Recognizing Ego Temptations | WD

Hope Johnson Hope Johnson
15 minute read

In this week’s episode of Wisdom Dialogues, Hope Johnson shares insight on projections, communication thru energy, and illusions as blocks to our flow. With guest panelist, Lorry Thiboutot. Receive wisdom on the following:

  • How did Lorry relieve her stress?
  • If food doesn’t affect our body, is it okay to eat an Orbeez?
  • How do you know you have the energy?
  • My husband feels like he is stuck and depressed. Is it a reflection of myself on how husband feels? How do I deal with that?
  • How do we avoid conflict?
  • How far do you go in having fun and living it up? Is it okay to do drugs, drink alcohol and such activities?
  • How does a person make that transformation?
  • What feelings do you have? How do you go through your day? Do you think about your vibration?
  • What is truth?
  • What if I feel unsafe to trust the wisdom of the person?
  • How do I approach the pain?


Lorry’s Relief from Her Stressors

Lorry shares that she was going thru a hell of a week. She’s about to leave her abode and she was bombarded with fearful thoughts of losing her house, a sense of safety and the future. She never felt such fear where her stomach and legs tightened. It was getting worse day by day until she talked to Hope Johnson.

Hope Johnson consoles Lorry by saying she needed to go through all that to be knocked down and realize that it is the ego’s idea to sacrifice as if there’s truly something needed to be sacrificed. She adds that the divine doesn’t know the illusion Lorry makes in her mind. She is not receiving information from the divine because she chooses not to but instead, chooses to listen to the fearful thoughts generated by the ego. However, she reassures that everything is alright because it is all coming together. It is all a blessing.

Lorry shares that it is good to be back to her center. At first, it didn’t feel like a blessing. She didn’t have an appetite for the past few days. Hope answers that Lorry’s feelings were a symbol of excitement that she identified them as fear. Despite that, it is an opportunity to extend and express more love. Once the intense experience is released, all she will experience is a relief.

Lorry agrees that it was an unbelievable sense of relief. Her experience made her understand when people with depression run for medicine. Now, she has compassion for them.

Hope explains that what people go thru are projections. However, deep within those illusions is innocence. They can lead to a miracle of healing. We can choose to let go of them anytime, choose the truth and allow ourselves to be released from them. However, when we think we don’t have a choice but only those projections, then, we become victims of our thoughts. We will only wait for good news to be in a good mood.

Hope also adds that the ego shows us that once we screw up, other things get screwed up, too. We need to recognize that it is a red flag. To get out of the rabbit hole of the ego, we need to realize that there is no right and wrong. (10:43-11:03) Once we understand our feelings, there is forgiveness like nothing happened. When we get relief from our fearful mode, there is so much love in the end. It is important for us to realize that we have the option to return to our core anytime no matter how far our ego makes us think. Our ego-thinking has no effects and we are completely forgiven by it.

Hope is not here to advise what we should or should not do. It is irrelevant because we don’t have a choice in those. She explains further that actions are symbolic of one’s thinking. For example, we have a perception of putting someone in danger that is our thought giving us an illusion. We need to defy such thinking. We will know thru reactions when we are projecting.

Q: If food doesn’t affect our body, is it okay to eat an Orbeez?

Gabriela, a listener, recounts a situation at home where her four-year-old son was playing with Orbeez. She told her son that there is no such thing as good or bad food, nothing outside doesn’t affect the body. Her son, then, asked her if it is okay to eat an Orbeez. Hope answers Gabriela that it is unnecessary to teach a kid anything. There is no need to pretend that she can teach him something. What she says or does to another person is teaching her mind instead.

Then, Gabriela shares that her boyfriend went mad when she told her son it is okay to eat an Orbeez, creating a huge argument between them.

Hope explains that Gabriela didn’t do anything wrong. Believing so is the effect of the ego who wants to make conflict. What matters is getting a feeling reaction in the body. The fearful reaction is the temptation of the ego. Instead of taking care of the feeling, Gabriela spoke and said, “Sure.” She reminds us that nothing we say is true. Instead, we communicate thru energy. “Sure” can be an extension of love. However, Gabriela’s ‘sure’ could have been a projection. She would know it is a projection thru her boyfriend’s reaction.

