THE PRISON OF THE EGO
5 APRIL 2022 (14 MIN READ)
“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” - Terence McKenna
A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally ingested a much higher dose of psilocybin than I intended, leading me on a painful, confusing, yet necessary journey. In essence, what I experienced was the process of the cage surrounding me being forcefully lifted—that cage being my ego. The process of the lifting was the most intriguing part, observing what thoughts and archetypal identities make me feel safe in hiding away from the present moment. As McKenna masterfully puts it, our egos are designed to protect us from the potential pain of the present moment, aka chaos. In other words, our egos try their hardest to control what they cannot control, leading our identities and habits to be a defense mechanism toward being open to the unknown, which in nature cannot be controlled. Thus, what I was experiencing was the forceful removal of thoughts that were previously used to make me escape from what was occurring in reality. Some thoughts that came up were about dying, feeling like I could not handle the pain that was occurring, and worrying about what might happen if I never make it out of this trip. These messages were all attempting to distract me from the beautiful journey I was taking towards the unknown, in the form of partial removal of the ego.
Once the deep fears of death subsided and I was comfortable in my body, I could observe my usual defensive thoughts in a different lens, with love and curiosity, rather than automatic acceptance and shame. I observed thoughts surrounding perfectionism and needing to constantly work in order to love myself and make others love me. Some other intellectual tangents involved feeling like I was not worthy of love—doing whatever I could to push it away. But most important of all, there was a constant mental default to being hard on myself to elicit personal change; in other words, constantly shaming myself into growth. Whenever those harsh words popped into my head, I could feel my heart sting and my vibration immediately lower, taking me into a whole new version of reality: a nightmare. This is when the big message hit me hard: the default way in which we talk to ourselves determines the quality of life we experience. Let’s unpack this notion.
The default language we tend to go back to in our minds is a direct reflection of where our mind has had to go throughout our lives to make us feel safe. For me, this meant constantly forcing myself to be as perfect as possible as a kid and young adult, so my parents could finally accept me and show me the love I needed. It was my way of trying to control an incredibly painful situation, but it only allowed me to hate myself in the process—making my already agonizing reality worse. Although this default mental self-talk may seem like a comfort zone, it’s usually a reflection of deep trauma, and you can only overcome the trauma if you first see it, and then reframe the way you talk to yourself. Many people try to heal themselves through just changing their self-talk, but all that easy way out does is leave behind a rich history of pain that requires investigation. You can change the thoughts themselves all you want, but if you don’t work through the pain behind them, that pain will manage to manifest itself in different ways.
So, within this removal of the cage of the ego, I was able to somatically recognize how the way I talked to myself was directly affecting my experience of life. But deeper than that, I could investigate why these thoughts were occurring and direct love and attention towards healing that underlying trauma. After the experience, I was left with two personal tasks: working through the trauma feeding my thoughts while reframing the tone of my thoughts when they came up. But why am I telling you all of this? Because if I had not taken away the chains of my ego, which allowed me to see beyond myself and why I was in so much pain, I would have stayed exactly where I was: deeply unhappy with myself and the world at large.
This article will unpack other reasons as to why it’s important to step away from the ego in one’s healing journey, as well as how we can develop a healthy relationship with the ego—disabling it from getting the best of us in the process.
THE STORY OF LUCIFER
“Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” - Corinthians 11:14
For those of you who have not heard about the story of Lucifer, I will recount it here. And no, this will not be some religious tirade, but I do believe this biblical tale serves as an excellent metaphor about the danger of the ego. Lucifer served as an archangel, the highest rank of angels, who could also communicate directly with God. On top of possessing this deep privilege, the Bible also describes him as the most beautiful and perfect creation of God. This combination of his privilege and perfect looks and intellect blossomed a deep arrogance and pride, which led him to believe he was greater than God and deserved to take his throne. He ended up seducing God’s fallen angels into believing his mission, resulting in a unionized attempt to defeat God in battle, only to be defeated by some of God’s angels and losing everything in the process. Because of this attempt to assassinate God, Lucifer ended up being cast to hell, where he gets tormented day and night. Throughout the Bible, although he is in hell, we see the consciousness of Lucifer being able to infiltrate others’ minds, or directly manipulating them through creating nefarious distractions.
