The ego’s job is to protect us. So, it’s always looking for danger. Even if the situation isn’t hazardous, it still has its hackles up because it expects something to go wrong. That is its role, seek out threats so it can protect us from any harm, real or imagined by the egoic mind. This negative outlook on life is why the natural state of the ego is fear.
Genuine fear is something that our bodies naturally respond to when we are physically threatened. It’s the automatic reaction we call the fight or flight response. Our heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing increases so that our bodies can handle the danger. This response is normal and part of our genetic makeup.
Egoic fear is psychology because the threat isn’t real; it’s just driven by the ego’s voice in our heads. It reruns a threat over and over, making us relive those moments. Or it makes up countless ways the hazard could have been worse or ways we could have avoided the situation. Either it makes us feel victimized or blames us for the outcome. Only negativity comes from allowing the egoic mind to maintain its storytelling.
The ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. It gives definition to our self-image, makes us into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego. ~ Eckhart Tolle
What are Some Familiar Egoic Stories?
The ego want’s to protect our self-image because that’s what it is. But many times, it inflates what reality it sees and projects its own, which causes us more problems. It’s the egoic voice that makes us think someone is trying to take away our position. The shameful thought we have about ourselves is from the ego. Feeling embarrassed is an egoic emotion because it affects our self-esteem.
When we allow the egoic voice to run our lives, we realize that we only see half the story. The part the ego wants us to see, not necessarily the truth. But if we acknowledge the role the ego is to play in our lives, if we see that it’s trying to protect us, we can accept its part and dismiss the concern. Just because the egoic mind thinks there’s a threat doesn’t mean it’s real.
Once we are aware of our egoic voice and function, we can stop reacting to situations. Instead, we can change our responses based on the actual circumstances, not on how our ego feels.
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo–even when it’s not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future. ~ Richard Rohr
What’s at the Core of Our Fear?
As we continue to suffer because of the egoic thoughts, we stay stuck. All negative emotions (hurt, anxiety, sadness, anger, loneliness, jealousy, self-criticism, rejection, blame) all have the root of fear and, more specifically, fear of not being loved.
Being rejected or abandoned keeps us fearful and unaware of the egoic nightmare as we struggle in our search for love as human beings.
But the truth is the love we seek outside of us we already have within us. We have to open our hearts as pure love flows from our being. In making this conscious choice, we move away from our fearful reactions and begin to respond with love. By doing so, we allow the magic of flow to enter our lives, and things get more comfortable.
An open heart means that you are vulnerable, which the egoic mind takes as a treat. Society thinks vulnerability is a sign of weakness, but it’s a lie of the ego. Showing your vulnerability means that we are our authentic selves. We can’t be authentic when the ego’s controlling our lives.
If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort, and repeated choices. ~ Jean Vanier
How to Determine if a Threat is Real?
Pause, take a deep breath and take a moment to assess the situation honestly. Are we reacting emotionally because our buttons were pushed, or are the circumstances such that we need to make an appropriate response? The first step is to evaluate the surrounding conditions. Are the ego’s concerns real or inflated? Are we reacting defensively? Once completed, we can move forward with a thoughtful response.
After we initially assessed the situation, pause again. Take another deep breath. Determine how or why the circumstances are affecting us. The time it takes for us to breathe allows our heart’s voice to give us direction. The goal is for us to respond from a place of consciousness and emotional intelligence. In this response, we enable ourselves to rise above the circumstances and overcome the situation in a positive way.
Finally, check-in with those around us. Are others reacting from an egoic place? Or are they assessing the conditions differently than we initially did? By looking around us, we can help ourselves see the actual circumstances and not just what our egoic minds want us to see.
Ego takes everything personally. ~ Eckhart Tolle
What Disguises Does Egoic Fear Wear?
The egoic mind is a master of disguises. The more it can hide its fearful state, the better it can control our lives. Worrying about the future is one society accepts. But concern or its other mask, anxiety, is toxic. The ego uses the past to prey on our future. This apprehension isn’t real because the past is not an indicator of the future. Only the present moment is tangible. And in this present moment, we can stop the egoic mind from talking to us about an unknown future.
Another costume the ego uses to engulf us in fear is to run scenarios in our minds about our lives. When we hear the egoic voice speak about the “should” or “could” of anything, we should take heed. When it focuses on “my” anything, we feel powerful, but this is false empowerment because it’s actually isolating us from others. When the ego separates us from our vital connections, it’s harmful as it cuts us off from any love and support.
The limiting belief of scarcity is a guise of the ego. It believes there isn’t enough for everyone, so we can’t have it if a friend has something we desire. Or that we aren’t worthy of a grand love affair. The scarceness the egoic mind accepts as true is its misguided idea that it’s in control.
Your ego is your self-image created by thought. It’s your social mask requiring validation because it lives in fear of losing its sense of identity. ~ Thibaut
Why the Ego Wants Control?
The egoic mind thinks for it to survive, it must be in control of our lives. It holds the belief that it’s always right as its only evidence to maintain control over us. And to keep us under its control, the egoic mind keeps us fearful. It causes us to be afraid and feels negative emotions, so we allow it to run our lives. The ego uses our own thoughts against us as a way to maintain the illusion of control. And sadly, we let it.
