If the many thoughts that run through our mind can’t be trusted, what can? When we stop listening to the egoic mind, it becomes clearer that something else is moving life forward, something other than our thoughts, desires, and feelings—life is happening! The ego does its part in shaping life by producing thoughts, desires, and feelings, but much more is going on in life than that. While we’ve been listening to the egoic mind, life has been happening: suddenly the phone rings, suddenly we speak, suddenly we jump up to do something, suddenly someone speaks to us, suddenly information comes to us, suddenly an opportunity shows up, suddenly a person shows up, suddenly love shows up, suddenly motivation to do something shows up, suddenly an “Aha” happens, suddenly we do something for someone.

When we aren’t involved in our egoic mind, it’s much easier to notice and appreciate how life is already happening. When we are involved in our thoughts, many of them are about what we think we need to do or should do and when. Our mind creates and implements strategies for how to make things happen in life the way we want them to happen. The ego sees itself as the main force in life, as if nothing will happen if the ego itself doesn’t make it happen. Meanwhile, life is happening and bringing us the experiences, lessons, resources, information, opportunities, insights, and wisdom we need to unfold our plan.

The ego focuses on what it wants that it doesn’t have and on what’s missing. It sees the glass as half empty. The ego was programmed to be this way, and it serves some purpose for survival. But the ego misses the truth: Life provides. Life doesn’t provide everything the ego wants, but it provides what we need to fulfill our higher plan. Life is not about getting what the ego wants, although the ego would like it to be, but about learning, growing, and returning Home to love. For what life was designed to do, it is very dependable and trustworthy.

It’s a good thing we can’t trust life to give all of our egos what they want. What kind of a world would that be! Everyone would be rich, beautiful, young, and powerful and have everything they wanted. Perhaps the Creator made a world like that somewhere, but this isn’t it! So we have to accept that. And, truly, that wouldn’t be an ideal world, would it?

Coming through vision, coming through wisdom,
Coming together—this love!
Giving me daytime, giving this nighttime,
Bringing within me this love!

From the song “Change We Must”
from Change We Must by Jon Anderson

Fear drives the ego, but love drives life. Love drives all that matters in life. Love is the motivating force in life that creates, sustains, enhances, and gives meaning to life. There is nothing else here but love because Life is love. We are love.

This Love is hidden only by a sense of being someone who is afraid of life. Our identity as a separate individual is of someone who feels lacking, insignificant, lost, confused, afraid, struggling, and in conflict with life. So it’s no wonder the ego wants and feels it needs so much to be okay and happy. But this is a false identity and false needs—we need nothing but what we already have to be happy.

We are not the individual we think we are. We are life. It is living through us. And when the ego is put aside, Life lives through us more cleanly and purely, and with ease, gratitude, fortitude, joy, and love. When the ego is no longer dominant, it becomes obvious that all that’s here is Essence being and relishing in being.

Life is trustworthy because love is behind life. Love is what is unfolding life and making life happen. Love is the motivating force in all we do: Love for our life, our body, and food motivates us to grow, shop for, prepare, and eat what we need to sustain us. Love for self-expression, expansion, discovery, and self-development motivates us to speak, learn, create, expand our capabilities, and develop our talents. Love for others motivates us to procreate, relate, give, care for, nurture, and support others and society. Love for pleasure and fun motivates us to play, rest, sing, dance, and enjoy life. Love for security and safety motivates us to be careful and take care of ourselves. Love for being productive motivates us to work and develop our skills. Love for knowledge motivates us to learn, read, and share what we’ve learned.

Love allows us to identify with the ego, and love is even what motivates the ego: Love for security, safety, self-preservation, superiority, power, comfort, and prestige motivate the ego to pursue what it pursues, such as money, beauty, and a good job.

The ego and Essence are motivated to do many of the same things: Both motivate us to take care of ourselves, work, play, pursue relationships, and in other ways create a life. However, the ego and Essence do these things for different reasons. While Essence does them for the love of life, the love of being alive, and the drive to perpetuate life, the ego does them out of feelings of lack and fear in order to gain superiority and control. Because the ego acts from fear, it often causes harm, but even love is behind that, albeit a distorted version of it: love for what the ego is trying to get by harming someone or love for its own self-preservation.

