Can We Overcome the Ego?

As you’ve been reading, many of my daily adventures seem to return to this subject of my relationship with myself - with my ego. But, what is ego? 

There are so many definitions and opinions about it:

• It’s a villain – we should kill it! 

• It’s a wounded child – we should love it. 

• It is to be overcome or integrated. 

• It is confused and just trying to keep us safe – like on the savannah of our ancestors. 

• It is nefarious and has evil intentions with its nasty comments and harsh badgering and judgments. 

This game we play with ego is crazy-making and in my new awareness – every bit of the debate is from EGO. 

The more I try to understand something, to figure out the truth, the more my ego is solidified. 

Ego is the seat of our identity, and it is identified with that identity. 

I AM depressed. I AM damaged. I AM overlooked, unheard, undervalued, or misunderstood. 

These are just the beginning of how we identify with the facts of our lives.  

Eckhart Tolle asks a powerful question here: 

Can you find YOURSELF in any of these identities? What is YOU?

Ego is how we are separated from the rest of the energy soup we’re in, right? It says ‘this is me, that is you.’ 

It relies on that separation to validate itself — to compare and justify — superior or inferior. 

Ego is kind of like Artificial Intelligence. Beautiful and elegant in its concept, but we no longer have any clue how the algorithm works, it is running itself without SOUL to guide it. 

For me, I’m leaning towards Eckhart Tolle’s understanding - that humanity’s collective dysfunction is IDENTIFYING with our minds. 

I’m finding, as I continue to grow and evolve, that I am far less concerned in the mental ministrations of defining it, or clarifying WHAT and WHY ego is, but how we live in SOUL without removing ourselves from society like a monk. 

Awareness and presence are the only tools we have to recognize and experience something OTHER than the ego, the mind.  Soul appears in presence. 

At first, these moments of presence are little flickers. A brief feeling of connection - the breeze, the scent, quiet in our heads. We get a powerful A-HA and are sure that with THIS new awareness, everything will change for us. 

Interestingly, as soon as we experience that moment of clear awareness, we give it to our ego without noticing we’ve done so and it makes a project of it. Starts examining and measuring. 

And, because its apparent goal is self-preservation — it begins drawing us away from that awareness, that powerful insight that could change everything. 

I think the a-ha’s and feelings of connectedness are what life is supposed to be like, the original intent, as it were.

Awareness is life. Those insights and a-ha’s tell me how far away from my soul I’ve become.  This awareness of the interconnectedness, wholeness, and beauty that is life (even the negatives) is what is NORMAL for humans. 

The AI of our ego has just run amok – so much so that we sit and debate the original program — round and round in circles… exactly as the ego likes it. 

Whether its intent is to keep us safe or to keep us down… the fact that we discuss it like this tells us that it IS NOT US. 

Sorry, Eggo, I’ve got your number now! Instead of resisting, fighting, or loving you, I will just seek awareness, I will be aware of you. 

I will seek presence and practice it as much as possible so I may experience LIFE rather than the separateness that you, my friend/fiend, Eggo offer. 

Let the games continue!