The Seven Powers of the Ego

Reading Meggan Watterson’s Mary Magdalene Revealed felt, quite honestly, like finding the Holy Grail.

Not in a dramatic way, but in a deeply settling one.

The way God is described.
The way goodness is framed.
The way patriarchy is named — not with blame, but with clarity.
The way the feminine voice is restored without being romanticised or diminished.

My body settled in during the pages, my heart delighted, and I felt a huge sigh of relief. For the first time, I realised that spirituality didn't ask me to become less human. It invited me to become more fully myself. I didn’t have to override myself to belong or contort truth into obedience.

I am a soul.
And I am human.

That both could be held at once felt inherently right.

Much of what follows comes from Meggan Watterson’s interpretation of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which offers a radically different map. Not one of sin, punishment, or salvation through compliance — but a psychological and spiritual journey of remembering.

At the centre of this teaching are what Meggan names the seven powers of the ego.

These are not demons, sins, or moral failures. They are internal states of consciousness that arise when fear replaces truth — when protection replaces presence.

What struck me immediately was how modern this ancient text feels.

These states mirror what we now understand through trauma theory, nervous system science, and behavioural psychology. I see them in therapy rooms, in patterns around food and body, in perfectionism, self-judgement, and the quiet ways we try to stay safe.

This isn’t ancient theology kept at a distance; It’s a mirror.

Once you see them, you start seeing them everywhere.

Not as something to overcome, but as something to understand.

This is not a map of failure. It is a map of the human nervous system under threat.

I also experience these seven powers not as fixed states, but as layers of the ego , different expressions that come online depending on threat, history, and context. They aren’t linear, and they aren’t something we “graduate” from. We move through them again and again, often within the same day.

When people hear the word ego, it’s often framed as something negative or inflated. But as Deepak Chopra famously describes it, ego can be understood as “edge God out” not a flaw, but a state of separation. A forgetting of connection, wholeness, and choice.

Seen this way, the ego isn’t the enemy. It’s a structure built to protect when safety felt uncertain. These seven powers show us how that protection took shape — where fear narrowed perception, where control replaced trust, where survival eclipsed presence.

To acknowledge these layers is not indulgent or self-focused. It is an act of awakening. Because when we refuse to see them, we don’t become more spiritual — we become unconscious to what it means to be human.

Remembering, then, is not about dissolving the ego altogether.
It is about meeting it with enough awareness that it no longer runs the system unseen.

That is where integration begins.

In the context of Food & Body Trust, I explore these seven powers as they show up in our relationship with food, body, and self, not as problems to fix, but as signals of where protection, fear, and unconsciousness have taken hold.

The first power is darkness — forgetting who you are.

Darkness isn’t evil. It’s disconnection.

It’s the moment the body learns that being fully alive, expressive, or trusting is unsafe, presence retreats.

This often looks like numbness, dissociation, living on autopilot, or the quiet thought: “I don’t feel anything.”

Darkness is the freeze response of the soul.

Many people don’t struggle with food because they love it too much, but because it becomes one of the few remaining ways to feel something.

The second power is desire — seeking outside yourself.

In Mary’s Gospel, desire isn’t longing, but grasping. The belief that something external will finally complete us.

Food, achievement, control, approval, routines, relationships — desire attaches itself wherever relief once appeared.

This isn’t weakness. It’s the nervous system doing its job.

If something once soothed, the body will reach for it again.

Desire says, “Just one more time and I’ll be okay.”

The third power is ignorance — not seeing clearly.

Ignorance here doesn’t mean stupidity. It means unconsciousness.

Patterns run without being questioned. Beliefs inherited from culture, family, trauma, or morality quietly become identity.

“I’m just like this.”
“I have no willpower.”
“This is the only way I cope.”

Ignorance isn’t shameful. It’s protective.
But it keeps us living from reflex rather than choice.

The fourth power is the excitement of death — attachment to suffering.

This is one of the most confronting.

It refers to the pull toward what harms us, not because we want pain, but because pain is familiar.

The nervous system prefers the known over the safe.

