I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “pilgrim” this week. At first, I thought it popped into my mind out of nowhere but of course, everything is connected, if only in our unconscious. Writing these newsletters has served as a form of pilgrimage for me this year and now nine months into it, I’m starting to feel my feet beneath me.
Regardless of whether you are making your pilgrimage to find yourself or God, your ego is your constant companion. In my experience and in talking to others about their own personal pilgrimages, becoming clear on what role you want your ego to have in your life can be an important part of the journey, regardless of your final goal.
We are all born with egos. There’s no escaping them. We need them to survive but they can often be an impediment to living a true and fulfilling life if we do not cultivate an empowering relationship with them. What does this mean?
Some months ago (1/26/26) I wrote a newsletter piece on the “Peter Principle.” Laurence Peter aptly said, “[I]n time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties…” The ego convinces us that it is best equipped to do the job of running our lives. Unfortunately, when we allow that to happen, we elevate our ego to position it is neither trained for nor appropriate. And like many civil service positions, it’s almost impossible to remove someone even if they are incompetent.
In truth, we shouldn’t remove the ego completely. We need to form a knowledgeable relationship with it. On both sides. We need to learn its assets, limits, and liabilities. It needs to know that it can count on us to take care of ourselves, and when that is not possible, to seek and receive help. The ego is committed to do its job. We just need to assign it the correct one!
Because pilgrimage occurs over time, it offers an exquisite opportunity to mend our relationship with ourselves and our ego. We can inhabit our discomfort rather than immediately try to fix it. And in that inhabiting, we begin to develop a different relationship with both our discomfort and our ego.
Pilgrimage offers an opportunity to create a new relationship with our ego. Thus, the goal is not to kill the ego, but to come to know it and appreciate what it has to offer us and what we have to offer it.
What does it mean to be a pilgrim? The word evokes a feeling of journey, of forward movement in my body. It also means that that this is not a short trip. One is not a pilgrim for just a day. It involves a conscious commitment to a goalthat will involve surviving seemingly impossible challenges, possibly getting lost and finding the way again, asking for help, learning how to graciously receive it, confronting all manner of feelings, sometimes traveling in solitude and sometimes joining and appreciating the communion of others.
Like the rest of life, a pilgrimage is an encounter with experience. But on pilgrimage we are called to be conscious. To meet, to connect with, and often to wrestle with ideas and feelings we might casually dismiss in our everyday lives. Our egos get to take a back seat as we do the work of the deepest part of our being which some refer to as soul.
On pilgrimage, we are not called to be productive in our typical ways. The soulworks differently. It values presence, and therefore allows for stops and starts, for “producing” inner work which has to do with awareness, letting go, honoring what is real, truth-telling, forgiveness, and reparation. And most of all, practicing love.
These are not necessarily skills or experiences valued by our ego. It wants to survive, stay in control and compare and contrast itself to others. When we elevate it beyond its capabilities it becomes a binary machine always seeking to find itself above or below others. Like any other living being, the ego has needs. We can best be of service when we attend to those needs in a healthy manner.
Nine months into my own pilgrimage, I’m beginning to feel my feet beneath me. Perhaps I’m finally learning to walk beside my ego rather than casting it aside. We are accompanying each other into a new and previously uncharted relationship. Perhaps a lifetime of pilgrimage together?