What is the ego?

What’s the ego? It’s that “voice” of the mind that’s constantly narrating your experience of life. Now you might be wondering what’s wrong with that, and if you are, I encourage you to spend a day observing your mind and noticing what it says. Have you noticed that it fluctuates wildly between negative thoughts and positive ones? How it can turn literally any situation into a problem and tell you all the ways things are going to go to shit or all the ways you’re a below average human being? That’s the voice of the ego. It’s the little animal nature that’s hell bent on keeping you small, scared and cut off from your infinite potential. The thing is though, we can never get rid of the ego. Some think it needs to be destroyed or completely annihilated and then there’ll be freedom. This is not only impossible, but insane. It’s not the ego that’s the problem. It’s your identification as it, and all the things it has to say about you, that is the problem. You take all those negative beliefs and make an identity out of them, and then a perpetually negative experience of life arises. You become a prisoner in your own head. Dictated to by a small voice that has an uncanny ability to ruin things.

Instead of destroying it though, it’s time to demote it. For so long we let the ego be the CEO of our experience, when really it’s just a hyperactive security guard with a massive chip on its shoulder. It shouldn’t run the show, and it’s time to recognise its foibles and put it back in its place so that the rightful boss can run the show - your true Self, capital S. this part of you is the one qualified to manage. The Self is grounded in silence, in knowingness, intuition, kindness, creativity and love. It sees life not as a problem to be feared or sorted out, but as an endless unfolding of opportunities for growth, joy and peace. THAT’S who you really are.