In terms of the correlation to the internal battle we face as humans, I believe Lucifer can be seen as the ego. The more we solely focus on our positive qualities, such as beauty or intelligence, the more we tend to look down on others, due to our feeling of superiority and like we are the chosen one. Feeling this godly way leads to the unconscious sentiment that life should occur on your terms, meaning that everyone should treat you the way you want to be treated and that everything you wish to happen in life should come true the way you want it to happen. In essence, what is occurring here, is that you are allowing a focus on “superior” qualities to lead you to wish to play God. And I cannot say this will land you in physical hell, but it will land you in mental hell. One of the biggest contributors to the personal destruction of mental health is the idea that we can control reality, in the sense of feeling like we can make people treat us well or control the actions of others so they do not cause us stress or pain. Although the power created by extreme beauty or other gifts may make this work at times, it will not work a majority of the time because life does not happen to you or for you, it happens through you, meaning that the only way to live life is to dance with it as it presents itself to you, because you cannot change what happens to you but you can change your reaction to it. If we constantly expect life to act out the exact way we want it to, then we will get increasingly depressed and angry at the world when it inevitably doesn't. This constant resentment towards life itself creates one’s own personal hell, becoming Lucifer in the process.
All of this started with an excessive fixation on one’s gifts, which led to feelings of superiority and eventually a sense that we can control reality. Funnily enough, Lucifer in Latin translates to “bringer of light,” and some of the most egoistic people I have met are those on the frequency of toxic positivity, where they believe that everything is beautiful and amazing, and because they reside on this frequency, they believe that they can manifest whatever they want into their life, essentially playing God in the process. Although it may seem like these sorts of people are happy on the outside, a deep shadow is acting through them unconsciously—secretly hating everything and everyone in front of them. So, how can we go about breaking this pattern?
One, we can still acknowledge our gifts without allowing them to separate us from the rest of the world—making us feel superior. What helps with this is understanding that everyone in the world has some sort of gift, meaning that ours is not something special, just unique. And ultimately, the biggest gift is allowing people to discover their gifts, which becomes impossible when all you do is internally focus on and boast about yours. Two, do not allow your mind to think you can play God. Although this egoistic tendency will lessen the more you become acquainted with humility, it will still arise in moments of uncomfortable emotions, due to our desire to escape pain at all costs. In painful moments, we have to remember that life presented us with this situation—we can choose to run away from it, but when we run away from something it will always be chasing us. Whatever happened occurred and didn’t happen any other way, so instead of focusing on how we could have changed it or how we did not deserve it, all we can do is focus on the way we respond to it and keep our minds engaged in the present moment. Presence is the biggest act of humility, because we are sending the signal that we trust everything that is occurring in the present moment, suggesting that we trust the universe and everything that may come with it, opting out of the egoistic desire to play God and control reality. And as explained previously, playing God is the easiest shortcut to personal hell.
Although the seduction of power and grandiosity is hard to turn down, we have to take a peek under the hood of our egos to see what’s really going on inside. And in this case, it’s a desire to control reality to save ourselves from internal pain and the unknowingness of humility—being unconsciously afraid to trust the present moment.
AN INABILITY TO GROW
“The sage battles his own ego. The fool battles everyone else’s.” - Sufi proverb
The amount of personal growth a human has undergone is reflective of how far they have pushed away from the old version of themselves. And the old version of themselves can be envisioned as being under full egoistic control, suggesting that as the person develops, the more the control loosens. When we are under complete egoistic control, our negative, jealous, angry thoughts run rampant, while we believe these thoughts as sincere and reflective of reality. Furthermore, the emotions created by those thoughts come with no degree of separation, creating the lens with which we view the exterior world. To defeat this ego, one must take a step back and separate themselves from these painful thoughts and emotions—similar to treating your mind like a separate person. The deeper one goes into this process, the more liberated one becomes from the entrenchment of their ego. Why the fuck am I going off on this philosophical tangent? Because if we never take a step back from the thoughts we have always thought—and the feelings those thoughts have always created—then we will never grow. And these thoughts are reflective of our conceived identity, aka the way we view ourselves in the world, which is basically our ego. As the passage of time occurs in front of our eyes, the way we view ourselves and our standing in the world dictates our analysis of the present moment. For instance, let’s say an incredibly attractive girl approaches an overweight nerd, and the next day, she goes up to a handsome billionaire. The nerd will be shitting his pants, while his mind tells him he is not worthy and has no chance, and the billionaire will probably tell himself, “Oh, another one, let’s see if I like her.” This massive difference in mental evaluation is a direct reflection of the ego’s control, aka the identity of self, influencing analysis of the present moment. Thus, we can only change our thoughts if we change the way we view ourselves, which is altering our relationship with the ego. And this process can only begin by observing the ego as a separate entity to ourselves.
