I used to be into ego identification. I am now recovering. Let me explain.

The whole ego thing had always been something of a confusing concept to me. I grew up learning that having one was not only important, but that you needed to make sure to have a strong and good one, and be able to show that to the world so that others may take you seriously. You didn’t want to overdo it though, too big an ego was frowned upon and not seen as an advantage. Thus it was important to find just the right balance with this, not too much and certainly not too little. So I worked on mine and tried hard to find the right balance.

Over the years I ran into all kinds of definitions and theories on ego, but they all had as a common theme that it was real and something to deal with. As I got into the spiritual community and became a ‘spiritual seeker,’ the ego was often talked about as the ‘enemy,’ or at the very least something to ‘transcend.’ I created a version of ego that looked spiritual, sounded spiritual, but wasn’t spiritual. And that, as I found out to my surprise years later, was simply so, because the ego is neither the enemy nor does it have to be transcended, it has to simply be seen for what it is: A keeper of information on an individuated level to enable us to have a functional human experience. Nothing more and nothing less.

Once this realization hit, the ego and the idea that it is me diminished rapidly. There is a choice to be made here. Do I live my life as my ego or with my ego? Huge difference. With this the questions about how to overcome or transcend it become meaningless. Once I see that, I live with my ego, which makes my individuated functional human experience possible. That’s it. Your whole perspective shifts. Suddenly there is this other ‘me’ that sees ego in its rightful place and function, but I am no longer the ego, rather it is simply a useful aspect of me.

This is freedom. We see the ego doing its job most efficiently, and when we have bouts of ego identification (as I call them), they tend to pass rather quickly because they really don’t feel very good. Ego identification is fear. For when I am my ego, I am trapped in the time bound version of me, the one that is born, does some shit, and dies. And that even sounds depressing. The ego is temporary and when I am identified with it, I desperately try to deny and hide from that fact by making it more real and more permanent through personal experiences, and that is one fearful existence. For when the ego dies, I die. That is why the ego identified state is one of constant alert, after all, we know deep down that it is only temporary and try to hide this fact from ourselves. So we make a lot of noise, and the best noise in ego identification is one of competition with other egos, only second to competition with itself. Thus we spend a lot of time of our lives defending and building up our egos only to find out at some point that it is the least real part of us.

Even entertaining the possibility that we are not our egos, but the one seeing it, changes everything. I don’t have to worry about keeping up my ego/me, doing maintenance on it/me, making sure other people see it/me, always making it/me look its best, etc. Life is no longer about me in that smallest way, instead it is about living here and now, while being able to see this at work in others with the compassion and understanding of a recovering ego addict.

So I invite all of us to have some fun with this idea and choose to stop the ego identification when we notice it. Whenever we feel any kind of negative or positive drama, no matter how mild or severe, we are in full ego identification mode. Dramatic emotions are a hallmark of this state, and can serve as great information and wake up calls. They can either put us deeper to sleep or awaken us. Our choice, as it always is.

Cheers,

Ralf