Be Kind to Your Ego

Ego is defined in the Oxford dictionary as : “a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance; in metaphysics, a conscious thinking subject; in psychoanalysis, the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.”

For many of us working on spiritual expansion, we often hear about our ego.  Most often in the form of “my ego is getting in the way,”  “ oh, my ego again, I guess I didn’t learn the lesson yet,” “ my ego is getting in the way of me moving forward in x, y or z spiritual  practice.”  The way many of us talk and think about ego is in the negative and something that holds us back.  When I have these thoughts, I am usually feeling I’m not good enough, scared, angry, disappointed but the root of all of these is fear.  When I am feeling fear, I’m usually not feeling very good about myself.

I would like to offer a gentler way of talking about our ego self. Most of us in the spiritual community would agree we are here on Earth to live a human life and learn lessons.  Many of us are also here to explore spiritual expansion.  Instead of talking about and thinking about ego in a negative way, consider being kind to your ego which is really our human self.  If we were not here to have a human life and learn human lessons then we would not have chosen the fullness of the Earth experience.  It is through our ego that we learn our lessons, sometimes not always the first time, but we are given the opportunity to learn. 

So the next time you are feeling, hurt, upset, scared or beating yourself up and frustrated with your ego, try instead giving your ego self a hug and showing it compassion and love and thank it for giving you an opportunity to move forward with learning your human lessons. In doing so we are being kind to our human self.  This in turn leads to loving yourself a little bit more and accepting yourself a little bit more.  Through self love and acceptance it helps us connect to our high Self which leads to spiritual connection and expansion.

Be Well.