that continuously.

Pål-Esben: And most people don’t even know that there’s such a thing as psychological transference of projections; they’re nowhere near being conscious of the mechanism, which exists in every human being. That’s one of the reasons why the first thing we ask students to read, when they start a primordial shamanic process of development with us, is this book called The 7 Golden Keys, which among other things describes this in detail. That’s how you learn the mechanisms that run on autopilot inside our heads, and can begin to identify them. Because how are you going to identify the ego’s autopilot without understanding the mechanisms? There’s nothing wrong with you as a human being; you’ve just never learned it. It ought to be basic knowledge at primary school, where we’d have learned this fundamental psychology about how our brain reacts, how our behavioural mechanisms are created, and what we need to do to become conscious of them.

Phase 1 is a whole introduction where it’s very easy to understand this mechanism of the ego. All it takes is the willingness to make an effort to begin identifying and acknowledging this side of yourself, and most people manage that on their own without any problem. So these are the self-evident things the ego steers on autopilot. But they have to be worked through, because otherwise it’s very difficult to make the ego the soul’s adviser. That’s where shamanic death begins, which we discussed in a whole episode earlier in our podcast. As soon as a seeker decides to begin identifying these behavioural mechanisms and these parts of the ego, it often creates a great deal of trouble in their life. So, that was the start.

Phase 2: the sacred cows

Pål-Esben: Phase 2 is the ego’s process of development. We take all of this very seriously at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, where we train the students in it right from the start. Because these ego dissolutions, the straitjacket, moving the ego to the role of the soul’s adviser, and then this shamanic death, you can call it many things: it takes more than a weekend. It takes at least 18 months before you get very far along the way, and the last bit can take a little longer, because it’s a bit tricky. Phase 2 I’ve called the sacred cows, a concept my students come across very early on. By that I mean a learning theme that people have, and that they don’t really want to touch or do anything about. And you have different layers of sacred cows. You have sacred cows standing in their stalls, easily accessible, which perhaps have to do with structures of opinion, for example a learning theme about learning to forgive people who have hurt you. But then we have more complex sacred cows, which are found a bit further down in the catacombs, our stinking catacombs, and which are a bit trickier. Those are what we call our biggest, most difficult learning themes of our whole life, and they’re the ones we resist most.

When we’re going to deal with the sacred cows, it’s important to identify belief systems, dogmas and opinions. And this is where it starts to get a bit complex. Because we’re often fully identified with our belief systems, dogmas and opinions, as we talked about a little at the beginning, especially religious ones. But it’s often just as bad with vegan dogmas, spiritual dogmas, whatever it may be: dogmas and belief systems that often don’t have much to do with reality, but that we identify with as the truth. And they’re complex and difficult. Just take someone who has a dogma and belief system that the devil is real. Taking that person to the point where they acknowledge that the devil is a fiction is difficult. Just as difficult as it was with you, when you believed the demons were what had taken you over. As we talked about in the first episode of our podcast, you had a very strong belief system that it really was the demons that had taken over and controlled you and caused all this trouble. Bringing a human being out of this, so that they understand it’s an illusion that has nothing to do with external beings, is very difficult.

Amina: Yes, it really is. It’s one of the hardest things to really get to the bottom of. And also communicating in a way that lets the student and the client open up to the new, while not shutting the door so hard that everything grinds to a halt.

Pål-Esben: And this is something every single human being limits themselves with; it’s part of our nature. Some, or a great many, are extremely limited by it, since everything happens on autopilot in the subconscious. But when you’re going to find the path to oneness, you need to learn to identify these things. Because as long as you believe that demons exist, that the devil exists, that death is the end of everything, as long as you’re afraid of death, these belief systems we’ve been drilled with: as long as they steer you from the unconscious, the straitjacket has insane power over you, and then it’s very challenging to break out and find the way into total freedom. So this is something a seeker on the way to oneness absolutely needs to engage with and find a solution to. One thing is that we identify with dogmas, belief systems and opinions. The other problem is that we defend them tooth and nail.

The protective mechanisms and the courage to ask

Amina: Yes, like when we started talking together about these demons. I was ever so flexible and easy-going at the start, wasn’t I?

Pål-Esben: In the early days there were protective mechanisms at work: you protected this belief system the way the ego does on autopilot, by fighting back. But you’re a personality who is strong enough and wise enough to ask questions, even when it’s difficult. That’s why you are where you are today: because you had the courage to question what you didn’t really want to question.

Amina: Yes, I remember that round, and several other rounds, but that round was intense. And I thought: “Yes, but Pål-Esben may not see everything I see around this. What if there’s something he doesn’t know about this?” Those are all the thoughts you get. “What he says does make some sense, but perhaps he hasn’t seen it from this perspective. He’s been in this sphere for many years, he’s never experienced a demon or an evil being of light, but perhaps he just hasn’t been there yet.” All these stories the head starts spinning.

