And the fruits of the ego are impurity, enmity (hate), strife (suffering), envy, and anger. These are some of the fruits of the Spirit and the ego as shared in the 5th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
Remembering that these words were written at least 2000 years ago to share a message of hope with believers in Galatia to counteract the effects of idol worshippers that were creating doubt in the Christian teachings. The word “fruits” is a metaphor for those ideas and emotions that you allow into your consciousness and their subsequent outcomes in our lives.
Another way of saying this simple key to life is: Good thoughts produce good things in our lives and negative thoughts of the ego produce the evil things that create suffering, chaos and struggle.
Just ponder this idea and see how it fits into your life awareness. We say that God is good and only good and so if I think, live, and express love and joy, (eating the fruits of Spirit) I am creating only good in my life. If I allow my consciousness and subsequent thoughts to slip down into anger, jealousy, and enmity, (eating the fruits of the ego) I am creating the trials, suffering, and chaos that I am trying to eliminate in my life. Maybe this will help us understand the idea that we live in a world of our own making. Maybe even explain Pogo’s famous comic strip of several years ago that declares: We have met the enemy and them is us.
This is the spiritual path back to our own personal paradise or heaven. Imbibing the fruits of Spirit produces a spiritual consciousness that creates the world of love, peace and joy that we seek. This is the Kingdom of Heaven that is available to us now! Not somewhere over the rainbow or in the sweet by and by. Now! This is the state of consciousness that Jesus and the scriptures tell us is available when we learn to change our spiritual, emotional and mental diet over to the fruits of the Spirit and eliminate the diet of the ego’s world we have grown up with and incorporated into our everyday life. We now change to a spiritual diet of love, joy and peace.
I Love you,
Rev. Robert