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May 03
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Each one of us has the constant chatter of thoughts in our heads. This persistent little voice is known as the ego. The ego is a manifestation of the individual self in the physical world, and it is the aspect of us that exists solely in the realm of thought. The ego is our conscious identity of who we believe we are, and it is the part of us that interacts with the world. It is the ego that expresses individuality (separateness) and gives us the sense of me, my, mine, and myself.
The word ego comes from the Latin form, meaning “I”, and it is the I-ness in us that creates the sense of separateness from the rest of the world. Eckhart Tolle, who is a spiritual teacher, says “The word “I” embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending on how it is used.” When most people use the word “I”, it is a misperception of who you are, and it is a false sense of identity. This occurs because most people make the mistake of identifying themselves with the little “i”, the ego or False Self, instead of the big “I” or the Higher Self ( the Soul) which is connected to God. Some spiritual teachers call this false sense of identity an illusion, but this word denies the reality of our experiences. An illusion has no existence, but a delusion, on the other hand, is a convoluted and twisted way of perceiving Truth. Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only in to the reality of time and space but also into human nature, referred to this false sense of identity as “an optical illusion of consciousness”.
The ego is not a physical entity; rather it is a mental concept of who we think we are. This mental concept is very powerful, and for many people, it controls the realities they experience. The ego acts like a defense attorney, and it will supply us with any evidence that we need to keep our psyche convinced that all our actions are justified. Much of the content of the ego has been repressed in unconscious form, and it manifests as distorted thinking patterns. The ego uses these distorted thinking patterns to deceive us into believing that we are helpless victims who are unable to create our experiences. The ego perceives its main job to ensure our survival, but this is part of the fallacy. The ego is not concerned with our survival, but its own, and it protects itself by controlling us from changing our realities.
Although most people know they have an ego, most are unaware that they are being controlled by it, and this occurs because they identify self with ego which is the focal point of their sense of self. This identification with the ego, the little “i”, as self is the root of their suffering, anger, misery, frustration, unhappiness and all other negative emotions.
The identification with the ego occurs during early childhood, thus the ego is a byproduct of our upbringing. It constantly monitors our relationship to everything in our environment. It observes who we are in relation to people, places, and objects. Once we develop the skill of language, the ego catalogues our relationship to our environment using words. In relation to our parents, the ego identifies us as “the child”. In relation to the size of our parents, we are identified as “small”. These observations become our identity. Everything that is observed serves to create a label to identify the self. This labeling is the ego’s way of creating a human “identity”, beginning with “i” during our childhood. As we grow older, the original i-thought attracts other thoughts to itself, and it becomes identified with a gender, the body, possessions, a nationality, race, religion, profession. Other things the “i” identifies with are roles such as mother, father, husband, wife, opinions, likes and dislikes.
We all have roles, but the more seriously we take our roles, the more we disconnect from our Higher Selves. Even fairly beneficial roles are subject to this. Take a kind woman who defines herself as a loving mother. What happens when all her children grow up and begin to want independence? The stronger the role, the harder it is for the ego to let go. In the ego’s efforts to hold on to a part of itself, it might turn the same loving mother into a controlling tyrant. She might unconsciously retard her children’s growth into independent adults so they will always need her and be by her side. Or she might turn into a bitter, lonely, complainer.
Roles are not restricted to the individual. Some egos find their strongest identity as part of a group. These groups can range from violent street gangs to a weekly book club, from our religion to our race and our nationality. Another thing the ego identifies with comes from our perceived childhood ‘traumas”. These traumas are “perceived” because they are based upon our interpretation when we were a child. When we were no more than a child, a simple and perhaps insignificant incident occurred, and we came to an erroneous conclusion about it that was to become the pattern for our life. Something was said or done that hurt our feelings and rattle our identities. As a result of that upsetting experience, we arrived at some fundamental misconception about ourselves, and that deduction became our primary ego identity that determines who we are BEing and shapes our reality concept.
Even though we made this conclusion from the view point of a child, we usually have carried our reactions of this early painful experience with us into adulthood to some degree or another. The memories may now appear as constant anxiety, feelings of rejection, low self-esteem, and inescapable fear of abandonment, depression and pessimism. We may feel powerless to exert any control over the events of our own lives. We may feel unworthy of love or success or vibrant health. We may feel that nothing good can or ever will happen to us.
Identities
Although we have a primary identify that we created from our fundamental misconception of an event that occur in our childhood, we have many kinds of identities. An identity is any declaration or deeply rooted determinations about what we are and what we are not, and what we are capable of and not capable of. Most identities are in the form I AM (whatever) or I AM NOT (whatever) or I CAN or I CAN’T; however, all identities are not equal. For example, I AM cold or I AM angry are identities, but they are fleeting physical experiences and easy to change.
While there are various types of identities including roles such a parent, daughter, father, doctor, teacher, it is the Essence identities that control our lives. Essence identities are those that affirm or deny our fundamental spiritual essence and determine our self-image and self-worth. Just as there are negative and positive emotions, we also have negative and positive identities.
Examples of positive essence identities include I can, I AM able, I AM worthy, I AM deserving, I AM strong, I AM smart, and I AM good to name a few. These types of identities produce happiness, joy, prosperity, and inner peace.
Examples of negative essence identities include I can’t, I AM unable, I AM unworthy, I AM less than, I AM stupid, I AM weak, I AM not good enough, I AM bad, to name a few. Our negative essence identities are based in fear and they are the cause of our problems, conflicts, poverty, and suffering in life. Most of our negative identities were created to help us survive something that, at one time, made us feel unsafe or insecure either emotionally or physically. Psychologists call these mechanisms “ego defenses”. These ego defenses built a fence around your heart (body, psyche) to keep it safe from harm.
These essence identities become our perception of who we are (our self-image) and determine who we are BEing. Who we are BEing affects our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and determine what we experience in our realities. While much of the negative information, observations, opinions, attitudes, and “perceived traumas” the ego absorbed during our young formative years created our identities, most of it is no longer needed.
If we are to live a prosperous life, we need to turn our attention from the past and begin to dis-create our negative essence identities. This can start when we are able to consciously view our negative essence identities from a spiritual witness perspective, but to do this, we have to awaken.
Most of us remain asleep and thereby in a state of unconsciousness with little, if any, awareness. Many of us have heard about the concept of being “born again”, but most people do not know the true meaning. Well, the true meaning of that is awakening to our true SPIRIT-ual nature and living from our Higher Selves, and that involves surrendering the illusions of the ego.
Namaste,
RC
