The E-Word: Ego, Enlightenment & Other Essentials

by Cate Montana

"An excellent and entertaining look at the issues, challenges, and resolutions that come with the territory of awakening.” —Gary Renard, bestselling author of The Disappearance of the Universe trilogyA book of liberation and ecstasy, The E-Word lucidly explains how the ego is created, how it thinks, and how its limited mind-set can be expanded—not inflated—into a joyous transpersonal perspective that eradicates feelings of isolation, fear, and insecurity in your life. Through stories, practices, and a masterful detangling of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the Matrix, and quantum physics, The E-Word strips the ego bare and liberates the soul in highly entertaining, relatable ways, revealing how even self-improvement techniques can chase away the very fulfillment and wisdom we seek. Montana further reveals how the ego co-opts spirituality, dangling enlightenment in front of us as a prize. Stuffed with electrifying insights and transformative meditations and exercises, The E-Word is the ultimate how-to guide for discovering the “real you” within.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 17, 2017

About the author

Raised on a cattle and thoroughbred horse farm in Virginia outside Washington D.C., I followed society’s happiness formula for the first 30 years, attending prep schools and graduating from university with a bachelor’s degree in English. Instead of pursuing my original career plans as a newspaper journalist, I fell into television (hint: met a guy), and ended up building a highly successful career as a freelance television editor with the global networks including ABC, NBC, CNN, and BBC.
Unfortunately both career success and a socially equitable marriage to Mr. Right failed to lead to happiness or answers to life's perennial questions. At age 30 I took the only other road available in life: within.
While freelancing around the globe from Atlanta, I explored everything from Christian mysticism to Zen Buddhism, yoga to Chi Gung, quantum physics to hands-on healing. Fascinated by the mind and human potential, in 1984 I went back to school, graduating with a Master of Humanistic Psychology Degree from the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
Soon after graduation and I left television and husband #2 (agh!) to live in the middle of nowhere in a one-room 100-year-old stone cabin in the North Georgia mountains near Gainesville. With no worldly distractions, I spent three years meditating, writing magazine articles nobody wanted to buy, playing the harp and writing music. I also started work as a feature reporter at The Times, a Gannett newspaper in North Atlanta.
Moving near Olympia, Washington in the Pacific Northwest in 1989, I continued working as a freelance journalist for newspapers such as The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Tacoma News Tribune. In 1999 I got hired as the Northwest editor and bureau chief for the national Native American newspaper, Indian Country Today.
Eventually I moved into marketing in 2004, working with the filmmakers of the international indie hit film What the Bleep Do We Know?!, publishing the film’s online newsletter, The Bleeping Herald, writing articles about consciousness and breakthroughs in quantum physics that were leading scientists to a new understanding of mysticism and a unified cosmos.
In 2007 what can only be called a 3-day enlightenment experience occurred, shattering everything. For the second time I dropped career and all my personal endeavors, leaving the US to travel extensively in Central and South America, studying with ayahuasceros deep in the Amazon in Peru and with shamans in the Andes of Ecuador.
In June 2009 I returned to the United States to work with Hollywood filmmaker Betsy Chasse writing the screenplay Killing Buddha. Although disenchanted with spiritual teachers, at this time I also met my guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev from Coimbatore, India. From Sadhguru I learned ancient yogic kriyas (energy processes), traveling to his ashram in South India to study and participate in a yogic alchemical consecration of a lingam dedicated to the Goddess.
Returning to the states in March 2010, I started writing Unearthing Venus - My Search For the Woman Within. I also co-authored the book The Heart of the Matter: Gifts in Strange Wrapping Paper for Hay House Publishing with Dr. Darren Weissman. I currently live in Washington State and am writing a sequel called Unearthing Shadows.

Reviews

[Sarah Phelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book messed me up for a solid week. I get the concepts intellectually, and Montana is straightforward and very clear about how ego, enlightenment all works or doesn't really work at all actually, but I do not think I am in the right place for the information inside of this book yet. I will absorb it, and let the ideas swim around in my mind until I am ready for them. Thank you, Cate, for laying it quite bare. I'm sure at some point I will be grateful. :)

[Gemini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was alright & made one think but it was a bit too philosophical for me. Which I am not a fan of so didn't get that much out of it. I didn't care for the author speaking about God & higher beings either. This might be right up your alley, but not totally for me. Some of it was a bit much w/ the whole "I AM" being the entire focus. I guess that was the point but I didn't get it so went over my head. To each their own.

[Sana Mafiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open up, take a long breath, look into the mirror, what do you see?
A package of Ego made by your family, society, environment, the whole world. This will teach you to differentiate between YOU and you.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the daily practices.