Hope says, “The ego will take on any kind of spiritual concept to make conflict. In Buddhism, when a concept is new, it needs to be protected like a baby plant. (H.J. 2019)” The world is made up, it has a lot of manifestation and full of the ego and these are the bugs surrounding the baby plant. When a concept is not yet nurtured, it needs to be loved up and taken care of.

The illusory world is based on the denial of who you are. We just need to take care of the fear. We will know we are fearful thru other people’s reactions. If they are scared, it reflects your feeling. Remember, the ego does not have full power over us. It is just our perception that it does.

It is not about communicating thru words but communicating thru energy. When we are communicating love, no one will eat Orbeez and the body is completely protected.

Q: How do you know you have the energy?

Hope answers that we are always communicating with energy. Our words are meaningless. (35:07 – 35: 19) “What’s being communicated is love, other than that is projection making more illusions. (H.J., 2019)” We will know we are projecting illusions when we are fearful.

Most people do not know how to tune in with their energy. We will recognize our energy when we get the feeling effect. As words come out when we speak, we need to watch and feel our body’s energy. When there’s fear, our solar plexus area constricts. The solar plexus is between the navel and the breastbone. It has a lot of nerves. It is an energy center of the body.

It is between a sense of openness and receiving divine information and a closed-off sense. Our function is to remove the blocks in our feelings. When we sense something, get the feeling effect first. So that energy is cleared of it.

Q: My husband feels like he is stuck and depressed. Is it a reflection of myself on how husband feels? How do I deal with that?

Hope answers Stacey by saying there’s a lot of fear going on there. She will know it through reaction. So, she needs to allow energy to play and herself to feel the effects. The first manifestation is the words she says. It will help her to think about what it feels like. If she allows the sensation, it will reveal the truth and she will get guidance to get to love. She will be made to speak and extend love and calm the situation. However, when something is going fast, the mind will say she needs to say something but there is no need to put herself in conflict. Doing so simply sets up for guilt and shame and the situation will just escalate. It is how the ego wants to get validated.

Q: How do we avoid conflict?

Hope says that all conflicts come from fearful thoughts. When we get the feeling, we will get what we are holding against ourselves. We can avoid that by trying not to get there. She further reassures that conflict needs to arise for the teaching. When we have a conflicted mind, in return, we experience conflict in our lives.

Our ego will use spiritual concepts to make conflicts with other people. However, we are in a relationship with one another. The whole point is to extend love. When the person is fearful, there is no love but only projections and illusions. When we teach other’s minds, we are using our perceptions of ourselves. We need to recognize that it is just our perception. We will get the clue when we get the feeling effect. Inner conflict makes our bodies vulnerable. Our ego makes illusions to make us feel guilty. Manifestations come from conflicts. However, they will not happen, it is simply our ego making them real. Thus, spiritual concepts are irrelevant when we engage in conflicts. Conflicts with ourselves, affects our relationships. If we are loving right now, no one will get hurt.

Q: How far do you go in having fun and living it up? Is it okay to do drugs, drink alcohol and such activities?

Hope says that we don’t have a choice. Having a choice blinds people of having a function. Our function is to extend love. It is not a concern about what we eat or drink. People take such thought in an egotistical way. What we eat depends on what we think is a healthy diet.

For Hope, she doesn’t have any conflict about eating a pastrami sandwich because she knows food doesn’t have an effect on the body. She adds that food and anything else is magic. Feeling hungry is not possible and is projected outside the mind. What is confusing the mind is a sense of guilt. Feeling hungry, full, sick, hyper are used to get an effect in the illusion. The awareness of the effect of food coalesces to take care of the body. It is a tool of communication.

Q: How does a person make that transformation?

Hope say not to even try to do that. It will seem you have a choice when you don’t have one. It is just the ego talking. It has nothing to do with realizing the truth behind the illusion. It is not about getting a better illusion. When people manifest being spiritual then something hits them rock-bottom, the spirituality is gone completely. They become inconsolable because they only built up an image of spirituality. When things go wrong, they are really gloomy. When they have a dangerous thought, they think of to use their minds to get a better illusion. It is not about that.

So, we need to forget about trying to manifest anything. The manifestation is already working in our favor.

Q: What feelings do you have? How do you go through your day? Do you think about your vibration?

Hope answers, “I am aware of who I am. (H.J., 2019)” She explains that her vibration is all an illusion. It is all about the connection kept to who she is.

