You Are the Hero You Are Looking For!
by Dr. Jeff Alexander

Contemplate those who have been called heroes and how they inspired our world to create great change. There is a quote by Randal Wallace in the opening scene of the movie, Braveheart, “History is written by those who have hanged heroes.” Many heroes will live forever in our hearts as a direct result of the actions of those who intended to erase their existence. It appears that the dark side sets the stage for the light to enter. Distortions and inaccuracies can occur, but one thing I know for sure…those who laid down their lives had one thing in common – they took a leap of faith.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the willingness to feel your fear, embrace it and take the next step. Your courage comes from your ability to love. You cannot love that which that does not exist within you. Your ability to love comes from your heart. We love our heroes and are inspired by their actions. We want to be like them. In fact, most of them taught us that it was possible to live their teachings. You can honor them by becoming what they taught. To live the message they died for is to demonstrate divine gratitude.

How does one know what road to follow? Consider this important point. If you hear the call, then you are the call. You cannot be conscious of something that you are not capable of living and sharing. You were created to give. You were created to love and be loved. Yet, we have been taught by an ego-dominated world to fear others. The fear of failure drives one to accumulate material goods under the assumption it will bring completion and happiness. This is the process that ego brings to us. Fear has been the greatest enslaver of mankind.

With this being said, then know that you are your greatest hero! Yes, in spite of all your shortcomings and all those daily petty thoughts, you are the hero you have been looking for. Who else would have the infinite patience to put up with all the years of pain and suffering you have inflicted on yourself? Like it or not, you just may be your own best friend. Although you may have said horrible things to yourself, you can be counted on to hang out day after day, like a faithful old friend. Most friends would have left by now after years of listening to such harsh words from that little voice in the head. But you are still here, and will probably be here tomorrow regardless of what your ego voice says to you.

 Yes, you and only you will stick it out until the end. No matter how many wonderful beings are in your life, you came in with only you and you are going to leave with only you. Every pain you felt, you were there. Every ecstatic experience you had, you were there. Only you have been there for you since birth. Every time you had a problem in your life, you were around at the time. And no matter how often you tried to run away from yourself, you were waiting right there the next morning. Through good times and bad, you have stuck it out with you whether you liked it or not. At the end of this life, when death comes to your door, no matter how many friends are there to see you off, YOU will be the only one who will be at your side as you cross over. You are your best friend.

So when I say to you, that you are your greatest hero, what YOU do I refer to? Now I can hear you say, “What do you mean which you? There is only one me.” There is a good chance that your ego is sitting on your shoulder reading this right along with you. So let’s talk about our old friend the ego for a moment.

The arrogance of the ego is demonstrated by its need to dominate based on past experiences often distorted by its misunderstanding of fear. Egos will tell you that others have egos and that you are special. It will try to convince you that the only way to reach enlightenment is to pick a goal in the distant future and avoid risk at all cost. It will measure your life by the accumulation of material things, knowledge and information. It looks to the outside world for validation and seeks everywhere but within. The ego will tell you that you are a personality with many stories. This collector is really the ego fascination with the material world of survival. The ego says that you are a tiny bottle of salt water floating in the infinite ocean of Spirit. You have a soul that knows it is really part of the whole ocean.  Since birth, your soul’s only burning desire is to merge with the infinite ocean and live this reality.

The ego’s job is to convince you that you are only the small bottle of salt water and will point out by past evidence that you could never be such an unlimited entity. Your soul senses you are that vast ocean and the arrogance of the ego is that it thinks the bottle is all there is. The ego is the cork in the bottle, which separates you from the rest of the ocean. The unfulfilled desire from your soul creates a gap. This separation gap from yourself is felt as suffering. This is why all the money and material goods in the world will never quench the thirst from your soul.  This suffering eventually reaches a maximum contraction point that shatters the glass bottle. Either through extreme perturbation or conscious choice, one eventually experiences their true nature.

Yes we have a voice in our heads. This ego voice sounds exactly like our own voice. It also can impersonate many other voices like your loved ones, families, friends and co-workers. It literally records the experiences in your life and often plays them back to you riddled with fear and judgment.  It is the 24-hour personal CNN of your mind that gives a constant often-distorted update of all events past and future. This voice can only exist in the illusion of time. It can’t talk in present time, because it cannot exist in the now. So the game of the ego is to get you to live most of your life dwelling on either past or future events. Because both of these are nothing but an illusion and can’t exist in the now (which is present time), you are forced to spend all your present moments in a reality that does not exist. This causes a chronic anxiety gap between your soul and your mind.

This constant state of uneasiness felt in the body is interpreted by the ego as discomfort that can only be resolved by looking outside and accumulating more of what you don’t need. The only remedy to easing suffering and finding freedom from anxiety is to enter the present moment. Fear can be the signpost that tells you how to get there. Usually a good clue, is to go where the ego warns you not to.

