Spiritual Intelligence Vs. Ego Mind

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about spiritual intelligence.

One of the things that I love sharing and teaching the most about is spiritual consciousness.

And it is a area of study that I focus on because it helps me understand myself as an ego being,

As a physical 3D being,

But also a spiritual being,

A being that uses logic and reason to process the world,

A being that uses my five senses to process stimuli from the outside world.

Because let's face it,

Our brain is constantly interfacing with the 3D world and trying to process at lightning speed various forms of stimuli from the temperature of the room to the light outside our room to the way things feel to pressure to so many different things to taste and to touch.

I mean,

It's fabulous when you think about it.

It's happening all outside our consciousness.

And we rarely think about those things.

But I think that we should because that affects us and that helps us to become spiritually intelligent.

Spiritual intelligence is also a term that I've created to help myself and my students understand this idea that you have the ability to witness what you witness without having a visceral or an egoic response to something that's happening outside of us.

I also rely very much on understanding how the brain processes information,

How the default mode network of the brain operates,

How human beings are 95% subconscious,

Meaning that you have been programmed to think and to feel and your programs are responsible for how you act in the 3D world.

And one of the things that I always interrupt my private clients about is I always say like,

No,

You didn't make that happen.

Or when they say something like,

I thought this or I acted that way,

I always bring it back to,

Was it the conscious you or was it the default you?

Was it the automatic you?

Was it the programmed you?

Were you acting out of a program or a pattern or trauma?

Or was this a conscious thought?

Because they're not the same thing.

I also like to say that we can have an ego conversation,

Which is a trauma conversation.

So who I am today is the result of my unmet needs and my trauma that hasn't been resolved.

My wounded ego self,

My shadow self,

Or I can have a spiritual conversation,

Which implies that I have some awareness around my trauma and how it affected my personality and how it affected me at a subconscious level and how,

When I was unaware,

I was unaware I was responding and behaving out of these programs and patterns.

But now with raising my consciousness,

With becoming the observer of my thoughts rather than the reactor,

By learning spiritual principles that allow me,

And also psychological principles,

Mental toughness skills,

They're all the same thing.

It just depends on who you're talking to.

I like to blend all of these ideas together and give people a holistic approach that they can rely on,

One that doesn't splinter us off from our spiritual self,

One that doesn't splinter me off from my psychological self,

And one that doesn't just see me as this flesh and bones and neurology.

Because what I think from my mind,

I feel,

Which affects my physiology,

It affects my chemistry,

It affects my state of being,

It affects whether or not I flow cortisol,

Which is a stress hormone,

Or I flow oxytocin,

Which is a healing hormone,

Which makes me feel safe.

If you feel unsafe,

Then you operate in the world in a state of hypervigilance.

You operate in the world from a place of insecurity.

You don't feel good enough.

You don't trust that you're enough.

You have no self-efficacy.

If you're codependent,

You don't even realize that you don't have a self.

And you enter into relationships putting everybody before yourself,

Almost like a puppy follows the master,

Waiting for a pat on the head.

Oh,

You're a good girl.

Oh,

Here's your bone.

Here's your treat for today,

Lisa.

You did exactly what I wanted you to do.

You behaved exactly the way I wanted you to behave.

When I came through the codependency recovery journey,

It forced me to become the witness.

It forced me to observe the way that my mind was thinking.

It also forced me to take accountability for the way that I was thinking,

Which was really hard because in the beginning,

When you are healing from trauma and you are learning to take accountability for how you feel and you really start doing the deep dive,

You find everything that you've always run from.

You find the feeling of the abandonment.

You find you don't just logically understand,

Oh,

Wow,

I never felt good enough.

You feel the energy of not being good enough.

And it feels like shame.

It feels like impending doom.

It feels like this is the end of the road for me.

It feels like there is no hope.

But of course there is.

If you stick with it and you allow yourself to process what you're feeling,

If you develop spiritual intelligence and you learn that you are here to observe what's happening to you on an emotional level and that you don't have to react to everything,

But we remain reacting to what we feel when we're living below the veil of consciousness.

And over the past 20 years,

I've heard a lot of people start using the term programming.

I've heard a lot of people start saying what I've always thought was correct,

Which is very validating that not only are we what we think we are,

What we feel,

Which if we're in the self-help community,

We are learning about trauma,

Trying to overcome CPTSD.

Really what science is proving finally is that what affects us in childhood,

Especially before the age of seven,

Becomes a pattern and a program.

It becomes a way of being.

And we aren't taught,

At least in this culture,

To really look at the way that we feel and to investigate why we feel that way.

When it comes to dysfunctional families,

Oftentimes parents are struggling with their own trauma and they don't know how to help their child deal with their emotions.

And they haven't developed the life skills for looking within.

And life is hard,

Right?