Pål-Esben: And it’s the ego we’re talking about here. It’s an insane protective mechanism, with a power out of this world. When we begin to sink our teeth into this, it takes a good dose of courage, and then a capable mentor, teacher or guru who is willing to work on these things is a must. Because these patterns are so insanely strong that it’s impossible to handle them on your own, since we’re subjective about ourselves. The ego’s protective mechanism is so incredibly cunning that the ego will get experts to manipulate you into believing what the ego wants you to believe. So if you say: “No, I’ll fix this myself, alone”, then you’ll be the first human being in history to have managed it. You can of course play the lottery and believe you’re different from everyone else. There are surely people who have managed it alone, for example gurus who have lived for 50 years in a cave in India and meditated their way out of it. But I’m talking about ordinary people living in the West. And if anyone reacted to my using the word impossible: there are always exceptions to everything. But that’s my way of generalising a little, of simplifying the language.

And as I also tell my students: you’re not here to take my word for it. You’re here to explore. By exploring and experiencing, you see what reality is. Because I couldn’t just say: “Yes, but that’s just how it is, now pull yourself together, stop this nonsense.” You have to do it in a different way. You have to say: “OK, this is my experience through all these years, and with a certain number of students and clients who have been through it.” Then I share a few experiences, and then I say: “That’s how I see it, Amina. If you’re open to exploring this direction, to exploring that it’s something created inside you and not outside you, then we can explore it together.” That’s the gateway: an exploratory approach. And through exploration and experience, if you’re brave enough, mind you, you arrive at your own experiences, as you do. And they’re revolutionary. Instead of someone telling you that this is how it is, and this is how you should think and feel, the whole primordial shamanic process of development is about information and knowledge bringing you into an experience. And that’s where the answer itself lies.

Amina: Yes, and that’s where you’re quite unique, Pål-Esben. Because there are times when I come and say this and that, and instead of you saying “No, but that’s not how it is”, you say: “Well, how do you know it’s like that?” Or: “How do you know it was those mechanisms that were at work?” And then you start reflecting yourself, and, at least in my experience, you also become open to other input: “Yes, how do I actually know it’s like that?” You start asking yourself more real and critical questions: “Is that really true?” And the moment you ask that question, the process of opening up to more consciousness begins. So it takes an honest willingness to explore, otherwise you don’t stand a chance.

Deletion: the Teflon pan in your head

Pål-Esben: Then, still in phase 2, it’s important to look at other mechanisms in the unconscious that most people have never heard of either. There are three basic filtering mechanisms in our subconscious that run on autopilot. It was actually Milton Erickson, a brilliant psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, who came up with this back in the day, and then it was taken further by Bandler and Grinder, who designed something called NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. But most of it comes from Erickson. The first mechanism is called deletion: we filter out and ignore large parts of the information we receive, and only notice what already fits our own view of the world. It’s like the Teflon pan: whatever doesn’t fit our view of the world either runs off like water off a duck’s back, or goes in one ear and out the other. Have you heard of it?

Amina: I haven’t, no, but I certainly recognise it.

Pål-Esben: And it isn’t that people want to be like that; it’s part of our psychological structure, of the brain’s survival mechanism, that is, genetic. Because our brain has two main systems: protection against danger, and saving as much energy as possible at all times. That’s one of the reasons why all these autopilots are created. Sometimes autopilot is good, for example when we learn to walk: then we no longer need to think about walking. A very handy autopilot. But we have others that are more complex in the society we live in, and those are the ones we’re talking about now. Deletion runs on autopilot in most people: whatever doesn’t fit the view of the world, the opinion, the belief, the system, is either ignored or run down.

Amina: OK, I have a question. In the past, when I had symptoms of problems in my body, of illness, I’d google them to find out what it was. And I filtered out everything that told me it was fine. The only things I cared about were “probably dying within the week” or “major, serious internal organ failure”, everything fatal and destructive. Because I was so set on the idea that there had to be something terribly wrong with me, whereas if I’d opened my eyes a little, I could have seen that maybe I’d just eaten some bad food. Is that the kind of example you mean?

Distortion: the map that doesn’t match

Pål-Esben: That’s one example of it, plus a couple of other biases we’ll talk about later. The second of the three big filtering mechanisms is distortion: we interpret and distort incoming information so that it fits our existing opinions, assumptions and expectations. This is where it comes in that every human being has a subjective map of reality, programmed in through experience and imprinting, consciously and unconsciously. It steers most of how you find your way in reality. You believe the landscape looks like this and that because your map says so, but the problem comes when the map doesn’t match reality.

