Egos

"The ego is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear."- Deepak Chopra.

The ego is often blamed for getting us into many bad situations, and there is a mountain of evidence to prove that this is true. What is the ego? It is a bit tricky to define as the word has different meanings depending on whether we are talking about psychology, philosophy, spirituality, or everyday life. In the everyday sense that I am writing about here, the ego is your "mental sense of 'me'". It is the story you tell yourself about who you are, what you are worth, how other people see you, and what kind of person you believe yourself to be. In many spiritual traditions, the ego is also described as the part of us that experiences itself as separate from everyone else. "We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us." - unknown.

I have been struggling with my ego for years and years without knowing what it was and how it sabotages me. I like to think of myself as being a capable individual. Someone who can learn a variety of new skills and then perform them at an acceptable level. This self-concept has served me fairly well as, from the outside, I seem like I have a lot of self-confidence. The downside of tying competence to my identity is that when my inexperience is exposed in front of other people, my ego can interpret it as incompetence.

Reality - I do not know how to do this yet.

My ego translation - Maybe I am not as capable as I thought.

Then comes the self-judgment about my intelligence, my age, my lack of focus, my laziness, and my worthlessness to society. If you also tend to do this, I found some advice:

"How To Manage A Thought Spiral:
Thought spirals are about control and a lack of trust that we can handle the unknown. In the face of uncertainty, our Ego will begin to search for answers to 'control' our fear. Yet all emotion is looking for safety, so a better way to deal with the unknown is to build solid self-trust by first exploring (not fighting) the source of your fear and offering it compassion instead of judgement. When we trust that we'll be there for ourselves regardless of the outcome, the unknown loses its power, and we regain ours.' - Tess Rene.

My ego has some favorite defenses that it uses to protect my sense of self. Let's see if you recognize them from my writing. 1) It likes to find explanations to say why something happened as it did. 2) It likes to intellectualize by trying to say "Let's understand what's happening here." (If it did not do this, many of these posts would never get written). 3) It uses self-deprecation and helps me to point out some of my flaws before someone else voices them. 4) It primes me for retreat so I can leave the situation before catastrophic failure ensues. Your ego may use some of these strategies, but if not, there are many others to choose from.

Sigmund Freud did not classify the ego as being necessarily bad. He thought that a strong ego could be viewed as good since it was the part of your psyche that negotiates between your desires, your values, and reality. A healthy ego helps you function realistically.

Most people do not use the word ego in quite the same way Freud did. Instead, they are usually referring to our psychological investment in a particular image we've built for ourselves and how the ego fights to maintain it. "Instead of fighting the world, kill your ego." - unknown. And, "The sage battles his own ego, the fool battles everyone else's." - attributed to a Sufi Proverb. This ego is our self-concept or our ego-constructed identity.

The ways that you identify yourself can be positive or negative. Smart, responsible, a failure, a victim, independent, unattractive, successful, the funny one, etc. All these may be true to a certain extent, and truth about yourself is always good to know. The ego, though, does not always operate from a place of truth; our emotions can distort the story we tell ourselves. "When you notice your ego creating drama, ask yourself, what am I avoiding in this moment?" - unknown.

Our ego-constructed identity can sometimes drift far from reality. "The ego says, 'I shouldn't have to suffer,' and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it." Eckhart Tolle.

The belief that we should never have to suffer can become one of the ways the ego protects itself. An ego can be distorted in either direction. We can construct an inflated image of ourselves or an unnecessarily diminished one. Neither is humility. Humility requires seeing ourselves as accurately as we can. Humility comes from having an accurate self-perception. It is knowing "I am good at this but terrible at that. Or that criticism is valid but that one is nonsense." It is being able to find out information about yourself without immediately turning it into a verdict about your self-worth. The more secure your ego becomes, the less you will have to defend it. "A truly humble person never behaves like a teacher; he will listen, and, whenever his opinion is requested, he responds humbly. In other words, he replies like a student. He who believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism." - attributed to St. Paisios.

The goal, then, is not to annihilate your ego; it is to develop an ego secure enough that it does not require constant protection. "What is often best is to slow down and spend time developing a clearer and more informed perspective. Ego rushes and reacts, but peace moves purposefully and gently." - Yung Pueblo.

This has been a heavy subject, which probably means my ego has been triggered. 😄 Luckily, there is an antidote. "Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die; it cannot exist anymore." - Osho. If you need me, I'll be watching a comedy.

Love and Hope,

Big Sky Baby