She describes it as a déjà vu where past thoughts come out. Scenarios like, “I need to…”, “I have to…”, “I should do…” are played out in the mind. What’s important is if we agree with those thoughts then, we make more manifestations. When we do them, we feel proud. When we don’t, we feel guilty. It is about you agreeing or disagreeing with what the mind tells you.

Q: What about heaven?

Hope explains that heaven has nothing to do with manifestations. A world full of manifestation denies that heaven exists. There is denial because there is death. We can’t conceptualize what heaven is.

There are two things- an awareness of creation and reality created by the mind. When there is confusion, happens, there is a projection imposed between awareness and the mind’s reality of a physical world. The ego will trick us that our projection is the reality. It will make you believe that false reality is better. It is mental imprisonment.

Our only choice is between truth and illusion. We have the choice in making an illusion true or recognize what is true. Some spiritual teachings are about making more for myself. Though it is not bad, it is not all truth, it is all a lie. Parts of it is used as a teaching tool. We, who tune in to Wisdom Dialogues, mean there is something in us making a choice that we want the truth. You don’t want to manifest anymore.

Q: What is truth?

Hope says, “Truth is who you are. (H.J., 2019)”

Truth is an individualized experience. The ego makes a point that denies us, our innocence and what is divine. Let’s those blocks be removed. The most efficient way to the truth is to look at the conflict of the thought. Get the feeling effect of those thoughts. Realize we made it up for ourselves. See what we are holding against ourselves and we will realize they are just thoughts.

Hope reminds us to detach ourselves from the voices. We are not in the illusion. Let those voices just play out and we can be aware of ourselves. When we are lost, ask for help. When we can’t see, ask for help. The goal is to know who we are within it.

When we realize that our projections are just made up, we experience peace. It is an extension of love for ourselves. It is a short time to go back to heaven.

As our mind becomes saner, manifestations follow soot. However, peace happens when manifestations are neutral whenever they pop up.Lorry adds that peace is not thinking whether something is right or wrong.

Hope adds that being in service to yourself is extending love. When we see a pattern of conflict, allow feelings for that. That’s in service to yourself and others. The manifestation is following that thinking. Attacking those thoughts has no effect unless we let it. When we recognize them, we accept full forgiveness as if they didn’t happen.

Accepting forgiveness means projection didn’t happen, it was just a dream and it does not affect us. There is no before. The past is just being projected to give us a guilty self-concept. We don’t have to make the projection real.

There is only truth and illusion. We don’t have a choice on what spiritual concept that comes through us. We only choose between agreeing and disagreeing. When we choose who we are over the illusion, we will definitely be moved.

Q: What if I feel unsafe to trust the wisdom of the person?

Vidir Hallgrimss shares that he always sees a blind spot when something happens with a teacher. He believes it comes from a wound within him. It makes him feel unsafe and distrust himself in the situation. He feels unsafe to trust the wisdom of the person.

Hope believes that’s never safe. It like making illusions true. A person he perceives is projected from his own mind. There is no need to put it over onto them. His experience needs to occur for his learning. He doesn’t need to judge himself for it. If he feels the person got it wrong, he is projecting that. Whether or not he recognizes that he’s projecting it, it's always going to be for his best interests. Any blinds spots that he perceives is not really there. He’s not actually seeing the person as they are because of those blind spots.

Seeing the blind spot of another will move us but we are seeing our perceptions only. Choosing truth over illusion comes together for our learning. What we do with the illusion or find the truth, we simply need to get the feeling of that. There’s nothing wrong with our choice. Just let it flow.

Q: How do I approach the pain?

Vidir further shares that he senses pain in him and he wants to approach the pain. Something about illusion makes it hard for him to access the pain.

Hope explains that a strong defense from pain is the thought that it is hard. She adds, “It's also associated with a feeling. So when it seems to you that it's hard to undo this, that it's hard to see it, that’s the block. It's self-doubt. (H.J., 2019)”

(2:11:27 – 2: 11: 57) When we say to ourselves, “I can’t get this,” it is better to laugh. We have no choice about the thoughts that come up in our minds but we have a choice to laugh. When you choose truth, it is laughing. It is laughter on what we thought was real. Then, anything can come and we have an open space for that. What makes it fun is there’s no block.

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