A simple example: part of your internal map, if you have type 2 diabetes, is that nutrition doesn’t matter. That’s a big problem, since nutrition will usually solve the problem of type 2 diabetes in a great many cases: losing weight, changing your diet. At least that’s my experience with many, many people over the years. But as long as your internal map says that nutrition has nothing to do with your type 2 diabetes, you have a problem. Another example, since we’re talking about the gut: you struggle with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, have stomach pains or allergies, which very often arise from problems with the gut lining. But in your internal map it doesn’t matter what you eat, whether it’s frozen pizza and the like. And then someone says: “Perhaps you should try cutting out gluten and wheat flour for a month, and see how that works.” “No, that’s just nonsense, my GP says so too.” Our map very rarely matches reality. And if we take this into the esoteric world, we have thousands of examples. We can take one. In shamanism you find a bit of madness, and a well-known shaman once said something about what happens when you’ve had sex with a partner. Perhaps you can tell the story, since you were the one who told it to me.

Amina: Yes. Then you have to go through a cleansing process, and it may not even work. Because if you have sex with a person, that person’s energies are going to be inside your body for nine months. Not only that, but also the energies of everyone that person has had sex with, in turn. So no wonder you might feel a bit off.

Pål-Esben: What a good business for someone who’s a sex shaman, who has then driven out this evil spirit, through physical work, of course. Because it doesn’t work with energy work alone here; it goes into the physical. Joking aside: as long as your own subjective map, which is also part of your belief system, believes it really is like that, we have a serious problem, and then it has nothing to do with reality. And then you can experience it as reality, and it becomes a bit psychosomatic.

Amina: I certainly felt it: “Good grief”, I felt off for many weeks, with all those energies I had inside me. Until I began to realise: “Whoa, maybe it isn’t like that after all.” And then it disappeared, because I began to open up my view of the world around it, and get a different kind of input.

Pål-Esben: Yes. You have the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, psychosomatic reactions. Our brain is extremely good at healing the body, but also at creating illness directly from what you think and feel. Many studies have been done on this. So that’s distortion of reality: we create this map, consciously and unconsciously, with imprints as well. And the more our internal, subjective map is a mismatch with the terrain of reality, the more complex it is for us to find our way, and we experience a lot of suffering and many problems that wouldn’t otherwise be there. It’s an autopilot under the surface, in the unconscious, in most people who haven’t learned about this. Because when you start learning about it, you’re also taught how to identify the patterns, so that you can stop them, one by one. But it has to be learned!

Generalisation: awakened from what?

Pål-Esben: And the last of Milton Erickson’s filtering mechanisms is generalisation. We draw broad conclusions based on a few experiences, and often turn them into universal rules about how the world works. We’ve read a book, or ten books, about some spiritual thing or other, and then we say that’s just how it is. We take a little information, generalise it, and make facts out of it. An example: if a human being has a bad experience with a man, a generalisation would be that all men are a problem. But having a bad experience with one man doesn’t mean that all men on this planet are like that. And unfortunately there’s a lot of misunderstanding out there, among both men and women: they have a bad experience, and then they spread it and generalise it and create problems for themselves. It’s one of the autopilots that help the brain save energy.

Another example: “Oh, is he awakened? Is he awakened?” Well, awakened from what? We often hear that in the esoteric world. Then we have to ask: “What is it you’re waking up from?” It may be that you’re waking up from the belief that angels exist. That can be a form of awakening. Or you’ve had a spiritual experience, for example done your first spontaneous healing without touching the client, as our students learn in the first seminars; that can be an awakening thing in itself. And then you think: “Aha, what kind of awakening is it? I’ve woken up, now I’ve seen reality, I’ve seen the truth.” Well, you’ve seen a small part of the truth. Real spiritual awakening, which we’ve talked about in the last three episodes, is something completely different. So out there in the esoteric world you come across a great deal of generalisation on the topics of enlightenment and awakening. Is that how it is?

Amina: Yes, that’s absolutely how it is. And I’ve been a bit unsure how to use these words to make myself understood. A great many people say they’re in a spiritual awakening, and think it’s about having begun to sense that there’s more between heaven and earth. I think I talked a bit about that in the last episode too, and I can sometimes find it a bit difficult to be in settings where we have these discussions. Not that it gets to me, it used to, but because then all the patterns you’re talking about now come in. The way people in the esoteric, alternative community defend their stuff tooth and nail is by wrapping it up in very fine, spiritual words: “Well, that’s your truth, and this is my truth, and my intuition tells me this.” Instead of using the kind of accusing or nasty words the man in the street might use in a heated discussion, the discussion turns into: “Yes, but this and that and the other.” You wrap it up in something, and then you can actually sense that there’s a lot of irritation underneath, but you don’t let the irritation come out, because then you’re bad at being spiritual, then you’re not in your pink cloud. So I notice it very quickly, and over the last few years I’ve tried to find my place in this as well.

