The Ego in Operation

I have always been curious to know what the ego constituted. In the collective mind, the ego was always considered a vile quality of someone's personality. It is commonly associated with pride.

Personally, I never thought pride to be an unpleasant quality. Pride was a sentiment I experienced when I connected with and overcame internal resistance. So why was pride never celebrated instead? And why was pride associated with the 'undesirable' ego?

On further deliberation, I realized that the collective mind didn't measure pride the same way I did. Pride was a matter of status in society. About ethnic backgrounds, official designations, and their financial capacity. And lately, whether their life measures up (look wise) to what is considered a successful life.

This means there was a collective agreement about the type of boxes that were present and that needed to be ticked to be considered successful in a society or by anyone for that matter. Our personal values were handed out for validation, instead of remembering our true value and essence within ourselves.

The ego is the internalization and persuasion of external collective ideals as opposed to being guided by our intuition towards our true purpose.

In my experience, ego separates. It distorts our inherent qualities as good, bad and ugly. Naturally highlighting the parts that were highly appreciated by everyone. And subjugating those that don't meet an external standard. 

It is a thought process driven by a survival mechanism - wanting to fit in with an ideal. It re-affirms our external world (insecurities, not-enoughness) back to us and keeps us in the loop of the assumptions that stem from what we already know. It wants to re-create the missing link - of the things we don't understand.

No matter how we try to recreate it, it will always be from a space of our limited minds. It wants a deliberate command over our story. It wants to control what it naturally can't. Unless we allow to guide us, from a place of surrender and growth. When we allow this to be so, our intuition knows no bounds.

However, I believe that considering we are wired with the ego, we can learn to use it as an advantage. When we can perceive any internal aspect of ours with our awareness, it naturally begins to seem objective. From here we can drive our decisions through our conscious mind. This is the seat of our personal power.

I believe that whenever we see any of our qualities objectively, we have deliberate and conscious control over our intentions, focus and way forward. So, instead of trying to control our external circumstances, we lead with trust in ourselves - to navigate the unknown flow of life.