Loosening Ego’s Grip

In my previous post, I wrote about the many ways we become activated by ego. If you managed to navigate the holiday weekend without feeling the flare of ego, no need to read further – we bow to your mastery. For everyone else, I’d like to share some tips for loosening ego’s grip.

Let me start with an important warning label about the fallacy of trying to stop the ego. Ego is mediated by mind and thought – it is a collection of thoughts you hold about who “you” are. Hence, addressing the ego through mental maneuvers will prove an infinitely regressive (and frustrating) loop. Asking the mind to dissolve itself is a losing proposition, but holding the ego with equanimity can be a powerful practice.

So how can you avoid getting gripped in ego’s clutches? Here are a few suggestions:

Cultivate the Witness: The first step in dissolving ego is to simply see it. Rather than resisting, fighting, or battling – simply acknowledge it for what it is. When you can witness the barking ego without being gripped by it, seeing its antics without engaging, then you become free to choose your response rather than acting out the same old conditioned dramas. In his book A New Earth, Eckhard Tolle says, “To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions - as they happen. This is not really a 'doing' but an alert 'seeing'. When that shift happens, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life.”

Attend to the Present Moment: When you feel the discomfort of ego’s constriction, you are likely already projecting unfavorable future outcomes – embarrassment, failure, rejection – or conjuring up images from the past where you felt similarly. The ego is associated with the notion of time, which is created by the mind through the thinking process. As Krishnamurti and physicist David Bohm discuss in Ending of Time, the mind compulsively thinks to ensure its future existence. As a result, the ego will instinctively take you out of the present moment. Rather than getting carried away by fearful fantasies, bring your attention back to this moment. The “future” is only a succession of present moments. Be present with this one and you will feel the ego relax…making the next moment and the next more spacious and enjoyable.

Surrender Personal Agendas: Your ego is riddled with personal agendas and a sense of individual “doership”. You want things to work out a certain way so you fight, effort, and struggle to make things happen. When your expectations don’t bear fruit, you are disappointed. “I have to work so hard to get what I want,” you claim! In fact, just the opposite is true. When you surrender your ego agenda and invite a sense of ease and flow into your life, you will experience a natural joy and wisdom that not only expands the possibility for success, but also brings you into alignment with the super-conscious mind, higher self, or the divine.

In the battlefield discussion between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna instructs the great warrior Arjuna to offer his every action, as well as the fruit of his action, as a sacrifice to the divine. In other words, surrender all your thoughts, words and actions…and all the outcomes…to a higher purpose. While you may hold the common misperception of surrender as weak or out of control, this belief is just a trick of ego for self-preservation. Krishna knew that only from deep humility and surrender could Arjuna’s full power and greatness as a warrior manifest without corruption by ego.

Forgive Old Transgressions: Conflict is one of the surest and fastest ways to activate ego, and forgiveness is a powerful tool for moving beyond it. “Why should I forgive someone who has wronged me?” you ask. There are two primary reasons: First, anger and resentment are poisons that harm you. By holding onto toxic feelings you are choosing to poison yourself. As any native shaman would tell you, “It’s not the snake bite that kills you, but the poison running through your veins.” The second reason to forgive is that your transgressors are usually your greatest teachers. While you may never condone their behavior, they act as a powerful mirror for you -- anything you feel is unforgivable reflects an issue inside of yourself. See your transgressors as necessary actors in your play, provoking you to do your own inner work, to heal, and to ultimately become free.

Offer Selfless Service: Because the ego’s nature is compulsively self-centered, when you focus your attention compassionately on others, you free up energy previously consumed in self-absorption. You can use this energy not only as the fire for your own transformation but also for sacred service in the world. As you shift your attention to the broader needs of others, developing further awareness of the universal connectedness of all life, you will sense the unity of self and other. In a practical expression of this, you will naturally want to offer to others what you would like to have yourself – security, peace, acceptance, love. Ask yourself: How can I serve? What is my offering? What is my gift to my/your/our Self?

Fall into Love: The ultimate gift is love…and I don’t mean romance here. In this dance with ego, seek to open up to a broader, impersonal love for all beings and for your Self. Christ taught that you have a great obligation to love, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Let the ego fall away and allow an abiding love to enter its place. Life is a process of losing your ego and participating in the dance of interaction with all of creation, of participating in love. This is reflected in the common expression: falling in love. Where do you fall from? You fall from your ego to non-ego. You become willing to open up, lay bare your defenses, and become vulnerable to all of existence. Unconditional love blossoms when there is no ego left to defend.

I invite you all to play with these possibilities. There is no greater service than to be a crucible for this sacred alchemy, the magical process of transmuting ego into love.