And especially, as you say, with many of the people I talk to in my free time, the ones who ask about my path, or ask: “What did you do at the big ritual when you were away at the mountain hotel in August?” That can be very difficult, because I have an experience of it, and so I begin to tell them: “It’s a bit hard to explain, but OK, I’ll give it a try.” “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I experienced last week!” And then I just felt my shoulders drop, and I thought: “You know what, it’s completely fine for you to think we’re talking about the same thing. It actually doesn’t matter.” So I’ve made my peace with that. I’ve also noticed everything I identify with within shamanism: on this journey I’ve experienced being stripped of my identity, where I’m none of all the things I believe I am, and then I come back into that identity again, and then I have to navigate through this by being Amina, with all these thoughts, ideas, belief systems and qualities. That’s where I am now, where I’m really trying to get the best of both worlds. Because I’m not supposed to become identity-less, I’m not supposed to become ego-less, but sort of, yes.

Identity: the schizophrenic in-between

Pål-Esben: Where you are today in your process of development, it feels a bit schizophrenic, doesn’t it?

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Because you’re beginning to have a stronger and stronger experience of being without identity: when you’re in contact with the deepest level, with the subtle gravitational forces, and eventually inside the Sahara, oneness, you’re completely without identity. And then you come back to this world, to your body, where you immediately see your false, imprinted identity. That can feel like slightly schizophrenic stuff, but it’s just part of the maturing process and the getting used to it that has to happen. What we’re working on is bringing this false, imprinted identity closer to our real identity, which the soul brings with it into its prism, into the dream, when it starts the process of your life. And if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, with the prism and these things: in earlier episodes we’ve talked about the soul’s journey, about karmic and dharmic synchronicity, and about the soul’s elite university, and that’s where this is described in detail.

The art, where you stand today, is to get sharper and sharper at identifying the false, imprinted identity the ego has set up, so that you slide more and more over into the real identity, the real foundation. There’s a special word for this, which I always forget; forgetting these words is one of my things: the soul’s constitution, that’s the right word, the basic disposition every human being brings with them from the soul, with a certain memory, certain talents, dispositions and qualities. It assumes that we have all the resources we need to go through our learning themes, including a part of our karma, as part of the memory. When, for example, you go through a ritual where you come actively into the timeless and spaceless, and then return to everyday life, it’s important to identify: “What part of what I’m experiencing comes from my false identity, and what would my real identity say, be and express in this?” We laid the foundation from the start, with what we call the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which are a hundred percent connected to our real identity.

Amina: Yes.

From 80 to 97 percent

Pål-Esben: So we have the mechanisms for finding our way, we have the GPS. But it isn’t exactly easy to walk through terrain, even with a precise GPS. There can be big rocks and steep slopes you have to climb down. That’s the work I’m helping you with now: stabilising this, so that in time you can stand with one foot permanently in oneness and one foot permanently in the grain of sand, which I like to call full liberation. Nobody says this is easy; it’s one of the hardest learning tasks a human being can take on. So there’s no reason not to have full respect for yourself, even if you’re not perfect.

Amina: Yes, and thank goodness for that, because perfection doesn’t even exist.

Pål-Esben: Exactly. Over time we’ve understood that 80 percent will be good enough. Well, where you’re at today, we’re talking about 97 percent being good enough, but that has to do with the last phase of this process of development, which asks something more of a human being.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Before, it was sort of enough to be nice to your partner five days a week and grumpy for two. That isn’t enough any more.

Amina: No, it really isn’t, and it’s also a very, very exciting and interesting phase of this journey, it really is.

Pål-Esben: I call it going from 80 percent to 97 percent. We’ll never get to 100 percent, because as human beings we’re imperfect by nature. We’re fallible by nature. Unless you’re the exception, of course; that could happen.

Amina: Unless you’re the exception, of course.

Psychological biases

Pål-Esben: So, OK, we’ll carry on with phase 2, with the sacred cows. You can already see that none of this happens by itself for a human being who doesn’t engage wholeheartedly: first in understanding the mechanisms, then in identifying them in yourself, and then asking yourself the question: “Do I want these mechanisms to steer me, when it comes to my relationship, my health, whatever it may be?” That’s when the process of change begins. But forget doing this without an objective mentor, therapist, guru or teacher. It’s as close to impossible as it gets, since we’re so extremely subjective, and we believe the subjective map is reality, since we’ve been trained, decade after decade, to believe in it.

