EGO AND LIBERATION
The ego is another word for the separate self. It’s a combination of personal beliefs, the psychological identity, and self-concept of who you believe you are as a person in the world as defined by your stories, memories, beliefs, desires, fears, judgments, opinions, trauma narratives, and feelings that you take to be ultimately true about yourself.
When you believe that this separate personal identity is who you are, it can simultaneously become a source of personal empowerment and a veil of distortions through which you view yourself, other people, and the world. When you don’t see that your personal empowerment is ultimately interdependent, this can become a source of your personal suffering. This sense of a separate personal self-identity is very powerful but limiting. When the story of your Self is one of inadequacy, fear, abandonment, or rejection you operate reflexively out of old patterns, often learned in childhood, that don’t serve your peace, safety, and happiness.
How does this happen?
One interesting idea about ego is that it is mostly an imaginary identification with an overstimulated nervous system. How does the nervous system become overstimulated? Children are naturally empathetic and attuned to sensing and feeling the unresolved emotional baggage in the hearts and minds of everyone around them. The child then makes an unconscious decision that says: “If they seem blocked and unwilling to love me as I am, then let me replicate the fear based arousal, stress, anxiety, threat assessment I’m sensing and feeling from them in an attempt to mirror it and even take it on so that once they are free of this baggage that I feel is weighing them down, then there will be nothing blocking their heart from giving me the love that I so eagerly desire and hopefully it will give them a greater interest in embracing me.” But, by replicating the parent’s conditioned baggage, the child overstimulates its nervous system to be more like the world it is inhabiting, a world full of many beings whose nervous systems are overstimulated. This in turn creates a collective unconscious cultural sense of agreement that overstimulation of the nervous system is the normal and natural way human beings relate to each other and operate in everyday society.
As many of you know a significant part of Metta Meditation on Lovingkindness is “May all beings be free from suffering.” You all want to suffer less. So, what can you do?
You can begin by an exploration of the separate self and how it masks the reality of things. In reality, you are none of these limited ideas of separation. When you open to an inner exploration beyond the structure of the egomind-body personal identity, you expand your conscious awareness into your present moment experience. This is an experience of the Field of Awareness behind all of the stories and narratives that have kept you trapped in suffering.
Here is a gentle experiment you might try. Notice how you're taking in the world through your senses: breathing, feeling, seeing, touching, experiencing life exactly as it is this moment without the mind’s continuous commentary. Now relax even more to realize that you are aware, present, and conscious without the mind’s running commentary. It’s an experience of aliveness that has nothing to do with your personal identity or self-concept story. The stories, beliefs, and emotions of the separate self can arise, but this aliveness is way more compelling. You are here and wake this moment without being defined by anything!
When you return your attention to present moment awareness over and over, your attachment to the objects of suffering unravels. You get a taste of freedom that’s possible—right now and in any moment. Experiment with identifying as this alive presence and letting your attention fall away from thoughts and feelings. You're not rejecting or dissolving them. You're just not making them the ultimate reality.
This Field of Awareness underlies everything. When you bring your attention here, you have a new relationship to all those elements of your separate personal identity. These limiting ideas and feelings will still arise out of your autobiographical memory. But you can welcome them with a heart of compassion. They no longer have to define who you are.
This is a shift of focus. You don’t need to get rid of the ego, banish the ego, judge it, or resist it. But instead realize you are fully alive even though old limiting thoughts may arise in your mind. You can begin to realize that, although painful perceptions may come up, attachment to them is a choice and suffering is optional. You haven’t killed the ego. You have simply expanded your awareness beyond it to discover a new, fresh way of being.
Do you have to struggle to get rid of these old limiting thoughts? Not at all. You can choose to allow a few moments of rest in a place of willingness to let them all go. As you release your mental activity and create an open space, you may have a deeper awareness of your inner wisdom and peace.
Although a deeper awareness of your inner wisdom and peace can be accessed at any moment, the mind often pops right back into a resistant state. This is simply an old, fear-based habit. Because of this, it can be helpful to practice re-aligning your awareness as you form a new habit.
Just like training a rambunctious puppy, the process of training the mind can be done with kindness and patient firmness. You can spend a few minutes each day noticing your mind's interference, expressing your willingness to release that interference, and opening for a moment to rest in that open space of inner awareness and peace. This type of practice can also be part of a larger meditation or prayer practice. Just 5-10 minutes a day can create a new habit of openness.
One fairly effective way to reduce the power of the ego-mind-body thoughts of separation is to say, "I don't know what to think about this." If your mental activity is what obscures your inner wisdom and peace, saying, "I don't know
what to think about this" is one way to clear away the intrusive thoughts. When you say, "I don't know," you create a space for the inner wisdom that does know. You yield your old, habitual thought patterns for a deeper, brighter way of thinking and seeing.
Very simply and gently note any distractions that the mind generates. When you find any unpeaceful thought arise, simply say: “I'm willing to let this thought go. My intention is to experience a sense of being supported and loved.”