The pain of contraction that is felt in the body, signals that you are identifying with the movie in your head. In any movie, one often gets lost in the illusion on the screen. You forget you are watching a movie and actually become the movie. The truth is that you are really watching light particles projected from a little room in the back of the theater moving through pictures on a frame of film recorded in the past. The film was directed and produced by your ego. Usually you are in the starring role of this movie accompanied by a cast of those who are in your life.

The problem is that you think it is real and accurate. When you hear the voice in your head, you easily become the movie and forget you are watching it. Know that you are in a movie theater that exists in a dark room that cannot experience the light of the present moment. The only way out is to become aware of your attachment to the movie. By becoming the “watcher” rather than the “watched” you loosen the grip of the ego. The cork in the bottle has separated you from the truth. Your freedom comes from realizing the truth. Then you can see the truth of how vast you really are. In the stillness of this moment you will know that you are truly connected to the vast infinite ocean of the divine. The cork and the bottle are not lost, but dissolve into the ocean.

Out of respect for your ego I want to invite it in on the conversation. Let’s face it; egos like to be in on everything. In fact, if you ever want to strengthen and empower your ego, just attempt to resist its influence on your thoughts. So, with this being said, I would like to invite your ego to jump off your shoulder and literally sit in the front row and read along with these words.

The word confrontation literally means to “join with” that which is in front of you. I have learned that confrontations make us grow. I often use planned confrontations in my programs that stimulate fear so that my students get to experience their courage to move through fear.  Some of you might remember the term I call my confrontations in the program Leap of Faith. I call them Bothas. Bothas often turn up at the most unpredictable times and can be a great wake up call.

 It was once said, “Love your enemies.” So let’s start by surrendering to the fact that we have a teacher called ego that brings to us through the curriculum of fear, separation and suffering. It is futile to fight or resist the ego. It only feeds its power. Years of fighting your ego is a “house divided against itself” and causes “soul fatigue.” It is time to listen with different ears and demonstrate loving our enemy. So, let’s not judge or blame our egos. Let’s invite this great Master Botha into this moment of surrender.

The ego is tired and ready to lay down – forever. It’s time to embrace that which we have resisted. Egos have been given too big a job and can’t handle the immense responsibility of running your life. They just can’t keep up with the evolutionary pace dictated from your soul. They feel the push of Spirit to break out so they drop a great anchor that stops you dead in your tracks. They resort to fear and separation to slow you down. The problem is that once you have tasted spiritual fulfillment your pace quickens. To slow down can be like stepping on the accelerator and the brake at the same time.

You have attended the classroom of suffering, and just can’t remember when you enrolled. You have taken in many distortions about life through the experience of fear.  Most of this learning entered through the back door and became part of the unconscious software. It is time to invite your ego teacher in through the front door of awareness so we can discern and shine conscious light on choice.

First step is to bring to light the “You” that I am now referring to. What I am about to dive into here may be rejected in the ego mind. But that could be a sign that you are about to discover a new perspective, so keep going. A fish must take a leap of faith and jump out of the bowl to become aware of water. Only then will it know another perception and discover the beauty of its world.

The voice in your head is the ego. I have a question. Before answering this, please really contemplate the question.

What is the minimum number it takes for communication to occur? How many do you need to have a conversation? 

If someone is talking, then someone must be listening. It takes at least two. You need a talker and you need a listener. In the reality we live in, there is you, and there is that which is not you. You end and the other begins. This is the polarity of our physical universe. The spirit and the flesh, the yin and yang, the positive and the negative, the content and space that surround it are all aspects of this world. The physical and the non-physical of space, which allows the material to exist. Wow, now let’s not get into quantum physics just yet. I will save this for future articles.

So if you answered that it takes at least two for a conversation, you are right. In any conversation, you need to have one who is speaking and one who is listening. The listener must be silent so the speaker can be heard. We have already identified the “speaker” in our heads as the ego.

 

So now I have another question for you. When you say “I” whenever you refer to yourself, just exactly which “I’ are you referring to? And is the voice in your head answering my question? If the voice is answering the question, then who is doing the listening? The ego will say “I” refers to “me” the personality and the talker. “I am the one. Just listen to me. Think Me! Think Me!”

The ego may miss entirely what I am asking, because the arrogance of the ego likes to think it is both the talker and the listener. Remember, egos like to think that they are the small bottle AND the whole ocean. But even the ego knows it can’t be in two places at the same time. So ego, you will have to admit that it would be crazy to talk to yourself, because you would have to divide yourself in two in order to talk to yourself. And what would be the good of talking to someone who knows what you are going to say? This just is not possible in the world of egomania.

So, who is doing the listening? If this is all happening within you, then who is the forever listener? Who is the forever-silent essence that unconditionally allows the ego to jabber away?

