DO YOU KNOW YOUR OWN EGO?

understanding the ego is an important part of any spiritual and healing practice, since dissolving this toxic part of our psyche is the ideal of all major spiritual pursuits. Reaching an ego-free state, whether brief or sustained, has been called many things: Illumination, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Transcendence.

The spiritual understanding of the ego is basically that it is the antithesis of our loving, core self or spirit. Instead of self-aware, it is selfish. Instead of wise, it believes it knows all. Instead of loving, it exploits and manipulates. Although these are obvious negative manifestations, the ego often works in subtleties, knowing that if it is the most powerful behind the scenes, where we have less of a chance of catching it in action. When we catch it, we can cast it away.

The ego is what causes us to see ourselves as separate from the Universe, others, and the things that sustain us. Our egos make us reject love and it tells us that love is not what we really need to get through life and find joy.

The ego is also what causes us to deny emotions, ignore accountability, distrust ourselves, do cruel things, isolate others, not work towards recovery, complain instead of act, and a whole bunch of other related traits. Through all of these, it keeps us from aligning to the love of the Universe/Source.

The ego exists out of the fear of letting go of past survival methods that no longer serve us. In our younger years (and/or past lives, if you believe in reincarnation), we learned ways of coping with and surviving in the world around us. Our planet is filled with perils and hardships (often caused from the egos of others), so our young selves realised that survival was easiest at the time while mimicking the egos of those around us.

The ego developed from a simple need to process the experiences life handled us, making it far from “bad” at the time, but now its role as changed.

The ego is afraid of “dying,” yet ridding ourselves of egotistic patterns is the intention of mindfulness. Recall all those times you struggled to follow through with a mindful act? That resistance was your ego, fearing its death if you enacted an act of mindfulness.

The ego will always try to do everything it can to stay alive, which means ultimately rejecting unconditional love in any form. This might manifest as self-destruction, apathy, worrying instead of solving the problems, or simply not being aware of the inherent peace in the present moment. When unconditional love and compassion directed at us (by ourselves or another) hurts, this is usually because the ego is shrivelling under this care.

The ego is a pretty complex thing to explain, since each of our egos manifests in different ways, but the ego will ultimately act in a way that won’t serve your highest interest. Sometimes this causes us harm, sometimes it causes others harm, sometimes it’s more in a neutral grey zone where it just simply doesn’t bring us joy or deep, sustained, fulfillment.

The ego will also try to make you struggle to understand it, because if you can’t understand it, it can’t be healed.

The ego is not something to fear or hate, as it is a natural part of our development as conscious beings. We just need to expose the ego to compassion and love, as it will then gently dissolve and we will shine brighter and brighter .© charlie