Because the ego sees itself as separate from everything, it is driven by fear and sees others and the world as something to conquer or subdue. This is obvious in how people have related to the environment. While native peoples have generally viewed themselves as part of a Whole and as belonging to and caretakers of nature, our ego-driven societies have related to the environment and other peoples as something to control and use for our own needs, without considering the impact of our actions on the Whole. These are two very different ways of being, which come from very different states of consciousness and result in very different worlds. If we don’t begin to relate to the world more from Essence instead of the ego, there may not be much of a world left. Raising our consciousness is not just for ourselves, but for everyone and for the earth—for the Whole.

Many think that if they don’t live as the ego would have them live, they’ll end up doing nothing. They think that spiritual teachings that emphasize meditation, acceptance, and being in the moment lead to being passive and avoiding the world and practical matters. Many assume they won’t get anything done or be able to pay their bills if they live as these teachings suggest. But that’s a misunderstanding. These teachings emphasize what they do because doing these things drops us into Essence, where we can then discover how Essence is moving us to act now in the world and what wisdom and insights it might have for us that can inform our life and actions. How do we know what to do and how to live our life? Instead of getting the answers from the egoic mind, we can find out by paying attention to what’s coming out of the Now.

Life happens, and it happens through us. We can be moved by the ego and its fear, or we can let life happen through us as it’s meant to by letting Essence move us. Essence is motivated by love, not by fear, and the results of Essence moving through us are peace, harmony, unity, and love. The only thing that can interfere with wiser and more loving action in this world is following the ego’s fear and letting the ego dominate our lives. When we’re no longer listening to the egoic mind, Life has a chance to flow through us as it’s meant to and as it naturally does, even to some extent when we are ego identified.

Everyone knows what it’s like to live from Essence: Life is happening, and you are flowing with it. Sometimes you are the actor, and sometimes you are responding to whatever’s happening. When we’re living from Essence, we move naturally and spontaneously through life, accomplishing what we need to accomplish and enjoying life every step of the way. When we’re in Essence, our actions are more functional and effective than when we’re ego identified because they are what’s called for in the moment—no more no less—and because our experience of life isn’t cluttered by unnecessary thoughts or troubled by unnecessary feelings, which drain our energy. Life is much simpler and happier when we’re in touch with who we really are than when we’re believing we are alone and separate and that life is a struggle. The ego makes life a struggle, but life doesn’t have to be that way.

From Trusting Life: Overcoming the Fear and Beliefs That Block Peace and Happiness by Gina Lake

Everything ends as quickly and suddenly as it begins. All of a sudden, you hear a bird, and just as suddenly that ends—it's over. If you notice, this isn't only true of birds singing, but of most things: Something shows up, and just as suddenly it disappears. Life is coming and going quickly, cleanly, and sometimes without our even noticing it. Life happens, and it happens by suddenly showing up and just as suddenly disappearing.

Of course, some things that show up have a longer lifespan, but even those are in constant flux during their lifespan and eventually disappear. Experiences that last awhile never remain the same while they last: If you are watching the clouds, they are constantly shifting, and then they are gone. If you are watching a ballgame, every second is different, and then it's over. If you are eating a meal, every bite is different, and then it's gone. If you are in a relationship, every moment, day, week, and year is different. Nothing stays the same. Whether it comes and goes quickly or more slowly, nothing remains the same.

The mind doesn't like it when that fun, exciting, or pleasurable moment is over. It also doesn't like the deterioration of the body as it ages, which is a more long-term phenomenon. The body is a good example of something arising and beginning a course of constant change and eventual demise. The mind clings to events, experiences, or images that have passed away, or tries to, but it can never win that game. What's over is over and can't be regained. The mind tries to retain experiences and things through memory, but memory is a poor retaining device. Like a sieve, most of the experience is lost and what remains is a poor substitute for life.