Then we come to a mechanism that’s even a bit more complex: psychological biases. I love psychological biases, because they’re incredibly exciting to engage with. A bias, also called a cognitive bias, is a pattern in our unconscious that makes us drift away from rational thinking about reality, a kind of mental autopilot, shortcut or dead end that affects how we perceive, remember and interpret the information we receive. These are programmed so deeply into the deepest part of the brain that they’re very challenging to become conscious of and do something about. But on the path we’re walking, we have to identify them, because they’re part of the ego that still rules, at a point where I want to make the ego an adviser. The biases are almost always unconscious, and can lead to very mistaken conclusions, even when we think we’re thinking objectively. We fool ourselves too. We’ll take just a couple of these bias autopilots to shed light on this.

Confirmation bias and the alarm bells

Pål-Esben: The first one is called confirmation bias. We actively look for information that confirms what we already believe, and overlook information that doesn’t confirm it, or that says the opposite. We do it all the time, all day long, on autopilot. Just try it: if you watch the news, it’s whatever confirms what you think and care about that gets through, while whatever is different, you ignore or attack. It’s a well-established term in psychology. This is powerful stuff, it really is. When it runs on autopilot, you’re not conscious of it. But when you begin to become conscious of it, you see how you unconsciously look for confirmation of what you agree with, and ignore everything you don’t agree with. You’ve probably had plenty of experience of that too?

Amina: Yes, yes, plenty of experience of that, good heavens. And in hindsight I think: “Whoa, what a circus.” But when I began to notice those things, I also thought: “Good grief, we walk around like robots before we realise these things.”

Pål-Esben: Yes. This fundamental psychological mechanism has been described in psychology over the last 50 to 60 years, but I find it astonishing that not every human being knows about it and was taught it back in primary school. There’s a reason for that: we don’t get that teaching in the society we live in, and have to actively seek this understanding ourselves. What we’re trying to do in our podcast now is to give information about these things, so that you, listening while you drive, might become fascinated and do a few searches on Google, or ask an AI, to start your own quest. First to get proof that this is something real, and not some esoteric waffle we’ve channelled from the rear admirals of the Pleiades. So this is real stuff, how our brain works.

Amina: It’s actually in…

Pål-Esben: Sorry?

Amina: No, I was just going to say that it’s also interesting for anyone walking a spiritual, esoteric path to begin reflecting a little on this. Especially what we’ve gone through in today’s episode, and what we’re going to go through from here on. All these spiritual thoughts I have, or all these esoteric things I have in my filter about how the world fits together, what’s truth, what’s reality, what’s light, what’s darkness, what’s the Pleiades, and what’s earth. All of it: to begin to get a little curious about yourself. How many of these things do I have?

Pål-Esben: Yes, and it’s especially interesting when you read articles you react negatively to. That’s when the alarm bells should ring: “Whoops, do I have a problem with some of my biases, or with my unconscious autopilots here?” An example: someone has taught you to believe that AI is spiritual, and that you can make contact with spirits and the dead through AI, which unfortunately is very common in the esoteric world, and which has nothing to do with reality, something that’s easy to prove. Now, I’ve written an article that proves, purely on the facts, why it can’t be like that. And what do people who believe AI is spiritual think then? Well, they won’t even read the article that goes against what they believe, that is, their bias. Then you have a problem, if you’re not willing to ask yourself the question: “Well, could it be like that?” Or people say there are three aliens out there who control our world, and that the world is a computer programmed and controlled by these three aliens, who use it as a battery to charge their spaceships. Then you think: “Hang on, could it really be like that? Why, and why not?” You start asking yourself questions, and through experience you gradually see that it can’t be like that: if you really have a deep experience of oneness, you understand that there are no aliens sitting there using us as a battery in one of their computers. This is something very different. But it comes through being willing to seek experience, not through having to believe in something else. That was confirmation bias.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

Pål-Esben: And the second is something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Not Freddy Krueger, mind you, but the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Amina: I don’t know what Freddy Krueger is.

Pål-Esben: No. They’re horror films from the time when I was younger. Yes, I watched them back then. That was probably before you came into the world, Amina.

Amina: That may well be. Maybe I fit into this Kruger effect.

Pål-Esben: The Dunning-Kruger effect describes the psychology whereby people with limited knowledge overestimate their own competence.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: It’s also called the idiot bias, because those who don’t really know anything at all believe they know everything. And we find that massively in our society. I gave an example at the start with academics: they have the Dunning-Kruger effect on steroids, because they believe, since they’ve got an academic title, that they understand much more than they actually have a clue about.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: And in the esoteric community we also find this massively. You’ve read a certain number of books, and the more books you’ve read, the more you believe you know, that you understand what reality is.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Then you stand there wanting to pass on all the knowledge that has piled up, which you believe is reality. Of course that’s a big problem. On YouTube you’ll find channels with a hundred thousand, even millions of followers, that are built on these things. And unfortunately it’s very sad for those who take the bait: you’re misinformed, you believe the misinformation is reality, and you lose your bearings completely and can’t understand why the suffering in your life doesn’t go away when you do what you’ve been told to do. For example: “Go up into this pink cloud of love for an hour a day, and life will sort itself out.” That’s an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect and the bias.