To go about this process, simply take a step back from your thoughts and emotions, treating them like a third-party actor. This is the most important step, but the real work comes here: allowing your thoughts and emotions to inform you of the painful parts of yourself that need healing. THAT is the work. And the more you heal these parts of yourself, the less your ego will control your experience of the passage of time.
CONSTRICTION OF THE SOUL'S JOURNEY
“When the ego dies, the soul awakes.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Unlike all my other writing, which attempts to logically explain the unexplainable, this section will go into deep spiritual territory, without much effort to masquerade it into psychological, academic terms, so keep your mind and heart open and bear with me.
Once connection to God/Universe/Source is established and felt, the spiritual path opens up for us, meaning a long road is paved for the expression of our souls. However, along this path of soulful expansion and personal freedom, will come stages of necessary hardship, testing our commitment to the path. The purpose of the path, like in Super Mario Bros., is to complete various levels that increase in difficulty but become easier with experience—with the aim of gaining freedom once we finish the last stage. Only the levels are temptations of the ego, such as allowing someone’s perception of you to ruin your self-worth, and completing the last stage leads to a state of being that’s completely embodied and in union with the spirit—free of ego and immersed in the present moment. In essence, the purpose of the spiritual path is to show us over and over again how our ego robs us of our freedom and contributes to the majority of our suffering. Additionally, it shows us how our spirit itself embodies freedom and already holds all the answers we feel the need to search for.
Every single time I have done a psychedelic drug that kills my ego and leads me to become completely embodied, I always come across the answers that I needed to carry through to the next stage of my life, which my ego was previously too dumb to see. And going back to the correlation with God, the more we become embodied in the present moment, meaning we are viewing reality from a state of embodiment not intellectual analysis, the more we send the message that we trust His reality—because we do not feel the need to change it. With this established trust, God/Universe/Source is much more likely to present us with its gifts. Think about it in terms of a romantic relationship: is your partner more likely to give you love the more you show that you trust them completely? Yes. How about if you are constantly trying to control them and accusing them of lying? They will most likely run away if they are lucky. God/Universe/Source works the exact same way.
Like Lucifer, our ego is only there to sabotage our relationship with the divine, which destroys our ability to trust the present moment—taking us away from a state of soulful embodiment and into a place of intellectual analysis of the present moment, rooted in the egoistic effort to protect us from the pain of reality.
Although I have gone on and on about the dangers of the ego, there is one way in which it can serve us well.
DHARMA
“When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of the Law of Dharma.” - Deepak Chopra
As stated earlier, the ego, at its core, is a protective mechanism used to cultivate an identity that separates us from the present moment—breeding personal stories in the form of thoughts that take us away from experiencing reality objectively. But what if this viewing of self was in line with the spirit? What if the stories we told ourselves came from our souls? In other words, what if our ego and spirit merged into one? This beautiful union is understood as dharma. And the easiest way to make this connection occur is through aligning one’s life purpose with the wishes of the soul. In today’s capitalistic era, our jobs are everything—they fuel the way we see ourselves as well as the majority of the thoughts that enter our mind—whether we like the job or not. Thus, if our job was in union with the intentions of our spirit, then we would only be deepening the connection between our ego and spirit. To find a mission that aligns with your soul, try out these two strategies: remembering what you loved to do as a kid and feeling spiritually fed after you have completed the work. In terms of the former, when we are children, the younger we are, the more embodied we tend to be, meaning we endure less egoistic control. Because of this deepened, albeit unconscious, spiritual connection, our personal interests are aligned with the interests of our soul. Personally, as a kid I loved to write stories and I also loved to help people, so as an adult, I realized that my soul’s mission is to help people through written word. And in terms of the second component, once we engage with the potential job that aligns with our spirit, we must feel spiritually fed after completing the work. This may feel like an enduring deep flow state and feeling profoundly alive after finishing. And, of course, we must feel like we are assisting with the personal development of humanity with the work itself.
Once you find this mission that is in alignment with your soul, your dharma will start to strengthen, which will lead to a more soulful manner of viewing yourself, instead of being dominated by the ego.
