Former boxing champion Mike Tyson was asked in a recent interview about his “legacy”. His response was dismissive: “I don’t believe in legacy. It’s just another word for ego.” While some commentators did not like that comment, I found it surprisingly astute. (Perhaps I should not have been surprised; I have long seen wisdom in the famous quote from Mike Tyson that “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”.) Although I would not describe “legacy” as another word for Ego, I do agree that legacy is an Ego trap. As I wrote in an article titled “Repurposing Ego” (posted to this Blog on December 7, 2022), “legacy” is in the category of things we do to gain recognition from others. Which is one of two “Ego traps” (the other being seeking to gain love from others). Specifically, creating a “legacy” serves Ego’s desire to attract recognition that will survive the demise of the physical “Avatar”. Not bad or wrong as such, but a trap all the same.
The reason why focusing on pulling in recognition and love is a trap is because it puts the focus on the wrong direction. The point of an “Earth Game” lifetime, it seems to me, is what you can send out, what you can contribute, during your time here. It is not about what you can rake in.
To illustrate, imagine yourself at the “Pearly Gates” at the end of your lifetime. Not that there is any kind of “Judgment Day”, but bear with me. Can you even imagine being asked, as the test of admission, how much fame and adulation you had attracted over the course of your lifetime? Plainly, that is not at all the point of this Earthly exercise. Ego sometimes thinks that piling up kudos must somehow be the objective, but not so.
Instead, think in terms of the “Life Review” that does take place at the end of a lifetime (as discussed in my recent book, EARTH GAME The Next Level). In the course of that process, which unfolds in the timelessness outside “Earth Game”, you will review every moment of the lifetime you have just completed. You will re-experience your entire lifetime, without judgment, but this time with a knowing of all the backdrop to what was unfolding in your life. Most significantly (for purposes of the present discussion), you will experience what every single person felt as they interacted with you. For better and for worse. Again, without judgment. But you will feel deeply every person you touched in a positive way, and every person you hurt.
Will the Life Review focus on how much love you attracted, how much adulation, how much fame, how many material possessions, how much money? Not a chance. Will it focus on whatever “legacy” you may have left behind to keep your name alive? Again, no. Dust in the wind.
Rather, the true “legacy” from your lifetime will be how you made others feel. Yes, there will be some enduring “ripple effect” – for better or for worse – from your actions during your lifetime. But what you will be looking for during the Life Review process is what you emitted, what you sent out. Not what you took in and amassed and built into some sort of monument to your Ego.
Even if, in the course of your lifetime, you scored the winning goal in the championship game, your Life Review will not care about the adulation (if any) that might have come from that achievement. However, you might experience the joy that fans watching the game, whether at the arena or stadium or in their homes on television, felt as they rose to their feet in shared jubilation. You will feel that as something you gave, rather than as something you attracted.
Thus, for the “doing” side of your lifetime, your Life Review focus will come down to how you made others feel. In every interaction. Did you help them see their worth, their value, their divinity? Did you help them to feel loved? Did you inspire them to feel joy? Did you help them to feel safe?
And no, it is not about stroking now the Egos of others in return for deferred gratification come the “Judgment Day” of your Life Review. For one thing, no judgment as such is involved. Further, other than those who have put their Ego in charge of things, most people will see your artifice as the manipulation it is.
In contrast, think of how much fun it is to bring delight to a toddler or a puppy. You delight in their delight. That is the reward in itself. It is merely a bonus that, during your Life Review, you will re-experience your delight as well as theirs. Well, what else might you do that brings delight to others in the course of your interactions with them?
Of course, there is more to a lifetime than “doing”. There is also the “being” side: receiving, awakening from the fog of illusion, remembering who you actually are. The breathing in part is every bit as important as the breathing out (i.e., doing) part. Of course you need to breathe in first; you cannot share with others what you have not first let in. This article, however, is about the breathing out part, i.e., the doing. If building some sort of legacy to leave behind is not the point of all the “doing” in your life, what is?
As I see it, the point of the doing is to be part of the story as it unfolds. Or more accurately, of multiple stories. Your story, the stories of others that you encounter, the story of an evolving humanity on Earth. You want to participate in the story; you want to play your role, whatever it may be.
Put another way, you want to be in the game. Not just watching the game unfold, from the bench or in the stands. Rather, on the playing field. Making plays, part of the action. Making some kind of difference in the game. Not merely a “Non-Player Character”, just there, part of the background. Rather, an active participant in this spectacular multi-player game that I call “Earth Game”.
Whether you prefer the metaphor of an actor on a grand stage or a player in a game, you want to feel a sense of adventure. Yes, you want to smell the roses along life’s path; you want to take the time to leisurely indulge yourself in the sensory delights that Spacetime holds. But you also want an adventure. Whatever it is you (technically, your Higher Self) aspired to achieve in this lifetime, at some level you sense that, and you want that. Whether it is something private and personal and the opposite of grandiose, or conversely something that would ripple into many lives, that is what calls to you.
As for fame, Ego gets that entirely wrong. Fame is not an end in itself. Nor does it tend to generate happiness. Rather, it is a price to be paid for an opportunity to touch the lives of many.
As for love, Ego similarly gets it backwards. It is not about focusing your doing on generating a steady stream of inward-bound love. Rather, the true joy of love is that it feels so wonderful to send it out. That the love tends to flow onto the object of the love (assuming they will receive it) is a delightful and beneficial bonus to all that. But it is not that giving love is somehow a cost or an investment that must somehow be recouped by collecting love.
No, do not fall into Ego’s trap of squandering your “doing” on seeking to accumulate renown or adulation. Irrespective of the extent to which the desired receipts are intended to be posthumous (i.e., “legacy”). Instead, find your story, play your game, live your adventure. Focus your “doing” on that, and you will make all the difference your Higher Self had in mind when they launched you into your present lifetime.