“If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It’s very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” – Deepak Chopra

What Is The Ego?

Whenever we give our power to anything outside of ourselves, we become susceptible to feelings of anguish, anxiety, depression, and stress. Usually, the cause can be found when your ego has become attached and strongly identified with the outside world. Your ego is essentially your self-image, it’s the mask you display to society. Your ego only survives by constantly seeking approval from that which it wants to identify with. Therefore all the unhappiness you experience comes from the constant battle of your ego seeking approval in the outside world.

You can feel your ego when you become attached and live your world by identifying your identity through the thoughts of:

Praise and Blame: Whenever you receive praise if you are not aware you will become puffed up in your own ego. Whenever the outside world does not go according to the way you would like it, you learn to put your blame on it.

Gain and Loss: Your ego is only concerned with what’s in it for me. When you gain something, you are never happy because then you are only worried about losing it.

Pleasure and Pain: The ego wants to only experience pleasure, but the only pleasure it can receive is momentary in nature because it needs external things to satisfy its desires. Superficial pleasures are always accompanied by the same amount of pain. At the time we receive extreme pleasure in drinking too much wine with friends, only to regret it the next day.

Fame and Shame: Since your ego only survives by seeking approval from the outside world it concerns itself with becoming happy through fame. You become famous then you worry about not doing anything that will bring you shame. You are never truly at ease with yourself because you worry about how others perceive you and whether it will bring you fame or shame.

When you believe that your identity is your ego, you will only live your world in reactive mode. You will live your life only in direct relation to how you are affected by gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and shame. Living like this you will never be living in reality; you are only experiencing this world from a self-conscious perspective. By living your life from only a self-conscious perspective, you only experience this world from your own thoughts, you are living in your own little world disconnected from the greater reality.

If you are not careful you will be lost, if you try and search for happiness, you will never find it because it’s not real. Happiness is not something you find outside of yourself. Happiness is something that is already inside you, you have to decide to be happy. You have to realize that happiness will never be found in egoist desires.

Since your ego comes from your memory and can only think of the past and imagine the future, you need to learn to be more present to transcend it. The real you can be felt when you are truly present in whatever you are doing. If you are able to go to a park sit on a bench, and learn to watch everything that’s going on around you, without thinking of the past or imagining the future, you will catch glimpses of your true identity. You must learn to watch whatever is going on inside you without becoming attached to your thoughts.

The more you do this the more you will develop a calm mind that does not automatically react to the immense number of thoughts we have. Next time you are driving and someone cuts you off, learn to just watch the thoughts that arise, if you do not become attached and give power to them, they will fade away and you will not react by screaming at the driver. It’s impossible to separate ourselves from our ego, this is by nature how we are designed, learn to understand it, so you can learn from it on your journey to self-realization.

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