Herd mentality, the status quo and the Golden Keys

Pål-Esben: And the second-to-last one I thought I’d say something about: the herd mentality bias, also known as the bandwagon effect. We adapt our opinions to what the majority thinks.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Without critical reflection.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: You’ve probably felt what that’s like too.

Amina: Oh yes, yes, lots. I’ve done it myself too. Yes, many times.

Pål-Esben: Everyone has. This is our autopilot. And the last one I thought I’d mention, though there are many, many biases, is the so-called status quo bias. We prefer our current state and resist all change, even when the changes would be very helpful for us. It’s very much connected to the genetic and physiological programming in our brain, and it makes it very challenging for human beings to make changes. So we can see we have a bit of work to do here: when we’re going to free ourselves in a real spiritual process of development, it’s absolutely necessary that we learn these things, identify them, and get help to work through them. This is one of the main reasons I wrote this book, The 7 Golden Keys: The Path to a Happy and Healthy Life. All of this is described there, among other things. You can read it in two evenings, and it gives enough in-depth information for phase 1 and phase 2 for you to get going and start working with it.

Amina: Yes, and I really recommend doing that. Not just reading it in two evenings and then everything’s fine, but really working with it. Because I see it with my students and the people I know who have really taken this book and studied it, used it as a course of study: not just reading it through, putting it on the bookshelf and letting it gather dust, but asking: “How can I work with perhaps one Golden Key a week?” And there’s always something new to learn when you go back; you have a few experiences, perhaps go back to the chapter, read something you didn’t pick up before. So it really is a holy book in today’s society, I think, those are my words at least. I feel it has helped a great many people, because it’s very practical: it describes what we’re talking about now in an easy-to-read way, and gives you all the methods and what you need to start working with it.

Pål-Esben: Then it’s natural, when you start working a bit on your own with phase 2 in particular and the sacred cows, that you come to a point where you get stuck, and then you look for a mentor of your own and get help to go through that phase as well. So just as a tip, if you’re a bit frustrated: “What do I do, what do I do? Should I start reading lots of books on psychology now?” No, it’s enough to start with that book, and then you’ll have a good overview. Then you can expand with psychology books, with ChatGPT, or whatever it is you do to get more information. But methods and techniques are the most important thing, and before we can use them, and find the motivation for it, we have to understand the map, the structure and the mechanisms. Then we can sink our teeth into it. We need to be conscious of it. And there we are at the first Golden Key.

Phase 3: when the ego becomes spiritual

Pål-Esben: So the last phase, which is where you are now, dear Amina, is called phase 3. The ego’s last stand: when the ego becomes spiritual, without our quite understanding that it’s what’s steering us. Many people believe the ego disappears by itself when we go through a spiritual process of growth, but the ego is a bit stubborn. It has a fantastic ability to disguise itself, and the problem is when it disguises itself as spiritual. Then the ego stops saying: “I want success.” Instead it starts saying: “I want freedom, I want liberation.” Instead of seeking success, power and a career, the ego says: “I want to seek silence.” And instead of seeking the knowledge normal people seek, you start seeking deep spiritual understanding. This can fool anyone, because you think: “Is there anything wrong with seeking freedom, liberation, oneness, silence, with becoming one with everything?” No, of course not. But if it’s the ego seeking this in you, then, Houston, we have a problem.

