What is ego?
Many times, we associate the word Ego as someone who is 'highly egoistical', someone who is usually quite arrogant and selfish, and sees themselves as superior to others.
But Ego means much more than that. Ego simply means the self. An outer layer of self that is presented to others, that is thought out and perceived by our conscious minds.
It refers to our association of who our 'self' is - our personality, race, religion, nationality, education, job scope, and the like - most of which are societal constructs and does not define who we truly are - consciousness.
From there, we define what we are and what we're not, who we are more willing to associate with, what we are more likely to do as a career, what hobbies we prefer, what rituals we perform, holidays we celebrate.
In some sense, it is not necessarily a bad thing as it adds colour and variety to life. After all, all colour mixed up simply becomes black, or ugly shades of brown. So there is value in keeping certain things separate at some point.
But what I'm about to talk about here is not about societal structure, but rather, the darker side of holding on to our ego/personalities - that is trauma.
As you can imagine ego limits us to a certain way of thinking and behaving. But not only that, it also locks us up into our own limiting storylines...
The healing process is strange in the way that it requires us to see things both ways.
First, we have to see and accept our shadow selves...
Then we have to let go and dis-identify with it.
For example, if you have depression, you first need to acknowledge it, ie:
- Yes, I feel depressed.
- I accept that I am experiencing depression.
- I will do what I can do treat myself better and get better, such as seeing a counselor, talking to loved ones, making lifestyle adjustments and removing elements that are contributing to my depression, taking a break and forgiving myself for not being able to perform and do things as I used to, and taking prescribed medications if necessary.
But to complete the road to recovery, one also need to dis-identify the self with depression. It requires one to change their inner dialogues to create deep and lasting change, ie:
- Depression is just a feeling that I have. (to replace "I am a depressed person")
- I don't have to do this if it is causing me so much pain.
- I don't have to force myself to be grateful if having this doesn't really make me happy.
These steps are also applicable to every aspect of healing, including trauma or chronic diseases:
- I accept that I have experienced this event
- I accept how that event made me feel at the time of occurrence, that I felt hurt, anger, hatred, shame, etc...
- I allow myself to fully experience those emotions as it is simply how I feel. I respect my feelings...
And then dis-identify
- I don't have to be that traumatised person. It is not who I am.
- I don't have to be who I am because of that event. I can always be who I wanted to be, regardless of what happened or didn't happen to me.
Because the truth is, we are the stories we tell ourselves. And we can be whoever we want to be, by cleaning up our hidden emotions, forgive and let go of what does not serve us, and retell our own story.
Wishing you love and light... ---<--{@ <3