The Inmate Running Your Asylum: Ego

How many of your thoughts today have centered on yourself? What will you eat, what will you wear, how will you get to the office, what will you do when you get there, who will you meet with, what will you accomplish?... The list goes on.

If you are like most people, your individual identity is the center of your universe. In a society of self-absorbed creatures, it's common to focus on number one.

To some extent your ego (defined by Webster's as "the individual self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves") plays a necessary role. When spiritual adepts transcend the ego by entering superconscious bliss states, their sense of individual identity dissolves. They have no sense of self or other. Great for an adept, you might say, but what about me? Could I function without an ego?

While some level of ego is required to operate in your daily life, ego is also profoundly limiting, especially if you mistake your ego identity (the false individual self) for your actual identity (the eternal, supreme Self). Most spiritual traditions see ego as the innate limiting condition or primal ignorance of the human experience. The ego's illusion of separate existence, of "I" and "mine" consciousness, clouds your perception of your true nature. The ego is fundamentally ignorant.
So you might say the rightful place of the ego is as a humble servant to your eternal Self...but at some point the servants waged a palace coop. As long as the servants rule the kingdom, with no inherent sovereignty or wisdom, there's sure to be trouble.

Using a vastly different analogy, the ego is like algae. In right proportion algae is an essential member of an ecosystem but, out of proportion, it can suffocate all the life forms around it throwing everything out of balance. Like algae, your ego is an essential background characteristic, but you should take great care that your ego does not engulf the entire landscape.

In our culture, the notion of ego has classically been identified with arrogance or an exaggerated sense of self-importance. We all know people with inflated pride due to their success, wealth, status or fame. But ego works just as powerfully in reverse and is commonly expressed as low self esteem. Withdrawal, shyness, self-consciousness and depression are identity defense mechanisms as well. Whether we feel arrogant and self-righteous or intimidated and insecure, we can be sure the ego is at work.

Self-Test for Ego

Let me offer a small exercise: Take a moment and remember a time when someone disagreed with you, maligned you or accused you of something unfairly. As you visualize the exchange, feel the energy & emotion of the experience. See if any of the following apply to your inner state as you do this exercise:

Ego Takes Things Personally: The ego's nature is compulsively self-centered. Rather than seeking to understand the underlying factors influencing another's behavior, the ego takes things personally, immediately preparing to defend itself. But your dispute may not be personal at all. Perhaps the situation evoked a painful memory or unhealed wound for the other person, or perhaps they were navigating a personal difficulty that has nothing to do with you. If you are constricted in ego, you will be insensitive and incapable of empathy, which is a vital ingredient for harmonious resolution. Ego undermines the possibility of creative solutions.

Ego Clings to or Resists Emotion: In addition to taking things personally, the ego reacts by generating emotions such as hurt, anger, jealousy and shame. Some of you might resist these emotions, finding them unsavory and burying them deep inside (only to be released later through unexpected shadow behaviors). Alternately, you might cling to these emotions, justifying your anger by constructing a storyline to make you feel better - "his behavior was unacceptable, so I have every right to be angry". Justification is just another trick of the ego.

Ego Shows Displeasure: Ego reactions are inevitably accompanied by a constriction in the body and mind. Very often these constrictions are glaringly visible in your body language and speech. Dirty looks, snarly comments, pouting, guilt trips, threats or demands -- any posture that seeks to manipulate or control the other is a sure sign of ego in full gear.

Ego Wants to be Right: "It's my way or the highway," says your ego. If you ever feel self-righteous, "better than", or certain you have the right answer, know your ego has gotten the best of you. Alternately, if you feel timid, embarrassed or paralyzed by uncertainty regarding the 'right' answer, your ego has snuck in as well. If you were enlightened, you would not be carried away by agreement or disagreement, approval or disapproval. They are both the same. Everyone has their point of view. Indian teacher Sai Baba has been quoted as saying, "The only reason you are disappointed is that you insist on having a point." If your ego isn't busy trying to be right, you won't feel defensive. In fact, without an ego there's nothing to defend.

Ego Is Attached to Outcomes: Ego is riddled with personal agendas and wants its agendas to prevail. If you grew up in the West, you were probably taught that your individuality is a prize possession and you should fight for what you want. However, your personal agendas create attachments to outcomes - you want things this way or that way and are upset if they don't work out. Your agendas take you out of the present moment, causing you to project into the future or rehash the past. In addition, the ego creates a sense of personal "doership" which makes you feel like you need to fight, effort, struggle, and exert your will to survive, rather than operating in harmony with the present moment. This "doership" is the ego's audacity! "You can't even take a breath without God's grace," says Dattatreya Siva Baba, "to think your ego is in charge is supreme ignorance." Take stock of all your agendas and you will see that ego is at the core.