So the ego starts pretending that it’s the one seeking freedom. You think it’s you seeking, but in reality the ego is the first to start seeking freedom. The vast majority have to go through this on the path to oneness, and the vast majority get completely fooled by it. It’s the ego’s last and most cunning trick, which you’re experiencing here. Now the ego doesn’t feel like a problem: “I’m seeking meditation and a deep inner peace, being one with nature, oneness, and that’s my thing.” Well, you think the ego is in its place as an adviser. The problem comes if it’s the ego that has this voice, and that’s what makes this catch incredibly difficult to identify. You as a seeker, dear Amina, start to think: “Oh, I’m making progress.” But the one who’s really saying it is your ego. Because the only part of you that’s interested in progress, or in measuring progress, is the ego. Others say: “Now I’m closer to oneness than most other people.” A hundred percent ego. Or: “I’ve understood something, now I’ve really understood it.” That’s the voice of the ego too. Because how are you supposed to know whether it’s the ego, or whether it’s the core in you? Very confusing, isn’t it? The ego fights tooth and nail not to let go, because then it loses its power. But how do we notice whether it’s the ego driving you into the silence in the meditation process, as opposed to the core in you? Well, we notice it, for example, when we’re out hunting for results.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: You notice it a lot at the start. When my students begin these processes, everyone has to go through this thing, and at the start it’s natural to let the students be driven by whatever they need to be driven by, to get started and practise silence in the meditation process. We’re going to have an episode of its own in our podcast, perhaps the next episode, where we go through the basic exercises every seeker needs to master on the way into oneness, for example the meditation process. Then it’ll get a bit practical. But when a seeker is driven by getting a particular result from what they do, it’s always the ego. You often notice this stress in students in this phase: you do a meditation process for 30 minutes every day, and you meditate, and meditate, and meditate, and then nothing happens, and then you get frustrated that you’re not getting a particular result. But then you’ve given yourself away: it’s the ego steering the way into the meditation process, because the ego wants a result, the ego wants there to be progress, the ego wants us to move towards freedom. Do you see how tricky this is?

Amina: Yes, now I just went: “Good grief, where do I actually stand, then?” But I recognise what you’re saying, definitely, and I’ve caught myself at it. Yes, yes.

Longing without an agenda

Pål-Esben: And that’s the thing. How do we see that it isn’t the ego driving the meditation process? Well, it’s when the human being has a natural longing for silence, completely without an agenda, where you do it simply because you long for it, not in order to experience something. That’s another of the ego’s things: it’s frustrated that it doesn’t get to experience something. It would love to have an experience of oneness, because it wants to experience something spectacular. But the day you let go of this part of the ego, you find that you walk the path into the silence because you have a longing, not because you have to. And you know exactly what it feels like when you’re driven by longing without an agenda, without any interest in measuring what you do, as opposed to when you’re driven by an agenda, have a goal, or are frustrated that it isn’t going fast enough.

Amina: Yes, that has been one of the biggest challenges, well, there have been many challenges on this path, but: “OK, we do what we do in the meditation process, we set things up like this and that, but we’re not supposed to have any expectations.” I’ve struggled a lot with that one, and slowly but surely I’ve understood more and more. Right at the beginning I thought it was the longing that was driving me. Of course it’s the longing that drives me out into nature and into the meditation process, and I sincerely believed that, I really did. And over time I’ve experienced more and more what that longing really is. It isn’t the same kind of longing as what I used to think was longing. Because it’s a kind of longing I can surrender to completely.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And then you have a longing that’s part of this clever ego wired into your DNA. So you need to identify the difference between your longing and the real longing we’re talking about. We’re talking about what’s really the trickiest thing, the last part of this process of development, because by then you’ve gone through phase 1 and phase 2 and have a reasonable overview. But this is where it gets really tricky, and here you absolutely need a guide of your own, a mentor or someone who knows what they’re talking about. Because here we’re blind. Here it’s difficult, difficult.

The ego always needs to become something. And that’s the key here: the moment we need to become something, need a result, need some thing or other that can be measured, it’s always the ego steering. So the good question is: is it wrong to want to be free? Of course not, at the start. We have to start somewhere. You start the path to oneness with the intellect, the ego and, hopefully, a deep part of yourself, all three, saying: “This is something we want. We want to set ourselves free. This is exciting.” And then you start with meditation and all the other rituals you learn, to train your muscles, so that this becomes possible. Everyone starts there. And when you’ve been at it for 18 to 24 months, the tricky part we’ve just talked about begins: the last stretch up to a stable experience of oneness.

And what applies here is the same: the closer you come to the truth, the real reality, the more humble you become. At the start it’s: “This is how it has to be.” Then you become more and more humble and respectful towards this gigantic whole you’re part of. And the more humble a human being is, the smaller the part the ego plays. Because humility is the opposite of “I want it like this, and I demand a result there, and blah, blah, blah.” Humility at simply being allowed to be in this world, at simply being allowed to walk out into a fresh green forest: what a gift. If you have a high enough degree of humility in you, you don’t go out into the forest to get a result, not so that you sit down to do utiseta for half an hour and bring a result back with you. No, that’s no longer necessary. The yogic tradition would say that the path to oneness is impossible without humility, and here’s the explanation of why. It’s something we place great emphasis on in our process: understanding what humility is. And through humility you also understand more of what gratitude is, and why it’s so important. The more gratitude, the more humility, the less ego.

Who is it that’s meditating?

