Encouragement, Motivation, and Faith — from Ego or Heart: Choose!

Following my letter to my Ego last night, I have been thinking about faith today. Without faith, Ego will win; Ego will beat out Heart for the supremacy of operating our soul-mind-body complex, for processing life and initiating actions and reactions.
Why? It’s fairly simple, really. Since the mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation, the mass of people, society in general, operate via Ego — not right, not wrong, just an unhappy fact. Therefore, when anyone chooses Heart and lives accordingly, society will be skeptical. People will be dubious. Standard measures of conformity will serve to show we are nonconformists, and that will cause our own Ego to kick in, fire up the old circuitry, and make us doubt Self.
That made me consider my work coming out of not only my writing last night but also the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Publishers Association. In that meeting, the speaker reinforced that which I have known for some time: 99.something percent of authors never really see any sort of significant income from their books, unless they have written their own mini-library. My Ego clearly attempted a conformist tactic: quit. Just freakin’ quit spending so much time on something that provides little evidence of being beneficial for others or income for myself. Makes sense to quit, doesn’t it?
Yes, if your personal truth is conjured through Ego. However, if I live according to Heart, that means I live my personal Heart-truth. This includes co-creating Purpose with Heart-Spirit. The ultimate aim of Purpose is Happiness; it’s rooted in the Soul and expressed in emotional outcomes. Ego ends would have us focused on physical and mental outcomes.
Therefore, when measuring according to society standards of conformity, the job, the person, the amount of money — all those things provide a quantitative analysis of one’s life. They are all based on extrinsic motivation and reward. Don’t believe me? Why are so many people so freaking miserable in their jobs and their lives? They don’t make life choices to produce intrinsic emotional profiles. Instead, they base choices on how good someone can make them feel on a physical level, how much money a job can provide, how acceptable their life choices are to others.
When I choose to live Heart, I have to divorce and divest myself of others’ standard measures. When I co-create my Purpose based on my personal Heart-truth, it means I wish to live it, yearn to live it, take no heed of cost in terms of time or money. I am doing it because I love it, because I chose it, because I am pursuing, living, and doing Happiness.
What measure is then employed to evaluate my life? None, because I don’t give a shit about evaluating my life. I hope no one else does either, because I don’t wish them to be that Ego-bound. However, my Heart calls me to check on my Happiness quotient, and the driver and motivator, the intrinsic one for living Heart, is faith.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) states this nicely: what I do shows what I believe, what my personal truth is. We cannot see faith any more than we can see Spirit or wind, but the evidence of their work and existence abounds. When I run a self-diagnostic, I look at my choices and see if they are helping me to feel the way I want to feel — not how much money, sex, recognition, or any other quantitative, extrinsic measures people can use. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but they are not my motivators.
They are for many folks, however, and that means at the end of the day, many folks are still wondering who they are and what their purpose is here. I know who I am and my purpose, and those are bound up in the proof of faith, the evidence I am living what I believe, even though there may not be anything to measure right now.
In the book of James, chapter 2 and verse 18, the expression of faith becomes something that can be evidenced; however, it is not necessary for me; it’s only for those who may call into question why I do what I do: “I will show you my faith by my deeds.” I live my truth. I write every day. I engage in activities that are auxiliary to that.
No one can see my faith, but the proof to myself provides the encouragement and intrinsic motivation to keep moving forward, to keep living my happiness. Most people I know, if pressed about it, would say I have a good heart but am not very wise about practical matters.
I couldn’t be wiser — well, I could be but not in relation to others’ opinions of me. I live my truth, and I do it by faith in fellowship with my Heart and Spirit. I enjoy Happiness in the work, day by day.
So, Ego, another hard lesson for you: I refuse to accept lack of response or lack of income as proof of misplaced faith. Even though I still have not published a book, that perseverance will only give me more joy, more happiness — not to mention these daily publications.
I’m encouraged by the work I have done over the last six years, and especially in the last fourteen plus months. I know what I want to do, and I will do it in Heart-faith. I hope you do, too.
Blessings!