The egoic mind keeps us asleep, as it runs nightmares through our thoughts. According to the egoic scenarios, we can never achieve our desires because something is always out to get us. This dream state seems very real to us, and this is how the ego maintains its control over us.
The reality is the control the ego thinks it needs is an illusion. The egoic mind wants us to feel safe, but only when it surrenders control and allows the heart to lead do we feel a natural sense of security. When we let go, we allow the natural flow of life to move us toward our dreams.
Destroy your illusions so you can see reality. Destroy your fears so you can take risks. Destroy your ego so you can see life. ~ Maxime Lagacé
How Do We Defeat the Nightmare?
With any bad dream, for us to overcome, we have to wake up. We have to move out of our egoic mind, out of the nightmare it plays in our heads. This awakening is our return to our Soul.
We have to realize that the fearful state the ego wants us to believe is an illusion. The reality is how we choose to respond and the meaning we decide to give the circumstances. When we are aware, we can consciously determine the meaning of the situations—thereby choosing to respond with love and create peace in our lives.
Freedom from the nightmare means we live in the present moment where the ego has no dominion. And in the now, we allow the heart’s voice to rise up from within because our Soul has always had all the answers we seek.
All the love, peace, and security we desire in our lives are within us. All the strength we need and the wisdom to make decisions are within us. But the ego has kept us in the nightmare so we couldn’t see the truth.
The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. ~ Eckhart Tolle
Why is Conquering Fear an Inward Journey?
The ego keeps us cemented in a physical reality it fills with anxiety. It believes that life is complicated and cannot be figured out because the egoic mind can’t. Despite the ego’s intention to keep us safe, it kept us in fear. The separation and scarcity that the ego falsely perpetuated dissipate as we become secure as the ego surrenders to the Soul’s voice.
The Soul knows that it is connected to the Divine and everything in the Universe. There is no separation. It sees ourselves in others, and loving accepts them as they are. The heart knows there is more than enough and that we are worthy. The Soul is where we find the love we’ve always wanted. Living from the Soul and not the mind, we allow love to rule our lives instead of the ego’s fear.
Our reality’s simplicity comes down to are we living from a place of fear or a place of love. And if we take a misstep at this instant, we have the next minute to make a correction because we are creating our lives moment, by moment.
The source of wisdom and power, love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast, which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self, whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind. ~ Paul Brunton
Why Awareness Calms the Egoic Mind?
We aren’t trying to fight our fears because the ego is tough, and it knows how to push our buttons. So our awareness of the fears is how we control them. Watch them when they arise. Witness how you feel and recognize what the ego is showing us. Once we acknowledge the idea, we can dismiss it and respond appropriately from a place of love, not fear.
Pay attention to what triggers cause us to react so we can note where we need to focus our awareness. When we begin to do this more regularly, we create space for peace to enter our decision making. As we do this repeatedly, the fears disappear because we have proven to the ego that these threats are not dangerous.
Be gentle with ourselves through this learning process. It takes time for our awareness to become the normal state of being. The ego reigned for a long time, and it doesn’t go away immediately. It still has a job to do, but as we listen to the heart’s voice more habitually, we quiet the egoic thoughts.
The bigger your heart, the more you love, the more you control your life. The bigger your ego, the more you’re scared, the more others control your life. ~ Maxime Lagacé
Imagining a New Dream
If we stayed in the moment and weren’t concerned about the past or the future, how would that affect our lives? When a troublesome circumstance arose, we may listen to our heart voice more readily. We could set personal boundaries with others, knowing that they were for us, for our self-care. We are no longer allowing others to take our power away. We could say no to things that are less meaningful to us and focus our time doing our life’s work.
We would notice that other’s reactions didn’t affect our moods. Our creativity would pour out of us. We would trust our intuition to guide us, as we would know that our Soul’s voice only tells us the truth, and we would automatically trust it. We will have fewer doubts about our decisions because we know if we misstep, in the next moment, we can alter our course.
There are no limits before us and no end to the positive changes we will see. Our full potential is limitless when we live from a place of love. When we consciously become aware of our responses to our surroundings, all our dreams can become our reality.
When ego is lost, limit is lost. You become infinite, kind, beautiful. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi
Moving Forward from a Place of Love
Each day we have the choice to believe the ego’s lies and stay in a state of fear. We can continue to react to the egoic mind’s emergencies based on its belief of separateness and scarcity. In doing so, we give it control of our lives and continue our suffering as we allow negative emotions to plague us.
Or we can choose to listen to the heart’s voice, our true selves. The part of us that is connected to Spirit. As we become open-hearted and vulnerable, we become aware. We are more fully present in each moment. All the questions we ask have answers from within, and we are now listening. Our responses to life’s circumstances come from a place of love, and all things work to our advantage.
Our lives’ quality is determined based on how we react or respond to the situations in our life. Do we react from the fear-based ego, or do we respond with love from the Soul? The choice is ours each day- choose wisely.
What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. ~ Eckhart Tolle
As we become more conscious of how the ego keeps us in a fearful state, we can take control of our lives by responding from a place of love instead.
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Do you need support to help you live from a place of love and not fear? Do you want a strategy to help you overcome the ego’s limiting beliefs and live a successful life? If so, please contact me, and we can put together an action plan for you to create the life you desire.