Pål-Esben: What’s wise in this last, tricky ego phase, in phase 3, is to begin asking yourself questions. Who is it in me that claims to be spiritual? Is it my real self, my real identity? Or is it a false, imprinted identity, that is, my ego? It’s a form of honest self-examination you embark on, combined with discussing it with your guide. Questions you typically ask yourself, where you are now: Who is it that’s meditating? Is it really me, or is it my ego that’s meditating? Who is it that’s seeking enlightenment? Who is it that feels success? Who is it that feels progress? Who is it that feels they’re stuck, or blocking themselves, or have resistance? Who is it that feels they’re advanced and getting far? So you’re grinning now?

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: In our tradition at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, we encourage gallows humour and laughing at the madness, instead of getting frustrated by it. It’s not that you’re stupid, Amina, it’s just that this is a tricky thing that flies under the radar to such a degree. And it’s something we need to wake up from. Remember that, in the end, you’ll notice that everything to do with the ego is only thoughts, feelings, opinions and memories floating around, like gulls behind a fishing boat at sea. It has nothing to do with a real entity, nothing to do with what the soul is, nothing to do with what you really are. The only thing that’s real is your core, which is your soul. That’s what we begin to understand when we begin to ask the questions. The real longing comes from the deep pull within ourselves, from the deep voice within ourselves, which is closely connected to our higher self and our soul. And that’s the art, where you stand today: actively tuning in and actively questioning this thing. That is: who is it that’s meditating right now? Very exciting.

Amina: I think this is incredibly exciting. I find it challenging, but fascinating.

Free: the ego with nowhere to hide

Pål-Esben: When we talk about the ego here, just to sum up right at the end: the ego is a complex structure. The way I see the ego: if you picture a triangle in front of you now, you have the intellect at the top of the triangle, at the bottom left you have identity, that is, your false identity, and at the bottom right you have the karmic memory. In the middle is the ego, which is a result of these three. When, in our tradition, we go in and break this down, the way we do in the senior shaman training, the students and seekers get their bearings and learn how the mechanisms work, so that we can break this up radically fast, and by radically fast I mean compared with an ordinary process of development. Because you get to know all the mechanisms, and the tools needed to break these chains. And when you understand this and really begin to get a grip on it, it’s incredibly joyful, isn’t it?

Amina: Yes, yes, it is. Really. I can vouch for that.

Pål-Esben: Then you come to a point where the ego has nowhere to hide. And then you’ve done it. Then you’ve brought light into the ego’s last stand, and there and then the ego stands as the soul’s adviser, and has completely lost its position as ruler. In that moment you’re free. Truly free. It’s almost poetic, isn’t it?

Amina: It is poetic. Beautiful. Lovely.

Pål-Esben: So there you can think a little about where you stand now, in your process, and begin to ask yourself these questions. Very, very fascinating stuff.

Amina: That’ll make for an interesting next guidance session, I can tell.

Pål-Esben: So, dear listener, you’ve now been part of a conversation that’s really tailored to where Amina stands in her process of development today. You got to see how it works at that level, and I hope this has been interesting for you. I certainly think so. And I’d like to give a tip at the end: all the suffering a human being has in their life is based on what we’ve talked about today, created through these mechanisms, on autopilot in most cases. The day you get a grip on these things, very little suffering can remain. And as soon as we see that this is how it is, we can begin to switch off one autopilot at a time, get more power over this, so that we can begin to design and create the life we want to live. And once again become those joyful children we once were, when we were very small, when we could sit out in the forest throwing leaves in the air and just be joyful and happy, without there needing to be any point to it. Do you have any tips to finish with here?

Amina: Yes, do I have any tips to finish with? Yes, perhaps pay a little attention to which spiritual clothes your ego is wearing over the coming days and weeks. With a bit of curiosity and joy about the whole thing.

Pål-Esben: Yes, do be joyful, and have gallows humour about the madness instead of getting frustrated.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: And think about this too: 99.99999 percent of all the people out there have no idea about these fundamental mechanisms. So by taking responsibility for them, you’ll be able to become one of the human beings in this world who can actually, actively design real freedom for themselves. And that, I think, must be motivation enough to sink your teeth into this slightly complicated topic, and not be afraid to seek help: to find a good therapist who knows about these things, a good mentor or guide who is really skilled in them, and work together with someone. Then it’s much more fun, isn’t it?

Amina: Good.

Pål-Esben: Yes. That’s it, Amina.

Amina: Yes, we got through it today as well. Lovely.

Pål-Esben: Yes, and this has been one of our longest episodes, but I thought it was good that we finished this slightly difficult topic in one episode, and then we’ll talk about something a bit more pleasant next time.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Then we might go into practical things that every seeker on the way to oneness needs to learn, and then we’re talking about methods and techniques it’s necessary to learn, and we’ll give a few ideas about how you can start the process in practice yourself, right at the start.

Amina: That’ll be exciting. I’m looking forward to it. I think.

Pål-Esben: Yes. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.