The False Power of Ego

What I have learned about ego is that it is not always what we think it is. Our ego's are our attachment to our ideas and beliefs about ourselves that we project on to others. And, it is also our attachment to any form outside of ourselves. This gives us a misconception about life. Most of us identify ourselves with our looks, our jobs, our family, etc... But who would we be if that were to disappear?

When we get up in the morning, look at the person in the mirror and groom ourselves to go out in public, who are we doing it for? ourselves or others? What are the thoughts that run through our heads? Are they too positive (egotistical) or too negative (victim mentality)? Then as we go about our day how many of the choices we make are made to maintain the image we have of ourselves? Where does our ego's get in the way?

Just think of all the areas where we judge ourselves as either inferior to others or superior to them.  This is our ego jockeying for position. If we can acknowledge that, then we can move beyond ego—simply by recognizing it. The ego cannot stand when we acknowledge it. When we know our true self, we can let go of our ego.

How do we find our true self? Well one thing I know is that we can not define ourselves through the way other people see us. We can not let other people define us. We have to find out for ourselves who we are apart from our ego. We have to truly believe that we alone are enough and no thing can define us, not a job, not our spouse, not our family, not even our looks. Ego is a false sense of self. A mental image of who we are.

When we are constantly feeling disrespected or that we are being treated badly, we have to ask ourselves why? It is not possible for people to hurt us, disrespect us, or even treat us badly, it is only our perception of the situation. We give it meaning, and we choose what that meaning is, they can only give us their observation or what their perception is of us. When we feel like we are being disrespected, criticized or treated badly we have to think to ourselves, "That is their perception of me, not mine", and then leave it at that. If we try to get approval from others, what we are really trying to do is get approval from ourselves.

Our choices that we make have to be genuine expressions of who we are and in alignment with what we want from life. Our choices, should not take us away from the person we really are, into an image fabricated by our mind or our society. The question we should be asking ourselves is, "What are the choices I am facing now?" and whether they are big or small, we need to explore which are the ego-driven and which represent those of our true self.

A lot of what we think of as ego is based on fear—of not being good enough, of not meeting others' expectations. How much of our relationships are based on what we think other people expect from us? Are we playing a role at home, at work and/or in the world? Are we assigning roles to others? Just think of what would happen if we became aware of these roles and made them less important. Then when we loved someone, we would love them for who they really are and not for who we thought they were, and other people would be able to love us for who we are and not who they thought we were. Our love should be enough and we should not expect anything in return.

If we could learn to acknowledge our ego when we see it come up and not place blame on others for not feeding our egos, then we would be able to just enjoy our journey through life and not try so hard to get to a destination.