You Are the Soul in Control
There's a topic I've avoided developing content around because I was afraid I didn't understand it enough to explain it well enough to help others understand. This topic is about the ego, letting go of the ego, and assuming your rightful place as the Soul in Control. I'm letting go of the ego's fear (you'll soon understand), and I'm going to give it a shot.
What is the Ego?
In spiritual terms, the ego is that part of you that lives in the illusion of the material world as the only reality, searches for and clings to an identity, wants to control everything in life, and actively works to create a separation between everyone and everything. The ego creates a lot of worry, doubt, and fear in its host, but let's be clear that the ego has one purpose in life: to keep the host alive and safe. The ego means well, but it works by creating unnecessary stress, struggle, and hardship as a means of survival. The ego is that part of you that constantly worries about the future, judges and is hard on yourself, judges and is harsh to others, and constantly presents stories of your insecurity, inadequacy, and insignificance.
The ego loves you and wants to protect you, but it doesn't care about your happiness. It only cares about your survival.
Focus on The Material World
The ego works hard to keep you focused on the material world. It obsesses over your circumstances such as potential consequences, other people, your business and bank account, relationships, politics, a God outside of you, and anything else that is "out there." It makes you a victim of circumstance, not the creator of circumstance.
For 43 years, I had no idea there was anything else but my external world. Each day I was focused on my job, family, and increasing my material well-being only. Life was hard because I was always waiting for something to go wrong and always felt like my life was happening to me instead of because of me. The ego kept pointing to all the times I had failed in my life, and it convinced me to wear an armor that I didn't need to wear. It encouraged me to attack before I was attacked, to leave before I was left, and to hurt people I perceived were hurting me. The ego created a fragility in my world that didn't exist, and it kept me focused on keeping the house of cards standing at the expense of my happiness.
It wasn't until I went inside of my mind and body to understand what was happening that I could remove my primary focus on the material world, do the required spiritual work, and eventually find the infinite peace and joy available in my inner world.
Attachment to Identity
The ego is a master of creating a character or personality based on preferences, titles, roles, and possessions. It builds an identity around stories of "Who I am." Once the ego settles on a characteristic that it adopts as an identity, it struggles to maintain it at all costs. This ego identity association could be based on a level of success or failure, a relationship, a parenting status, a marital status, a level of wealth, physical appearance, gender, nationality, professional role or title, or any other status in the world. Once the ego grabs hold of a status, it creates an identity around it and convinces you to live as it regardless of how life is evolving around you.
The ego convinced me that I was worthless, insignificant, and untalented. When the world showed me evidence otherwise, I thought the world was wrong, and I chose to continue believing the identity the ego had built for me and had convinced me was real.
If it can change, it's not your identity. There's only one thing that doesn't change - "I AM" the awareness that experiences all of these things, but I am not these things. My only real identity is as the awareness; the rest can change from day to day, so they are not me. When I live as the awareness that I AM and hold the rest loosely, higher states of inner peace and joy ensue, creating higher levels of spiritual freedom.
Illusion of Separation
Society and the ego work very hard to convince us that we are all separate. We might be in separate meat-suits that look different, but we are all one. This is not an easy concept to grasp when you've lived exclusively in the material world. Close your eyes. Listen to the noises around you. You are not those noises. You are the listener of those noises. But you are not the ears that hear the noises. Remember that if it can change, it is not really you. And since your body will perish, you are not your body. You are the awareness who hears the noises the body processes. You are the observer of all things. This awareness is infinite and will never die. You don't have a life; you ARE life. And we are all connected to the same consciousness which is that awareness. That is God. You are God. We are all God together.
The ego actively works to convince you that you are separate and distinct, that death is real, that the outcome of life is in jeopardy, and that you must protect yourself from all the "other" people in the world. But they are all you and part of you. We are all connected.
That's why what you give off comes back to you. Karma is real. Your circumstances are simply a reflection of who you've (mostly the ego) convinced yourself to be up to this point. When you change, everything changes. We are not separate. We look to be separate, but we're all energetically entangled and doing a cosmic dance together. But we're all one consciousness.
The ego, intact, doesn't want you to know how divine you are.
Need for Control
The ego doesn't trust life and will convince you to not trust life either. There are few things we can really control in this world, but the ego wants to control everything - people, politics, the economy, relationships, outcomes, etc. The ego is a control freak and obsesses with trying to constantly rearrange the world as a means to be okay. But there's only one thing we really control - ourselves. We can influence the world, but we can't control it. The ego is convinced it is right and can control all things; it will drive you insane and ruin your life trying to create the order it believes it needs.
Since the ego is so focused on controlling the external world, it works hard to convince you that there's no time to focus on your inner world. While it wrestles with life, the ego neglects the only thing you truly control in this world, as it grasps for external security, adequacy, and significance in the world.
When you give up the need for control, you'll see that life was never as dangerous and fragile as the ego made it out to be.
What Do We Do With All This?
The ego loves you and wants to keep you safe. But it lies to you constantly. Consider there are two parts of your human experience: the ego and the soul. The more the ego is in control, the more the soul takes a backseat. The soul is just here for the experience, so the more the ego is in control, the more it acts as a passenger. As we let go of the ego and the stories of the ego, the more the soul steps into its rightful place as the Soul in Control. As we let go of each story, worry, doubt, and fear, the ego dissolves a bit. This is the process of letting go. And letting go is the only thing that you need to master to live into ever-increasing spiritual freedom.
Letting go is a very simple process - deceptively simple. Put your attention and awareness on your internal world - inside your mind and body. When a worry, doubt, or fear comes up, notice it and fully feel it. Inhale deeply, and when you exhale, breathe out the worry, doubt, fear, and the present emotion you're feeling. Each time you do this, you're letting go of a little more of the ego that has assumed control over you. It might not feel like you're making progress, but do this regularly, and over a period of time, you'll notice significant changes in how you experience life and circumstances.
As the ego dissolves, you'll discover that there are fewer danger signals in your life and more joy signals. But the first step is to realize that you are not the ego, and it's safe to let it go. The soul knows why you incarnated and is ready to carry out this purpose. The ego often gets in the way of the soul's mission. But when you turn over control of your life to your soul and stop living as the ego, that's when life gets really fun. The ego wants to create material freedom as its source of survival. The soul creates spiritual freedom as its purpose, and from that spiritual freedom, you'll never lack another thing in your life.
Putting it All Together
There are two parts to the human experience: the ego and the soul. If you take notice, most people are running around life living through and as the ego. They fight for resources, for success, for achievements, accolades, and authority, usually at the expense of their own inner peace and joy. When they get what they want, they don't take time to enjoy it because the ego has already moved the target, and the chase continues. That's the ego's role - to constantly keep you focused on the external world.
Meanwhile, the soul is just waiting for you to tire of the chase. When you do, it's ready and willing to take the reins. And as you let go of the ego's pathological ways, you'll finally find the peace and joy inside of you that you've been searching for in the material world. "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within."
Image by Barbara Bonanno on Pixabay