Beyond Ego — the Joy of Being

The human body has an Ego attached to it. It’s an aspect of the human form. And the Ego is a curious beast. Most of us don’t realize its existence yet are at its mercy.

Photo by Slav Romanov on Unsplash

The Ego is the shell of thoughts, beliefs, memories, and emotions wrapped around your soul essence. It is part of the body-brain mechanics. The Ego can be unbalanced or balanced.

The Ego is your ‘me-ness’ to whom experiences are happening. Once new experiences have registered in your brain, your Ego assimilates them and adds them to a storehouse of pleasure, pain, fear, and desire accumulated since infancy.

Ego is who we tell ourselves we are without question or who others have told us we are. The Ego is what comes after the “I am.” I am smart. I am pretty. I am fat. I am American, etc.

The Ego is necessary for the function of integrating all kinds of experiences. But it is prone to go haywire — to become unbalanced.

Today, we more often use the word Ego to describe someone full of themselves. Someone who is an “egomaniac” is self-absorbed and obsessed with getting more for themselves despite the costs to the people around them. Think TRUMP!

Today, we usually associate the word ‘ego’ with arrogance, pride, or selfishness. Egotism is the common term for extreme self-centeredness. However, our Ego is composed of many facets. It magnifies both our best and worst traits.

The Ego’s genuine function is to help you build a robust and dynamic self. But the unbalanced Ego often gets in the way of our happiness. It is overly preoccupied with survival, accumulation, and success — and works to build an identity that sets us above everyone else and helps us fit in.

The unbalanced Ego presents our ‘false’ self — the person we become so others will like us, admire us, and accept us.

Our unbalanced Ego is also at play when we find ourselves wrapped up in obsessive thoughts about the past or the future. How someone wronged us — or will do so in the future. What we wished we had, or will say, in retort. How miserably we failed at something. How much ‘they’ let us down. How much we wish for the perfect companion to be truly happy.

The unbalanced Ego tends to be equally fixated on the future as well as the past. But not so much in the present moment.

This is part five of a series of articles about the human Ego.

Click here for article one, wherein I ponder:

• How the true self is awareness
• A tale of the two mallard ducks
• The Ego’s need for identity and possessions
• The Ego’s exaggerated version of itself

Click here for article two, wherein I elaborate on:

• How the ‘unbalanced’ Ego is such a curious beast
• The Egomaniac
• The Narcissist
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) — all hail Trump.
• Role-playing by the Ego
• Comparing yourself to others
• Money probably won’t change the way you feel about yourself
• Identifying self-worth with the body beautiful

Click here for article three, wherein I contemplate:

• The human Ego gone haywire
• The ‘unbalanced’ Ego of the ‘collective’ group
• Joining a like-minded collective group
• Realizing that your unbalanced collective Ego is insane

Click here for article four, where I explain:

• The human Ego in balance
• Our connection to Universal Consciousness
• Having the right amount of heart
• Don’t be aggressive — be assertive
• Clever versus Wise
• Turn your Ego into an ally
• Mindfulness
• The fluid nature of self and the Ego
• Some suggestions to help balance your Ego

If you’re all caught up, let’s consider how to….

Move beyond Ego to just Being

First, learn to distinguish between the unbalanced and balanced Ego.

Questions to see if your unbalanced Ego is more at play:

• Do I often have intrusive thoughts?
• Do I often let my emotions consume me?
• Do I tend to overthink things?
• Are self-limiting beliefs an issue for me?
• Do I highly value material possessions?
• Do I get upset when things don’t go my way?
• Do I care about what people think of me and how I look to others?
• Do I only care about myself most of the time?

Questions to see if your balanced Ego is more at play:

• Do I often get an intuitive feeling about things and follow what my inner essence is telling me?
• Do I accept myself for who I really am — including all my flaws?
• Do I tend to go with the flow?
• Do I often feel relaxed even when things don’t go the way I planned?
• Do I know I can create and be anything I please?
• Do I stand firm in who I am even if others might not accept me?
• Do I find happiness from experiences rather than material possessions?
• Do I love helping others?

Next, work to bring your Ego into balance

For example, let’s say you’re at work and have a deadline to make a certain amount of money. The deadline passed, and you did not earn as much money as you hoped. You might feel very angry, disappointed, and like the universe is working against you. This is your unbalanced Ego playing with you. You’re letting your emotions get the best of you.

Take a moment and do some mindful breathwork to help ground yourself.

At this point, try to bring your inner ‘knowing’ into the situation. What is your intuition telling you? Understand that there is most likely a deeper purpose behind this opportunity not working out and that, in time, everything you want will come to you.

It takes a lot of practice to tame your unbalanced Ego and look at things from a higher perspective. But trust me, it’s worth it. Life will feel much lighter when you understand your emotions and why you feel the way you do while also bringing divine wisdom into the situation.

Now, move beyond Ego — realize the joy of Being

The unbalanced Ego tends to equate ‘having’ with ‘Being’ — I have; therefore, I am. And the more I have, the more I am.

Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away (including their perceived beautiful appearance) that ‘no thing’ ever had anything to do with who they are. As we approach death, owning things is exposed as ultimately meaningless.

In the last moments of their life, many people also realize that while they were looking throughout their lives for a complete sense of self, what they were really looking for — their Being — had always been there. But it had been obscured mainly by their Ego’s identification with things.

Whatever the Ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for Being. You can value and care for things. But when you get attached to something, you will know it’s the Ego that seeks the attachment.

Forgetting to just ‘Be’

What may seem like a ‘voice in your head’ that never stops talking, is the stream of constant and uncontrollable thoughts. When every thought absorbs your complete attention — when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions accompanying it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion — you are totally in the grip of an unbalanced ego.

The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this, or I am that — but simply, I am.

In most cases, when you say “I,” it is Ego speaking — not you. The Ego’s “I” consists of thoughts and emotions, and a bundle of memories that you identify as “me and my story.”

Your Ego consists of habitual roles you play without knowing it. It consists of ‘collective’ identifications such as nationality, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance.

It also contains ‘personal’ identifications — not only with possessions but also with opinions, external appearance, long-standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others — as success or failure.

The only thing that matters is this: Can I sense my essential ‘Beingness’ — the ‘I Am,’ in the background of my life at all times?

To be more accurate, can I sense the ‘I Am that I Am’ at this moment? Or am I losing myself in what happens — losing myself in the material world?

Can I feel my essential Being as consciousness itself? Perhaps it’s time to go stand on a rock next to a waterfall and just be.