This is why people return to destructive cycles, rigid food rules, shrinking relationships, or inner criticism that feels “motivating.”

The ego says: at least I know this.

The fifth power is the kingdom of the flesh — reducing the self to the body.

This isn’t anti-body. It’s anti-wholeness.

It’s when the body becomes a battleground rather than a home. When worth or safety are measured by appearance, appetite, discipline, or control.

The body becomes something to manage, fix, punish, or perfect.

This is where many women get trapped — taught to live in their bodies, but never with them.

The sixth power is foolish wisdom — false knowing.

This is the ego dressed as intelligence.

Rigid rules. Moral certainty. “I know what’s right.”

Often inherited from diet culture, productivity, or spirituality, foolish wisdom sounds like discipline — but it’s fear.

Meggan Watterson names this the most dangerous power because it masquerades as truth.

It sounds like: “This is just what works for me.”
“Others are weak.”
“I must stay in control to be safe.”

The seventh power is wrathful wisdom — judgment disguised as righteousness.

This is anger turned inward.

The inner critic that believes punishment equals progress. Shame framed as accountability. Harshness mistaken for strength.

“You should know better.”
“Try harder.”
“Be better.”

But the body never heals under attack.

In The Gospel of Mary, the soul is not defeated by these powers.

It passes through them by remembering.

To each one, the soul says something like:
“What binds you has no power over me.”

Not because the ego disappears, but because it no longer runs the system.

Awareness loosens identification.
Compassion restores choice.
Truth re-establishes safety.

These powers aren’t something to conquer.
They are signals of where the system learned to protect itself.

Healing doesn’t come from trying to overcome the ego.
It comes from creating enough safety for the ego to soften its grip.

This is why control loosens when regulation returns.
Why food calms when emotions are allowed.
Why identity expands when shame dissolves.

Remembering doesn’t mean fear disappears.
It means choice returns.

In modern psychology, Steven Peters describes this in The Chimp Paradox: when the emotional brain is activated, it cannot factor in consequences. The system becomes reactive and narrow. The future collapses into the present moment.

In Mary’s language, this is forgetting; not a moral failure, but a loss of access.

This is why, in my work, I don’t ask people to reason their way out of urges or override themselves with discipline. I favour habit interruptions — short, simple reminders that anchor the system back into awareness.

Not to stop behaviour by force, but to create just enough pause for remembering to return.

Enough space for the human mind to come back online.
Enough safety for choice to reappear.

This is where comfort lives.

Not in control or perfection, but in the quiet knowing that we are not trapped inside our patterns.

We always have a choice.

And remembering is what gives it back.

Why I Think These Seven Powers Matter

Most of us have heard of the seven deadly sins.

They are framed as moral failures — traits to suppress, avoid, or overcome in order to be good, worthy, or virtuous.

What moves me so deeply about the seven powers of the ego in the Gospel of Mary is that they are not presented this way at all.

They are not sins to eradicate. They are states to recognise.

They offer a map not of moral weakness, but of human consciousness under pressure.

To live with awareness of these seven powers is not about transcending the human experience. It is about inhabiting it more honestly.

This teaching does not ask us to deny desire, fear, anger, or protection. It asks us to see them — to acknowledge how and why they arise, and what they are trying to preserve.

In that sense, awakening is not about becoming less human.

It is about becoming conscious of what it means to be human.

To ignore these seven ego powers is not spiritual maturity. It is unconsciousness. It is mistaking repression for virtue, and silence for safety.

When we deny these inner states, they do not disappear. They simply operate outside awareness, shaping behaviour, identity, and choice from the shadows.

Mary’s gospel offers something far more compassionate.

It shows us that being a soul does not require leaving the human experience behind. And being human does not mean losing our connection to the soul.

The remembering she speaks of is this integration.

To be awake is not to be perfect.
It is to be present.

To recognise the ego not as an enemy, but as a record of how we learned to survive — and to meet it with enough awareness that choice becomes possible again.

That, to me, is where freedom begins.

Warmly,

Willow Woolf