I’ve used Ra’s term “personality” instead of Hatonn’s term “ego” purposely: to illustrate one more thru line to Ra in the conscious channeling, which is very much my interest right now and the current motivating drive of my writing. This discipline is heavily involved in becoming an instrument, as I see it – the entire point is to make a self-aware, self-interested creature recognize its co-Creatorship and marshall this divine will to an end both vastly collective and sincerely individual.

Despite what strikes me as the necessary result of applying Ra’s suggested approach to one’s life, I don’t think Ra ever explicitly confirms this theory. Perhaps that is because those of Ra built upon a platform that Carla and her circle built over the course of decades. While I don’t think this makes an overly textual approach more accurate, it does cast an often helpful penumbra about Ra’s precise ideas. By casting these ideas in a more consciously channeled light, tracking their evolving facets and stable ones, the human application often appears more achievable than Ra’s sometimes severe messages, and I wager it is only in application that the authentic value of these concepts are properly ascertained.

So what does it mean for your ego or personality to be an instrument? What would it mean to make yourself that sensitive to the Creator’s love and light, removing the smudges from the windowpane that block the purer rays of those energies? I believe it is both a keen insight of psychology and the Law of One to see this ego not as something to be destroyed for its imperfection, but as a mere vehicle through which perfect creations can experience and participate in imperfection. We are seeking to bridge “vehicle consciousness” with the “spirit consciousness”, and the ego personality consciousness sits right in that driver seat between the two.

I’d suggest we already use this ego/personality precisely this way – as a vehicle, a socially molded expression of our individual spark that can manuever in this particular kind of illusion. Sometimes we let the vehicle’s abilities limit what we do; sometimes the vehicle becomes the horizon of our imagination. We are like drivers who never leave the car, just going through drive-thrus, never realizing another dining experience exists.

I believe it is the recognition of the insufficiency of the personality, of the existence of a more complete self than the mere ego that paradoxically frees the personality to pursue its desire for a higher calling without fear of annhilation. It is a shift in the way the self identifies, retaining the ability to address other selves in the illusion but altering the nature of the one doing the addressing. This is reinforced in no small way by Hatonn’s remarks on eastern cultures and the greater scope of freedom in deemphasizing the personality. I’m deeply interested in the way these different cultures have served as laboratories for understanding the diversity of human personalities possible, which is why Peter Kingsley’s argument about divine purpose of civilizations intrigues me so much. Cultures make both drivers and vehicles and mutually reinforcing but limiting concepts.

But at the very least, if we see our ego as simply the touch point into the illusion, then the more we participate in and relate to those parts of which we have less awareness, the more life becomes not about the personality you incarnated as in the first place. That personality becomes a means to an end – an end you yield to a greater conception of yourself, a conception that much closed to the One Infinite Creator. Disicplined service, then, allows the circuit of love and light to flow through the illusion with that much more purity, simply by learning how to get out of the way and yield the personality to a greater self. And the personality can finally be fully embraced precisely for the creative, thoughtful way it can be used to mediate truth into the illusion.

In this passage, Hatonn has been talking about their plans for awakening Earth and the channeling group’s part in that. A member question expresses some anxiety about that task and concern about the danger of ego sabotage, essentially. This sets the context for Hatonn’s remarks:

We shall see, and we will be in touch with your group. You may depend upon it—in the months to come and the years to come—to witness with you and to send our love and support [for] your own program to give love and information to those who desire it on your planet. We know that you will do the best that you can. We do not fear for any ego problems from any of you, for we feel that life itself has taught you enough at this point that you can analyze your own thoughts and work with them yourselves.

Each of you in the group, that has come to planet Earth at this time together, is a highly disciplined person. Ego is useful for being a chemical being upon a chemical planet. To be totally without ego would be somewhat awkward. We do not fear ego or ask you to dismantle it. We ask you to be aware of the way it works in your life. And when you feel that you have become offensive because of it, correct that action. That is all you need to worry about, in ego. If you are giving information to others, you may become tired of the sound of your voice. You may feel that you are showing off your information or your knowledge. But we ask you, why do you think that you had that information? Be humble in your heart and know that you are nothing without the Creator but clay and dust. But know also that you are a perfect created being. Do not be proud of the dust, but be unafraid to share the joy of being a child of God.

We ask you in all sincerity to have confidence and not to worry about your ego, but simply to analyze your actions in each case. And when you have determined whether your ego or your love was working, adjust your behavior accordingly. For you are not in a situation where others will understand you and it would do you no good to speak to others. Thus, you must be your own disciplinarian. You are always able to speak at any time on the physical plane with those others of your group with whom you came. If there is a question that you cannot penetrate, we urge you to speak to the one known as Don or any of the others in your group. And we assure you that we will send you our thoughts, if you ask us. But most of all, you must have the confidence to realize that you know the score, and that you are too much a student of life to allow something that has been a rather beautiful and loving existence up to this point to become marred by excessive egoism.

We are aware that you have been egotistic in the past; so has everyone that is incarnate in a chemical universe. Ego is a defense mechanism, it is a separator. Without ego you would become the proverbial doormat.

Know who you are, let your ego speak, but then let it be quiet. Simply see the balance between too little and too much. We are aware that many Eastern religions encourage the total abolishment of ego. This is all very well and good in a culture where the holy are fed. In your particular culture, the holy are normally considered quite insane, thus, retain your protective coloration and your ego [as] part of that. For you cannot function unless the society perceives you as normal. But know in your heart who you are. And let not your ego tell you that you have limitations.

- Hatonn via Rueckert: September 13, 1979