We're all taught that the more we have,

The more worthy we are,

Which is a bunch of nonsense.

We're all taught that if we have an apartment,

We need a house.

If we have a house,

We need a bigger house.

If we have a car,

We need two cars.

If we have two cars,

We need a boat.

It's a bunch of nonsense.

We're all taught that we have to keep striving and keep achieving,

And this keeps us seeking approval and feeling not good enough.

It keeps us in this perpetual state of trying to achieve,

Which is outside of spiritual intelligence.

The ego doesn't feel like it's enough.

And the ego is trying to be enough and end if it's really below the veil of consciousness and really wounded and has never felt enough as a child,

Never developed healthy,

Safe ego boundaries.

The ego will even start comparing itself to other people as a way to feel better about the self.

And usually what that sounds like is I have to compare myself to her.

I have to be better than her.

Oh,

She's better looking than me.

She's thinner than me.

She has a bigger company than me.

There must be something wrong with me.

And I have to be better than her to feel good enough.

And it's this hamster's wheel,

Right?

It's like so far from the spiritual path,

Which is I am enough,

Which is I have enough right in this moment,

Which is I'm in awe of how my body works,

Which is the universe has my back,

Which is the sun comes up every day and I'm not responsible for that.

What I'm trying to say is that there is this sense of relief and safety that each of us can achieve by stepping out of ego and looking around us to understand that we don't make our lungs breathe.

You don't make your lungs breathe.

You don't make your eyes blink.

You don't make your hair grow.

You don't make your body have the ability to digest the oatmeal that you had for breakfast.

You don't turn a banana into a brain cell.

You don't do any of that.

But yet we feel like we have to control everything.

And that's super sad.

And so when we use spiritual intelligence,

It's an opportunity for us to understand that a at our core,

We are enough that if you're chasing and if you're on Instagram and you are comparing yourself to other people,

That's not spiritual intelligence.

If you believe that something outside of you is going to be able to make you feel good enough,

That's not spiritual intelligence.

If you are relying on a relationship to make you feel good enough,

That's not spiritual intelligence.

If you beat yourself up because your hair is turning gray,

That's not spiritual intelligence.

If you seek approval,

That's not spiritual intelligence.

If you are in your trauma,

That is you normal,

Very valid.

That's you being human.

Nothing wrong with being human.

But when we introduce this concept of spiritual intelligence,

We understand that we have many different experiences in human form.

So while I'm below the veil of consciousness,

Of course,

I'm programmed by the outside.

I'm programmed by my family.

I'm programmed by society.

I'm programmed by my religion.

If you didn't choose your religion,

Someone chose it for you.

There's no choice in that.

Right.

So we identify that a lot of our belief systems were predetermined for us and they weren't of our choosing.

So then we have an opportunity when we're thinking about spiritual intelligence to question what we believe,

Which is heroic.

When I was coming through the veil,

I had to question why I was codependent,

Why I was afraid to leave a marriage that I felt was so toxic and had become more toxic over time.

Why did I think at any point in time that I would leave when my children were out of high school?

Like,

Why did I,

Why was I so afraid to make that move?

Well,

For me,

I believe that I needed permission.

It was literally a belief system that was hijacking me at the subconscious level.

And that's part of what I would like to introduce in this video.

That's part of what I would like to introduce in this session is that you have to start understanding that there are levers in your brain and the lever is very simplistic.

It's good or bad.

So when I associate below the veil of consciousness,

This idea that I'm good,

If I can make you happy,

Then the lever that I seek is to make you happy and in making you happy,

I experienced relief,

But you become the power over me.

Now in my mind or in my brain,

There's this lever and the lever is being controlled by this little gremlin,

This little green gremlin.

And when I'm in a state of constriction,

I think that my happiness is outside of me.

And so when I'm unable to make you happy,

The lever gets pulled and this little gremlin prevents me from flowing oxytocin.

It prevents me from feeling like I am enough.

When I am able to in a codependent mindset or in the,

When I'm in my pattern in my program below the veil of consciousness,

And I'm acting out in a 3d world,

My default setting,

Which I'm not responsible for because I didn't create the default setting.

I'm not responsible for what I was programmed to believe.

However,

Until I'm spiritually awakened,

There's no other choice by default,

I will operate out of this program.

So at the level of mind,

There's this invisible lever and it's associated with good or bad.

And what I associate good or bad with,

It's all subconscious.

Now if I associate pleasure with making you happy,

Then I also associate pain with not making you happy.

This is why if you're a codependent and you're in a narcissistic relationship,

You are stuck because your happiness is tied to making this other person happy,

But you really can't ever make a narcissist happy.

So if you do,

It's short lived and you always end up defaulting back to feeling miserable and like you failed and not good enough because you can't make this person happy.

