Written by Steve Beckow, the Golden Age of Gaia, http://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/03/national-ego/
One of the predictable crises that arises when global change is before us is the matter of national pride or ego. In my view, the subject is something we need to broach with each other and navigating it may require a fair amount of compassion.
The belief that nations have a character goes back at least as far as the Nineteenth Century. National character was used to bring in a great number of racist laws, eugenic policies, and diplomatic initiatives designed to protect the “purity” of the race or nation. Ever since that time, there’s been a slow retreat from its excesses and false grids.
Archangel Michael pointed to national ego as being behind attempts to hold up the Reval and create a clash between nations over the Crimea. He told me in a personal reading March 5:
“One [issue holding up the Reval] is what we would call a national ego issue. …
“There is a reticence, because of losing status in the world, for the United States to admit that the country it has condemned and the war it has waged now has a currency which is in many ways more valuable because of petrodollars than their own. So there is an issue of saving face.” (1)
Ashira in Heavenly Blessings on March 11 included Russia, the Ukraine and China in the circle of nations whose egos were involved:
“What is going on with Russia, the Ukraine, the Crimea, and we cannot leave China out of this mix, and the United States of America for that matter, is ego and it is the flexing of ego muscles, national ego muscles. There is not a sacred cause behind this.” (2)
We may not be selling each other the kind of race theories that supported much of the worst aspects of behavior in the Twentieth Century, but apparently we still do too many things based on national ego.
At the same time, there is a collective fellow-feeling that’s based upon the soul group, service to the Mother, etc., which ennobles and does not detract. So while throwing out the perspectives that separate racial groups, a distinction based only on the body, I’m not suggesting we throw out all sentiment connected to the soul collective, to relationship, and to human unity. It isn’t that collectivity is to blame. It’s that one form of collectivity stands in the way of the much wider form that is truly ennobling.
The problem we encounter in letting go of separative feeling is the same for a nation as it is for an individual. We face the same difficulty with a core issue or a false grid as we do with a national concern. We want to let go of that which does not work while not letting go of the lessons we’ve learned and the skills we’ve developed by wrestling with that issue.
If we’re dealing with core issues, we call the skills we develop the “flip side” or the “saving grace.” There is a flip side or saving grace to having wrestled with so many national concerns, human rights, and collective violence.
There are two parties to letting go: the one who lets go and the one who must live with the person letting go.
The one who lets go must be willing to risk looking wrong, feeling invalidated, and being blamed. It takes a great deal of courage to let go of an issue that has defined us for years, that we believe has brought us all we have in life, and that protected us from loss or harm.
The one who lives with the person letting go – whether in a family or between nations – must be willing to settle old scores and start anew. Those who go forward with us have to be allowed to do so with a clean slate. Their “rap sheet” has to be left in the past.
The one who welcomes them back must be willing to see – and value – the lessons learned and the skills developed as a result of everyone dealing with the original issues. They have to make that learning and skill development more important than the unworkability and self-righteousness that characterized the former ways of being.
The person letting go needs the support of the rest of the collective. You remember Archangel Michael citing the example of the prodigal son. The prodigal son was welcomed back into the home while the elder brother, who had always been faithful, resented the welcoming reception, which he felt he had never had.
But to bring peace to the world we have to welcome back a lot of prodigal sons. If we don’t, we’ll never have peace in the world. A lot of elder brothers will need to be willing to put their own needs aside during that process and join in the welcoming committee.
To accomplish that, we’ll have to let go of wanting to be right, needing to feel important, and needing to take credit for things. It’s a superior art that calls for balance, humility, and detachment. And for a time the only satisfaction coming from it may be the peace itself that results.
We’ll need to draw on workable patterns of behavior wherever they’re found.
When a child misbehaves, parents are accustomed to saying “no” to the behaviour while not saying “no” to the child. We’ve learned to separate the behavior from the child. This workable pattern has to be imported and applied here.
We all of us know that the process of growth for ourselves involves raising a matter to awareness, assessing it in light of workable principles that all of us accept, and then re-choosing whether we want to continue the behaviour or not. This is another example of a workable pattern of behavior that also needs to be imported.
And there are others that we’ll see and need to incorporate as we begin this aspect of creating a world that works.
This is not work to be left only to diplomats. This is work we can all discuss and join in on. Parents know ways that work. Teachers do. Bus drivers do. We all need to bring forward whatever in life has worked and apply it to the erasure of national ego and the substitution of workable ways for the world.
Footnotes
(1) Personal Reading with Archangel Michael through Linda Dillon, March 5, 2014.
(2) “Ashira on Malaysian Flight 370, the Ukraine and the Tsunami of Love,” March 11, 2o14, at