Visions of the Ideal Self

This past weekend I attended the Sacred Space Conference for the first time.  It was a wonderful experience and I have come away with much to process and integrate.  The tone of the conference was set for me in the first class that I attended, “The role of the Ego in Spiritual Evolution” with James Dickenson, a cherished friend and High Priest of my Tradition. 

I have never before had the opportunity to experience Jim as a teacher due to his living and serving more than 3 hours from where I live and I was looking forward to it with great anticipation.  I was not disappointed, Jim gave me much to consider.  He does not ask rhetorical questions but he does ask questions that make those present dig for the foundational beliefs they hold about the subject at hand. 

The answers offered by many helped me to be more aware of the diversity of thought on the subject and by noting my reactions to them I came to understand my own beliefs on the matter with more clarity.  James also offered his own position which he expressed with more grace than I am able to as yet but, which gave me an articulate model to refine my own.  I find it interesting that his expressed experience of the class was much more critical than mine.

In a nut-shell, the Ego is that self-aware part of us whose function it is to assist us in living up to our Ideal Self.  This exploration of identity is indeed a search to realize my ideal self, to refine and clarify it, and with the recent changes in my life I find I need to seek vision of who it is that I wish to become.

The classes and workshops and rituals I was able to attend, and the social interactions with beloveds as well as with new friends and acquaintances, taught me much about who I am and how I function and how those things might have changed over the past 48 years and how they might yet change as I step forward into an ever-changing vision of my Self.

Indeed I was granted visions of who I am to become.  Not flat images, but rather multi-dimensional experiences of who I am to be as a woman, priestess, lover, dreamer and human being.  

I give thanks for the teachers and beloveds and new friends who love me for who I am now, and who help me to see where I wish to go, and how I might get there, and who walk with me on the journey.