So I hope you can see that you're actually giving your power over to people when you are operating below the veil of consciousness with this default setting and you don't know it.

That's why you need spiritual intelligence.

Spiritual intelligence is basically,

I'm able to witness what I witness from a higher state of awareness and I'm managing my ego mind through a higher state of consciousness.

And I am willing to observe the way that my mind thinks and to make adjustments.

So what I did on my healing journey,

And this is what I teach in my coaching classes and with my private clients,

Is this idea that,

Oh,

Okay,

I have this subconscious belief that makes me think that I need my ex-husband's permission to feel what I feel.

This was a subconscious belief.

There's the lever,

Good or bad.

I'm good if he agrees with me,

I'm bad or unworthy if he doesn't agree with me,

Or I'm right if he agrees with me and I'm wrong.

That's the black and white thinking of the mind.

The mind is always trying to figure out,

Is this a safe place or is this an unsafe place?

Unfortunately,

Before we can even speak,

Most of us are programmed in a negative way,

In a dysfunctional toxic way.

And rather than be in alignment with what's right for us,

We're forced to go into alignment with what these toxic people are teaching us.

So that's how our guidance system gets all screwy.

And that's why the purpose of healing is to align,

To find the road back to the self and to align with what feels most in alignment with who we are and to operate from that authentic space.

If you're codependent,

You're not operating from an authentic space,

And that's not your fault.

And if you're codependent,

This is a subconscious issue,

It's a spiritual issue,

And it's a neurological issue.

It's a chemical issue because you don't have enough oxytocin flowing in your body and you have way too much cortisol flowing in your body,

Which means that you're hypervigilant.

You can't focus on anything else but what this lever in your mind is telling you that you have to focus on.

So let's say you have this idea that you have to make other people happy.

So you also then have this fear of making people unhappy.

Now what does that do?

That throws a monkey wrench in your state of beingness.

You are not solid,

Right?

You are reactive,

Right?

Your ego is like,

Everything has to be this way,

And if it's not this way,

There's something wrong.

But that's not spiritual intelligence.

So most people,

I think,

I'll go out on a limb and say most people are reacting to their ego self,

Their 3D self,

Their little self,

If you will,

Right?

The self that hasn't been awakened to the self.

So if I have a headache,

That's bad.

I can't have a good day because I have a headache.

Or if I have an upset stomach,

There goes everything because I have an upset stomach.

There's no sense of safety when the ego thinks something is bad.

And so let's say you're codependent,

And you think that you need approval.

Below the veil of consciousness,

That's the level.

Approval is good.

Disapproval is bad.

How many people do you know that go way down the rabbit hole when they've had an argument with somebody or they had a misunderstanding with somebody?

They really suffer when they feel misunderstood.

So what's the lever?

The lever is feeling understood and feeling seen good,

Feeling misunderstood bad.

What's the problem?

The problem is your ego and your body are attached to that 3D experience.

And that is not good.

That puts you at a deficit.

That puts you behind the eight ball mentally,

Emotionally,

Psychologically,

Financially,

And spiritually.

So what's a better way of going about this?

Well,

Understand that you are ego and body,

Ego and body,

The same thing.

And you are mind,

And you're also your spiritual self.

So think about a trinity,

Ego,

Body,

Mind,

And self,

Or your spiritual self.

And recognize that your spiritual self has the ability to observe what's happening with the ego,

The body,

And the mind.

Very,

Very important.

Spend some time trying to figure out what it is that you associate bad things with.

So do I think it's bad if I get sick?

Do I think it's bad if my dog gets sick?

Do I think it's bad if it rains?

Do I think it's bad if I don't have as many dollars in the bank that I want?

Do I think it's bad that I'm single?

Do I think it's bad that I had an argument with that friend?

Because every time you think something's bad,

Then your body goes into a state of constriction.

A better way of looking at it is this is not bad.

This is just an experience.

So it's not bad that my dog is sick.

Now,

That doesn't mean that you're not going to have human feelings about the dog being sick.

It means that you,

From a higher state of awareness,

Can observe that you being human,

Your body self,

Your 3D self,

Is going to have very emotional experiences tied to this animal that you love.

For instance,

So what do you do?

You say namaste to your 3D self.

You say namaste to your mind.

You say namaste to your brain.

You say,

Of course,

This is how I feel.

But you don't go into resistance about the way that you feel.

This is an experience.

Let's say you don't have the dollars that you want in the bank.

And you get caught up.

Now,

If you keep focusing on not having the dollars,

You go into a state of constriction.

Your body and your mind think something's wrong.

You release cortisol.

You constrict.

And we know that money tends to flow to money.

And so you cannot receive with a clenched fist.

So what does that mean?

You've got to trick your mind into moving into a state of nonresistance.

So what does that sound like?

