The Journey from Ego to Soul

About five years ago, I reviewed Karen’s previous book 7 Lessons for the Living from the Dying, containing essential truths relating the reality of death to the principles for authentic living. On her website, she writes that it is up to us…’We stand on a precipice between dissolution and transcendence. Do not underestimate the fact that our next steps have the potential to determine the course of the future.’ I imagine that almost every reader shares this view that humanity is at a bifurcation point where our existing modes of thought, action and policy are past their sell-by date. A transformation of consciousness or raising a frequency is an essential evolutionary step, as many thinkers are articulating.

This new book has much in common with the earlier one, and is subtitled ‘how to transform your life when everything falls apart.’ The lessons are the same, but the context more personal in terms of Karen’s own life story, which was hugely impacted by her father’s suicide. The lessons are to do with suffering, love, forgiveness, living in the present moment, purpose, surrender, and impermanence. These are all part of the earth curriculum, and life provides us with challenges and difficulties that can stimulate our growth. One of the principal guides in terms of headline quotations is the timeless wisdom of Rumi. The inner journey, as suggested in the title, is from Ego to Soul and the embodiment of fearless love. The initial portal is often suffering, and knowledge of our mortality implies that, sooner or later, everything falls apart; nothing lasts except Love. A story from her previous book makes this point elegantly where Ted, a successful banker in his 60s, is dying from pancreatic cancer. With great remorse, he remarks that ‘the only thing that matters is love. Who did I love? How much did I love them? How did I show that I loved them?’ This is the essence of life.

The book draws movingly on Karen’s own life experience, infused with spiritual wisdom and practical guidance. The world is run on the basis of the ego with its aspirations towards wealth and power, invariably bringing corruption in its wake. The ego resists change, and lacks the four core elements of dance: timing, balance, rhythm and grace. Karen quotes Aeschylus saying that wisdom comes alone through suffering. As the ego is dismantled, we become more open to the guidance of the soul, which has a larger and deeper perspective on life. At one point, she is working with hospice patients in a shelter clinic, and formulates what she calls the Love Project, focusing on sending pure, radiant love to every person in the clinic rather than trying to fix their lives. This practice eventually has a profound effect on her colleague Charlotte, who plays a leading role in the book, and she herself is transformed through her own suffering. We are here ‘to be a vessel for fearless love,’ and our greatest challenge is to love the unlovable people in our lives. (p. 94)

Readers journey on through the lessons of forgiveness, living in the present moment, purpose, surrender, and finally impermanence. Forgiving is equally important for ourselves as a form of release, and Karen shares a moving story about a colleague who wrote a critical letter at an early stage in her career; the colleague is brought in in a critical condition, and Karen is moved to buy her some flowers, which she takes into the hospital room. This gesture releases her from poisonous resentment. Our inner purpose is to be present by being who we are in every moment, as emphasised by Eckhart Tolle. The last two lessons are the hardest, but the most essential: surrender and impermanence. Karen writes that ‘to surrender is to allow a natural process to take place, while working to find the deepest meaning and the most growth possible within the current circumstances.’ (p. 181) This means living in a state of not-knowing rather than seeking to control. Impermanence is a central theme in Buddhism, as embodied in the teaching of Thich Nhat Hahn, extensively quoted in the book. The ego itself is impermanent, and change is inevitable, including the death of the physical form.

The final chapter is about the soul-guided life as it unfolds step-by-step. Here, Karen revisits the seven lessons, writing that when the True Self flourishes, ‘love expands and life flows.’ She relates a moving story about her cousin Jolene who dies suddenly of a heart attack. This brings to mind how she had been too busy to meet up with her a few months before, and there is a general atmosphere of denial at the funeral. A year later, the mourners meet again to celebrate a family wedding, and the minister says a blessing for their broken, grieving hearts. He then instructs people to take the white balloons attached to the chairs, and release these balloons into the air along with their pain. A few months later, Karen dreams of Jolene, and her guilt is assuaged by forgiveness. She sums up her message by saying that we are ‘born into this life on Earth so that we can learn these things: to love unconditionally through suffering and pain, to find a joy in the midst of impermanence, and to leave behind the beauty as well as the burden of physical existence when the time comes to travel into the next realm… remembering that we are actually already One with everything in existence.’ (p. 247) This inspiring book reminds us that the lessons of death are in fact lessons for vibrant living.