Resigning from your egoic duties

“As a serious spiritual student, one has to resign from the self-appointed duties of being the one to judge, correct, control, direct, change the world, and express opinions about everything. As a serious spiritual student, one is no longer obligated to continue these chores and instead they are turned over to Divine justice.”
-David Hawkins, The Eye of the I

On the spiritual path, we’re challenged to resign from our egoic duties… which means, basically, identifying and surrendering our ego attachments.

These attachments can include:

• wanting to always be right (or prove that we’re right)
• seeking constant approval or validation from others
• overanalyzing everything
• using other people’s success or happiness to feel bad about ourselves (i.e., “compare & despair” – ego loves comparison & competition)
• pitying ourselves (i.e., victimhood)
• trying to control the outcome of things
• trying to control others’ perceptions of us
• micro-managing other people’s lives, choices, behaviors, etc
• trying to fix or rescue others (or the whole planet!)

Spiritual teacher David Hawkins refers to these attachments as “egoic duties” and “chores” because, indeed, they are burdensome to carry…

… and we often find ourselves doing these “chores” without conscious awareness, in an automatic or conditioned way.

This is because, on planet Earth, we HAVE been conditioned to behave in these ways and to operate primarily from ego.

So, we don’t do any of this on purpose.

That being said…

… it’s still our responsibility, as “serious spiritual students”, to uncover the places in ourselves where we’ve been conditioned to behave egoically and to begin shifting this.

The good news: resigning from your egoic duties is like quitting the most draining, Soul-killing, conflict-filled, annoying, meaningless job in the world!!

It opens you up to greater authenticity, freedom, joy, and – above all – inner peace and equanimity.

A recent episode of my podcast explores this topic in greater depth, and you can listen to that here:

INNER REVOLUTION – You can resign from your egoic duties

(My podcast, Inner Work: A Spiritual Growth Podcast is also available on most podcast apps and YouTube if you prefer to listen that way.)

Thank you for tuning in, and please let me know below how this episode lands!

With love,
Josephine