You have to know that from where you are right now,

You are enough.

And you have to understand that the relief comes by switching the thought.

You want to release the lever on it's not enough.

You want to release the lever on this is bad,

Because it's not bad.

Right now,

You don't have the money that you want in the bank.

Big deal.

Are you breathing?

Amazing.

Do you have a roof over your head?

Amazing.

Even if you don't have a roof over your head,

Is your liver working?

Do your eyes work?

Are you able to walk?

Are you able to have a conversation?

Look for something.

And I don't mean to minimize whatever anybody's going through.

That's not what I'm doing.

I've studied people.

For many,

Many years,

I've studied people who have had the worst things in the world happen to them.

And the level of resiliency that they have is just fabulous.

And that's what we're trying to develop.

We're trying to develop this resiliency,

This mental resiliency,

So that we don't stay stuck in codependent narcissistic relationships.

So we don't stay stuck living in cortisol,

So that we're able to switch the lever in our mind and find a state of non-resistance or relief so that we can feel safe all the time.

Why?

So that we can become a magnet for what we want,

And we're not controlled by the outside world.

If I am someone who thinks that I need your approval,

You control me.

Now,

During the codependency recovery journey,

When I saw that,

When I saw that I thought that I needed my ex-husband's permission to feel my feelings,

That's when I realized that's why my body is always in a state of stress,

Because I'm associating my ego and my body are associating it's bad because he doesn't agree with me.

When I realized spiritually and consciously that he was wired not to hear me,

That there was nothing I could do to get him to hear me,

That's when I released the lever and non-resistance showed up.

I had so much relief knowing that there's nothing that I can do to change this,

Right?

And I don't have to change this.

And the more I want to change it,

The more control he has over me.

So I'm just going to move into a state of non-resistance.

And this is not bad.

It just is what it is.

And I'm entitled to feel what I feel about this situation,

Because that's my human self.

And from a higher state of awareness through spiritual intelligence,

I'm able to detach and observe my human self going through this experience.

And then I'm able to logically decide and decipher what I can control versus what I can't control.

And from that space,

What I decided to do in my life,

And this is what I teach other people to do,

Figure out what it is that you do want.

Become aware that you are worthy of what you want.

But when you are in resistance to who you are,

When you are in resistance to your worthiness,

What you want cannot show up in your experience.

My world shifted when I developed this spiritual awareness that I am enough.

Despite childhood trauma,

Despite the patterns,

Despite the programs,

Despite feeling rejected by my ex-husband,

Despite never really being able to feel like I could do enough to make people happy,

That was the lesson in it for me.

That's exactly what I was supposed to learn.

Lisa,

Stop looking outside of yourself.

Stop trying to make everybody else happy.

Focus on yourself.

Focus on nonresistance.

What makes you happy?

What makes you want to shout from the rooftops?

This,

Teaching you this,

Makes me want to shout it from the rooftops.

I feel like this is the answer to so many of our problems.

Unfortunately,

The people in my own family don't care.

And that's really what forced me to turn to platforms like YouTube and Instagram,

Insight Timer,

And Facebook.

It forced me to take this message out into the world.

Because I just believe that if I was feeling it,

Then other people who had experienced childhood trauma and who were on the spiritual path,

Who wanted mental clarity,

They would be attracted to it too.

And so I hope what you hear me saying is that you have the ability to flow your focus.

You have the ability to develop spiritual intelligence.

You have the ability to manage your mind from a higher state of awareness.

You cannot heal trauma without raising your consciousness.

So this is a,

It benefits you to understand the brain.

It benefits you to understand your spiritual self.

It benefits you to understand your physiology.

It benefits you to understand how your little brain needed to feel loved and how when it felt unloved,

It decided the world was unsafe.

And your brain neurologically wired to that.

And that became your subconscious default way of operating in the world.

And dear one,

That's not your fault.

So I hope what you hear me saying is that through spiritual intelligence,

Through developing yourself and your consciousness,

Through the spirit of detachment and discernment,

Through even codependent recovery,

You can heal.

And you can develop the ability to be non-resistant to what's happening outside of you.

And you can manage your ego from a higher state of awareness.

And when you do that,

You get to decide what shows up in your life.

You get to decide how to flow your focus.

You get to decide what beliefs stay and what beliefs go.

And that is worth shouting from the rooftops.

I really hope that this has been beneficial,

Dear one.

And it's so important that you know,

Absolutely know,

At the start of every day,

At the end of every day,

That there is a light inside of you.

And just because you can't feel it yet,

Guess what?

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And your only job is to find that light and to find ways to incrementally shift to a point where that light is shining through you,

And it's undeniable.

And you no longer need other people to validate that light,

Because you know that that light is who you are.

Namaste,

Dear ones.

Until next time,

Bye for now.