Life on earth is terrifying for the ego. We don’t know what’s going to happen the next moment. Will we survive or will we be killed? The ego, which is a person’s sense of self-importance, lives in constant fear of death and seeks to protect itself at all costs. Until we get to the essence of this unconscious ego fear, we will be forever living in survival terror. We go into our minds to deal with the immensity of this fear. We can only fully open to the heart of love, when we touch the root source of terror in the human being.
The ego lives in terror and it hates living in terror. It will do anything to avoid feeling fear. The ego builds its identity around avoiding fear, and this is where the ego’s bias for self-deception stems.
In order to control our environment, the ego seeks definitions. By defining ourselves as one kind of person, we push into our shadow everything else that we pretend we are not. We pretend we are not afraid and we build an adaptive identity, or mind-made sense of self, which is not who we truly are. Instead, this defined self is the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Who we truly are is beyond words. The ego values and seeks mental clarity and understanding. So this mind-made sense of self can only ever be a map and not the reality the map was modeled upon.
Since the ego feels separate and small, it is constantly insecure and asking, “Am I good enough? Can I manifest my destiny? Will other people like me?” These are just a small sampling of the many insecure questions the ego incessantly asks.
Ego Distortion
When I say I’m one way and not another way, I often deny the places where what I’m saying may be inaccurate. For example, I define myself as honest and heart-centered. To define myself this way, I also define myself as not dishonest and head-centered. The truth is I am as honest as possible, and sometimes I deceive myself and sometimes I deceive others. I’m as heart-centered as I’m able to be right now, but it’s just a fragment of what is possible for me to fully embody. When I define myself, I limit myself. When I dedicate myself to only speaking the truth as I know it, and keep looking for where I’m full of shit, then I counteract the constant self-deception game of the ego.
Ego Inflation
This is the tendency in the ego to make oneself appear bigger or more important to cover up insecurity. All arrogant patterns and ego posturing come from inflation. All attempts to seek power over another come from this pattern of inflation. All inflation is an attempt to cover up the deflation we actually feel more deeply underneath the inflated pattern.
Ego Deflation
This is the tendency in the ego to make oneself appear less than one is. It’s a way the ego clings to our identity. All insecure behaviors, like putting oneself below another and giving away power, come from deflation. There’s an underlying fear that we are not good enough or there’s something fundamentally wrong with us. This fear drives the ego, as it is core to a separate sense of self.
Right Size of the Ego
This is the way the being relates. We are no bigger and no smaller than we are. The being is fine just as it is. As with the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” inflation is too big, deflation is too small, but the size we actually are is just right. When we embrace the “just rightness” of who we are, self-acceptance is born and ease of living is possible.
The Greatest Ego Pattern is to Try to End the Ego Pattern
What keeps the ego alive is its pursuit of perfection, which it can never achieve. As we seek to perfect ourself, we enter a hellish torture chamber in which we seek to change our own nature. We may be seeking improvement, enlightenment, or anything, which drives us to be different from who we are. All these seemingly noble pursuits have an insidious pattern of trying to change oneself, undermining our true nature. This act is as self destructive as a snake biting its own tail. Like in the story of the “Ugly Duckling,” we can not make ourselves ducks if we are swans. A tree can not become a vine. It must be what it is. When we give up trying to change ourselves, then we are truly being and not playing with self-deception. It is an egregious fallacy to think we can change our fundamental nature. We were born to be the way we are. Why try to tamper with what is destined and meant to be? Yes, we can increase our skills and capacities; however, who we are is always going to be who we are.
Slay Your Bullshit Everyday
When you take the sword of truth and slay all the bullshit in your mind, yourself, and your life, only then do you see yourself and life clearly. Be willing to be completely honest with yourself. Be willing to sacrifice all you’ve held as sacred, for the sake of truth. How much pretense, ignorance, and deceit are you willing to tolerate in yourself and your life? When you have no self-deceit, your world becomes honest and chivalrous. All your actions become an expression of the authenticity in your soul.
The Blind Spot
The biggest fault of perception occurs in our blindspot. Of course, we know in our visual field our blindspot is literally where we can not see. It’s common knowledge that our blind spot includes everything to the left and to the right, above and below of what we can see. Interestingly enough, there’s a blind spot even directly in front of where we are looking. When we label something and think we know what it is in our minds, we stop perceiving what is actually there. There are blindspots embedded in nearly every part of our visual field. Psychologically, we often naively think we have no blindspot. What we perceive as reality appears to be the whole of reality, when all we have to go by is our own perception. Yet, we often can’t see how we are biasing our perceptions to meet our expectations. A loving and neutral observer, who can practice very good empathy with you, is often the clearest judge of where you are not accurately perceiving. Empathy is an excellent way to address these blindspots.
Empathy’s Role in Addressing the Blindspot
When we truly enter into empathy for another, we begin to see life through their eyes. It gives us a window into existence outside of our own narrow frame. Through empathy, we can see ourself through another’s eyes. We can also see the world, as best we can, through their lens.
