How to be wise to the tricks of your ego.
How to be wise to the tricks of your ego.
"Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it." Ram Dass
Our ego is a useful tool that can get power hungry. While we need our egoic mind to do things like book a plane ticket, organize a spreadsheet or plan a party, we have allowed our ego to take total control. Often our egoic mind creates elaborate narratives (usually negative), worrying, thinking unhealthy thoughts and imagining worst case scenarios.
Our ego is the part of us that loves having an identity. Good or bad doesn't matter to the ego. You can tell when your ego is running the show when you find yourself feeling like the following examples: a victim, a martyr, extra special, extra worthless, sicker than most, richer than most, poorer than everyone, uglier, better looking, stronger, weaker, better, worse, separate, and strongly identified with your opinions and beliefs.
We may even think we are on to our egoic mind's tricks telling ourselves "well I meditate, observe my mind and know all about the ego so I can't be fooled." Think again! The ego can be quite crafty!
Here are a few tricks the ego comes up with to stay relevant and strongly identified.
Tricks of your ego around spirituality:
Trick 1: You should always (or at least most often) feel happy if you are living a spiritual life.
Reality: All feelings are important aspects of the human experience.
Trick 2: You can’t grow without lots of pain and suffering.
Reality: Suffering can help point you to where love and light is needed but it isn't absolutely necessary once you learn how the mind works (Believing your thoughts as fact are often the cause of your pain).
Trick 3: The mind knows the truth.
Reality: True knowing is deeper than the mind. It is found in pure awareness.
So how can be be wise to our ego’s tricks?
1. Observe your thoughts. Take note of patterns in both what you are thinking and saying and your current life circumstances.
2. Return to the present moment again and again.
3. Feel your feelings without adding a narrative or believing the input from your mind.
4. Question the thoughts that cause you pain.
5. Make friends with the present moment (stop resisting).
6. Be grateful for a chance to unlearn the conditioning of the mind.
7. Find time to be internally still and silent so that the ego's language becomes easy to spot.
8.Don’t trust everything you think to be absolute fact.
May you use observe your ego, using it to co-create a joyful life with the Universes and seeing that all control the ego thinks it has is ultimately an illusion of it's own making!