I want you to stop right now and pause for a moment and really contemplate what I am asking you. For all of your life, who has been the silent listener that has allowed the continual voice in the head to be heard? Who has patiently listened and often felt contraction in the body from many of the dialogues? There is only one answer to this question, and you know it before I tell you. It is your Spirit.

 It is the divine that unconditionally allows all to exist.  It is the eternal Spirit that pulled in your first breath and will be there when you push out your last breath. Many would call this God. And yet, this three-letter word can’t touch what this essence is. Words cannot describe the indescribable. I call it Warrior Spirit. It takes a Warrior presence to listen and allow internal suffering. It takes a Warrior force of will to take a Leap of Faith in a fear reality. The eternal silence of the listener has always been present in your life.

We live most of our lives in the illusion of past and future thoughts and rarely enter the power of now. We are rarely ever truly here. Love is experienced only in the present moment, which is egoless and absent of fear. The ego talks to us all day long, and we listen often with contraction in our bodies. This causes a continual anxiety in the body. What is ironic is that we seek freedom from the pain by asking advice from the ego. This is like asking an arsonist to help to put out a fire. The emotional feelings in your body react to the dialogue in your head with either expansion or contraction. Contraction is identified with pain and discomfort. It is felt predominately in the stomach, chest and throat areas.

This is not punishment. It is a clue that you are off track. Most human beings experience a constant state of anxiety when listening to ego voice. This anxiety gap grows and begins to eat away at your aliveness. The first step to freedom is to welcome and surrender to this anxiety and see it as an important step in evolution.

Once you know this, you have a key to unlock your prison. But knowing it is not enough. You must turn the key to free yourself. Our heroes became heroes not by what they knew or preached. It was by what they did. How they lived cut a pathway for humanity to follow. You must act. You must change your ways. You must become your own hero by entering your self-imposed darkness. You must follow your Spirit without hesitation and have the courage to take Leaps of Faith in small and great ways. Once you declare you are going to live by your heart’s direction, the choices that arise in front of you will be obvious. They may not be easy, but they will be clear. They will guide you to freedom if you dare to go.

 Your unconditional loving Spirit has not judged the ego. No more than it would a small child having a temper tantrum. It has allowed it to run its course. It has been eternally patient just listening within you. You cannot lose your Spirit. No more than you could lose your heart or breath. You have just become distracted with the world and have not paid attention or noticed your beating heart and forever breath. Your Spirit has patiently taught you the grace of allowing your own fear and ego to teach you how to love.

How can fear and ego teach you how to love? Through the gift of pain and suffering, you have been motivated to move and trust the unknown path. When the pain is strong enough, you will move. The path is only unknown to the ego. The path of Spirit is known to your soul. It can’t be taught. It can only be lived. And the forever silence of your powerful Spirit has been waiting to resurrect itself. This is what it will take to make it through the times that are coming.

The forever silence of your Spirit is who you truly are. The ocean of Spirit has allowed the little bottle to float for a long time. It is now time to become the ocean. Yes, you are getting bored with the redundant message of fear and contraction. This is part of the curriculum of ego school. Boredom and fatigue are signposts that mean you are drawing close to the end. You are putting on your robe and cap. Graduation from ego pain and suffering is just around the corner.

The day will come when we stand at the dock and wave good-bye forever to that old friend the ego. You will set sail for new adventures. And when you launch yourself on this final leg of the journey, who will accompany you? Your best friend will be there at your side. Your Spirit and forever patient ocean will invite you into what you always knew awaited you. You will be there for you. The you of Spirit will merge with all others and your soul will be at peace.

I have a message to all egos. It is important that you know how loved and appreciated you are.  By loving you we honor a powerful commandment given us two thousand years ago. We lay down our sword and join Spirit as humanity embarks on its greatest adventure. You have attempted to protect us and convince us to seek happiness through the material world. We know how to judge our brothers and sisters. You have given us the wisdom that can only come through the suffering of hateful, violent thoughts. You have played your role well and through the fire of pain and suffering, you have motivated us to take action. And now it is time to lay down your weary head and rest. The forever silence of the divine that has allowed you to preach your sermons of fear now commands you to rest.

 So my dear reader, please know that you are my hero. And now you can now know that your search for a hero is over. Yes, your greatest hero is really you. Get up and go to the bathroom mirror and gaze at the hero of your life. No one could have done your life better than you. Be your own hero and live your life with forgiveness. Don’t be so hard on you. Start by forgiving you. When you do, there is a good chance you will forgive those in your life who have contributed to your soul’s wisdom. Be kind to yourself. Find more things right with you than wrong with you. And watch your world change.

My dear friends, I pray that this has given you another perspective. The Spirit that embraces all life created this article. If this resonated with you and stimulated a place of remembrance, then I am pleased. And if we all come from the same ocean, then you wrote this as well. This means we are one.

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