The egoic self mistakenly believes it is separate from all others and everything else. This is because it is so fixated upon its associations and identities that it cannot perceive the wholeness that truly exists.
The ego was created to perceive and interact with the “physical” world – just like the eye was created to help us perceive and navigate the physical world. Neither the eye nor the ego is bad. They just have limited perception. If we relied on our eye to give us a complete version of reality, we would be in trouble. Your eye doesn’t see the truck that your ear can hear coming up behind you, or smell the smoke from a nearby fire. The eye, like the ego, has limited perception.
If we judge our ego or make any part of us bad or wrong, we could hold back on our power and our full capabilities out of fear that we could make a mistake or cause harm to another. We need to see the ego for what it is – one aspect of us that was created to interact with the world and we’ve trained it to think small. The ego is not the fullness of who we really are. The ego is the small “i” – not the larger “I am” that is connected to the greater I AM. The ego can’t see beyond what we’ve taught it to believe. Our greater or higher self needs to be in charge, not our ego.
Be loving and patient with your ego. We have fed limited information to our ego and that’s what it believes is real; we’ve defined who we are, listed our limitations, described our version of reality and told it what is and isn’t possible. When we try to do something that doesn’t match those restrictive definitions or if we try to move beyond the limited pictures we’ve shown our ego – it blocks our progress out of fear. Then we get upset and blame the ego for our problems. Our ego tries to keep us safe, to help us navigate life but with the limited information we have fed it, it only feels safe with certain things. To change our lives and move beyond our ego’s current fears and perceived limitations, we don’t need to fault or judge the ego, we just need to educate it and give it better, more expansive information.
If you told a child that the world was a scary place, that terrible things could harm him if he left the security of his safe little home, and then you got angry with that child for screaming and throwing a tantrum when you tried to get him into the car to go somewhere – can you see how you might be the one responsible for the situation, not the child? Rather than push that frightened and resistant child into the car, wouldn’t it make more sense to teach the child different things about himself and the world?
Changing our beliefs and feeding the ego different information can be challenging – especially if we’ve been holding limited or negative perceptions of ourselves for a long time. When we believe something, we gather evidence to support those beliefs. So over the years, we have built quite a sturdy foundation under those beliefs. We have convinced ourselves that what we see in the world and what we experience is THE TRUTH about reality – not just BELIEFS we have about reality.
Live with whatever beliefs make you comfortable and choose how you want to live. You have free will. We all have different beliefs, perspectives, and life experiences. But when you find yourself feeling stuck, blocked or fearful don’t blame your ego. Comfort and educate your ego, challenge your beliefs by recognizing they are just beliefs about reality, not reality itself. Practice thinking better thoughts and look for beliefs that are more empowering, loving, expansive and freeing to better feed yourself and your ego – even if those new beliefs and images don’t feel quite real yet. Continue to focus on your new desired beliefs and begin gathering evidence to support those beliefs as the truth. Then your ego can also serve you better rather than create fear-based obstacles for you. You’re in this together.