Meet Your Ego

The voice in your head that's constantly building a delusional sense of self

For as long as you have had breath in your lungs, you have also had a master manipulator pulling the strings in your mind controlling every which way you move, every identifying thought and belief you think, even distorting your perception of reality to ensure its own survival.

You’re probably hearing the voice of this manipulator in your head right now—are they telling you to get ready to read a bunch of bullshit? Or perhaps, trying to convince you that this is just another thought-piece from some new-age, existentialist hippie, and definitely isn’t worth the time it would take to skim through the rest of this page, let alone giving any real thought to the ideas you’re about to read.

That, my dear friends, is your ego. Throwing thoughts at you disguised as your own internal beliefs to ensure that you don’t recognize the truth about what’s going on inside your head, because it knows that if you were to see the full reality completely unfiltered, it’s reign of control would come to an end.

If you would dare follow me down this rabbit hole, you must first establish a new perception of the voice in your head, that way we can proceed free of its interruptions.

First, think to yourself ‘this is who I am,’ hear the voice speak these words in your head. Let more thoughts flow, witness it all but stay entirely uninvolved. Now, give that voice in your head its own little body; a stickman, an anime character, your own bitmoji even! But every thought that floats through your head should come from that little imagined being’s mouth.

Stick with me here because things are about to get a little… “out there.”

This is your inner roommate, the voice you’ve given a body inside of your mind—this is your ego. But, it is not You. Your essence, your being, your awareness, your consciousness, the inner elusive soul that makes you You is something else entirely. That You is the one hearing your thoughts, feeling your emotions, experiencing your life, but none of these things are You.

Contrary to the popular cliche, you are not the sum of your experiences, you are not the collection of your habits or thoughts. Those are things that condition or nurture your ego, your inner roommate, but the mysterious identity or sense of self that everyone spends their young years searching for cannot be found in the experiences of life or the emotions of your heart. It simply is You, no matter the environment.

To test this theory, let’s assume someone has asked you, who are you? Or even better, the dreaded “tell me about yourself” that plagues our dating site inboxes. You might answer: “I’m 26, I work as a writer, I love animals and traveling.”

Now, does that mean you weren’t You at 25? At 12?Was there ever an age that you couldn’t sense your Being? Will you still be You when you’re 73?

The same goes with every other identifying label you might produce—would you still be You if there were no animals around to be loved? If the entire world went into lockdown and you couldn’t even travel around your own hometown… would you still be You?

Stick with me here, and don’t answer just yet.

Feel the thought. Chew on it, let it float around, give it a little love, a little benefit of the doubt. And if your inner roommate is rushing to answer for you, finish this article before you give them your attention.

You cannot be what you have, and you cannot have what you are.

At a young age, we are taught our names. We are assigned a gender and sexual identity, we develop and receive acknowledgement for different skills as we grow, we celebrate ownership of major purchases—we buy a house, we become a homeowner.

From the moment we are born, we’re taught to constantly find identity in the things around us, outside of us. When the environment changes, we find something new that is familiar and enjoyable enough to continue feeding our identity.

We develop this instinct to identify with thoughts, things, people, environments, likes and dislikes in an attempt to gain some illusion of control over our life. In the process, rather than experiencing life in the present moment, we are constantly fighting with the things we’re pulling our identity from to fit our needs.

The ego arises when the consciousness, the formless, begins identifying or mixing up with form.

You might say “I’m a country girl, I like the quiet, I feel my best at home or in nature, alone.” If that is your identity, anytime life takes you out of nature’s serenity, you can’t be happy. You’ll feel as though you’ve lost sight of who you are because the environment is feeding your identity and without the desired environment, you’re ego will throw a tantrum until you return to your comfort zone, all while telling you that it’s all a matter of who you are at your core Being, rather than what your ego has been conditioned to like.

This is what happens when you give an external item like scenery the power to determine who you are—an entire realm of life becomes unreachable, unenjoyable. Instead of being free to live as yourself in every moment, you have allowed your mind to place limits on your Being.

The truth is, when we allow our thoughts to filter life for us, the reality we experience is no longer the real thing. Instead we perceive life through a distorted lens made up of our past experiences and individual biases, everything becomes personal and warped.

When you allow the ego to run things, you will always live trying to avoid the pain of your past or reaching the expectations you have for the future, never allowed to rest in the present moment.

Letting go of the delusions of identification, attachment, and control are the first steps in taking back power from the ego. And yet, you won’t until you are ready.

As long as you don’t recognize those thought forms within yourself, as long as they remain unconscious, you will believe in what they say; you will be condemned to acting out those unconscious thoughts,, condemned to seeking and not finding—because when those thought forms operate, no possession, place, person, or condition will ever satisfy you.

If you enjoyed going down this rabbit hole, it doesn’t stop here! Stay tuned for an endless supply of philosophical, psychological, spiritual discovery through the inspiration of literature.

If everything you read meant nothing to you, remember me when you’re ready.

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This article was inspired by A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle, click this link to purchase on Amazon.