The spiritual goal of many traditions involves dissolving the ego and allowing the true Self to be revealed. In this way, you open the possibility for higher states of awareness described variously by each tradition -- enlightenment, nirvana, liberation, redemption, or simply presence.

These higher states represent your fundamental nature, a truth which is obscured by the ignorance of the ego. By recognizing ego's behavior, however, you can become wise to its trickery.

Tune in next week for suggestions on loosening ego's grip...

Harry Potter's Pearls Of Wisdom

While preparing to travel overseas this week, I couldn't help but ponder both America's precarious role on the world stage and the aspects of the collective American psyche that have gotten us there.

As I reflected on this, a nugget of wisdom emerged from the strangest of places - a Harry Potter film showing on my flight. In the film, Harry is tortured by his own inner darkness. He struggles to grasp his psychic connection with the wicked Lord Voldemort as part of his coming of age into his full wizardly power.

"We've all got both light and dark inside of us," whispers Harry's godfather, Azkaban prison escapee and shadowy figure, Sirius Black. "What matters is the part we choose to act upon."

Like Harry, it seems that Americans, both individually and collectively, are being asked to reckon with the light and dark inside of us. We are growing as a nation from adolescence -- where youthful idealism co-exists side by side with self-centered cruelty -- into adulthood which could bring either wise stewardship or outright tyranny. It is ours to decide.

America is being tested in this coming of age. As we traverse the narrow passage from adolescence to adulthood, will we step from our impudent teenage ways into something more responsible and mature or something more derelict? In answering this question, we are being called to deepen our understanding of who we are, what we stand for, and which force of our collective psyche we choose to serve...the light or the dark.

I hope America's adulthood will not be about basking in our self-centered glory, remaining gluttonous and indulgent, and continuing to coerce those around us to serve our self-interest through force. I hope America's adulthood will be about wise and centered leadership, about fairness and liberty, and about principled use of power.

In the end, I believe, there is only one "force" that can illumine our future. Only one force that can counteract the ills perpetrated across our planet. Only one force, available without condition or scarcity, that can subvert even the most heinous of transgressions. That force is love.

However, there is both light and dark inside of us.

Fear is an opposite polarity of love, and fear pervades America's collective psyche. In the face of terrorism, nuclear threat, scarce energy resources, genocide and war, our natural response is to constrict in fear. Fear activates the lowest tendencies of habituated human behavior, allowing us to justify hostility, violence, hatred and greed. We have used fear to excuse our vicious teenage inclinations.

Lest you think me an impractical fool, waxing on about love in the face of grave danger, let me be clear. To choose love over fear does not mean demurring to protect oneself or avoiding direct action. But it does mean considering one's actions with great care, grounded in wisdom, integrity, clarity and authentic strength rather than in the reactive lower nature of fear.

The good news and the great paradox of fear, as with most polarities, is that fear can be a powerful servant of love. How? The power of our choice is often directly proportional to the difficulty of the choice. To choose love, in the face of such fear, is a terribly difficult commitment that carries immense power. Deep courage, energy, inspiration, and integrity are activated when we make a higher choice in the face of a difficult competing tension. It is a true test of our character. That's why when we contemplate inspired leaders throughout history - Churchill, Lincoln, Mandela, King - we feel the quickening of possibility, of truth, of something great. Their ability to affirm the higher choice in the face of countervailing tyranny defines their greatness.

It is time for us to choose greatness - to choose to act upon the light rather than the dark, to choose love instead of fear in our everyday lives.

I can hear the nay-sayers moaning that "acting from love" is a nebulous concept but, as a nation, we know how to do this. We've experienced it in the aftermath of 9/11, Katrina, and the recent Los Angeles and San Diego fires. These disasters created the condition for great compassion to flow forth. We all felt the unity and coherence of pulling for one another, where the field of connection was palpable and deeply touching. Many New Yorkers still recall with great awe the time after 9/11 when all of New York was pulling together as one, as if the entire city was connected through the heart.

It doesn't take a disaster to live like this. It is a choice.

With so many of us concerned about the state of the world, the state of our politics, the magnitude of our various foreign and domestic crises, what have we got to lose? Why not choose the light rather than the dark inside of us? Love is the only resource that is fully under our control, that has infinite supply, and that is such a powerful force that it has repeatedly changed the course of human history.

Rather than be part of an America doomed to a fearful darkness, choose right now to serve the other part of yourself. Rather than sit there paralyzed and polarized, do the only thing you can do: choose love.