True empathy allows us to see things from others’ points of view, as best we can. But even with empathy, we are always looking out through our own eyes. So we can never get away from our “self.” Empathy, as in acting a role for a performance, gives us a taste of what it is like to be another. However, both empathy and acting are short of the full incarnation as another. When we access our experience from other lifetimes, we are able to get a sense of what it was like to be another individual. Yet, we still had our same soul and spirit all along. So even with these experiences, we can’t fully experience the other. When we use our imaginative and open heart to fully enter the other as they are right now, we are capable of a profound kind of knowing of them through direct experience. This kind of empathy gives you tremendous information into your own blindspots. By perceiving life as another perceives it, we can evaluate the ways in which they perceive more or less accurately than us.
Love includes all perspectives which are good and true. Love does not slant or narrow our perspective. Love sees through hatred. Love doesn’t discriminate against hatred, but it also doesn’t believe the pseudo truths that hatred tries to shove down our throats. In order to love, it’s good to know hate. When we know what it feels like to hate ourselves, only then can we have compassion and teach others how to love themselves.
Embracing our Innate Nature
When we embrace our innate nature, we align more deeply with our being. We get attached to our own story, when we believe the ego’s self-deception game. We believe ourselves to be a good judge of what is going on with us. Unless we view ourselves objectively, we are distorted in our perception. Others are better judges of our character than we are, unless we are willing to be objective with ourself.
We are Innocent
As children, we are born innocent. If you’ve ever witnessed a birth, could you really believe that a baby is born into sin? When we feel the inherent nature of a baby, it’s like beholding the nature of the ocean or the sun. These forces are innocent and beyond any reproach or corruption. The human being has the capacity for great good and great evil, as we know from looking out in the world. The love that is inherent in the human being can overcome any evil. Evil is a necessity to have freedom. Without the choice to be evil, we have no freedom to act from, when we choose to embody the good.
Self-Loyalty
The ethic of self-loyalty means we have no part of ourself left outside of our love. No feeling can be too intense or dark for someone who truly embraces self-loyalty. We are willing to feel anything at any time and stay true to ourselves in all situations. We will not abandon the truth of ourselves in the moment for pursuit or attachment to an outcome or anything external. We do not divide against ourselves for anyone else.
Divisive Energy
Divisive energy stands at the temple gate robbing us of our immense treasures. Divisive energy is the energy behind division. Gossip, judgment, condemnation, and hatred are all forms of divisive energy. To let ourselves be pulled off our path by the energy of division is a crime of the soul. Yet, we all commit this crime until we learn how to guard our temple and stay true to the way of the open heart. Open hearted love does not ever divide against the self or another. Open hearted love stays true to the whole and leaves nothing out of its loving arms. Open hearted love stays true to the whole and leaves nothing out of its loving arms.
Perception/ Filtering Bias
When you stand in one position physically, and look at life from this position, you become biased to this position. The vantage point tells you things about life. When you always live in the countryside, it can be difficult to identify with people who live in the city or vice versa. It’s always good to take a variety of perspectives. It’s good to visit other countries and cultures to get their take on life. When we see life from outside our own cultural conditioning, it offers us perspective.
The Petty Ego
The ego is petty and small. It makes mountains out of molehills. When we see things in the right perspective and at the right size, this helps us realize how things really are. If you don’t take the ego personally, it has no hold over you. The ego takes hold of you by making you feel bad that you have an ego. This is just simply preposterous because to be human is to have an ego. However, we don’t need to identify with the ego.
The Ego is Not Rational
The being is rational in an intuitive way. The ego is not rational. The ego irrationally links fear with certain actions. It uses rationalization to defend its absurd positions and hides behind twisted logic to justify its fear. At its root, the ego is like a scared little child who will use anything to defend and justify its fear.
Don’t Take the Ego Personally
The excellent thing about the ego is that it’s universal. Every human being has an ego. It’s no big deal. Don’t take your personal experience personally. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s got everything to do with being a human being at this time on earth. Whenever you beat yourself up silently in private, know everyone else does the same thing. We may have slightly different reasons why we are messed up, but we all feel separate and cut off when we are identified in the ego. So it really is no big deal.
The Ego’s Lover
Our rightful identity in creation is the ego’s lover. When we love our ego, then we are no longer absorbed in its grips. As the lover of our ego, we have freedom to act in any way we see fit. When we are trapped in the ego’s grips, we are not free. Owning this superb identity as the ego’s lover affords us the freedom we truly desire. Love your ego for the rest of your life, and allow yourself to get trapped in it sometimes. When you don’t mind being absorbed by the ego, it has no hold over you. When you are trying not to get absorbed by the ego, notice the one who is trying. This is actually the ego – and it got you again. Love all the brilliant machinations of the ego. It’s so good at trapping us all, we just have to marvel at its many wonders.
The ego’s best role is in dedicated surrender to our deeper being. When we become the most loving version of ourselves, we reclaim our identity from selfishness. We become a loving ego. Through opening up to love, and bravely surrendering to the divine, we become love. When the ego surrenders to the service of the being, nothing inside of us opposes love. We become an ever evolving expression of the divine. Embrace your ego as your being. Or, as your ego, surrender and dedicate yourself to serve the whole. You are love!
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