Putting Out Your Ego Fire With Gasoline

Once lit, my ego is a powerful flame.It ignited today, and I had to detox from it. I’m doing okay. Meditation helps me detach from my negative thoughts, and connects me with my true nature. My true nature or ‘real self’ is the awareness that witnesses my ego, or my ‘other self’ who is in internal competition with my ‘real self’. When my ego has dissolved, it can’t injure my ‘real self’ or others.My ‘real self’, like your real self, is of infinite worth, is greater than my divisive ego, and has a wide connection to all living beings and nature. Nothing can diminish it. It is whole, more brilliant than the sun, faster than the speed of light, and full of peace and love. It existed before birth and continues after death.I’m unsure if my ego can be stamped out completely. Athletes must play injured.

So to defeat the opponent within, l have developed a system to wack-a-mole my ego when it crops up. I douse it by meditating, which creates a gap between my thoughts and me, where there is no fear and I stop worrying about things that will never happen. It has worked well.Until today. Today my ego was inflamed again and I got burned in the ego fire. It happened when I asked one of my sons to help me with some html code.He said: “Do it yourself- you have to learn.” (He’s right. I do.)Knowing that, why didn’t I accept his answer? Why did I argue instead of accept his comments?

I said: “I don’t know how to do it because I am a baby boomer and I could spend days learning how to do it and you could do it in five minutes because you’re a teenager and you were born knowing how to code.”

I felt bad after. I don’t know how I allowed my ego to rise up and scorch me. I worried that all my ego work was extinguished and I would have to start over again. By arguing with him, I fueled the ego that I was trying to destroy and it caused me to make excuses, blame my son, and not take responsibility.Einstein’s gravitational waves can be seen, but my ego can’t. It can only be felt, and I feel awful when I act from my ego. My ego is sly. It loves the word “I,” and identifies with, and attaches itself to material things and people. If it loses a career or a relationship, it loses everything.My default solution is go on YouTube and watch Eckhart Tolle videos on the ego. Eckhart knows how sneaky the ego is. He had the same problem and he solved it. But he had to sit on a park bench for years to do it.Eckhart Tolle plumbs the depths of consciousness in his book ‘A New Earth’. The book is deep, and I had to read it three times to understand it, but it was the least I could do when Eckhart’s intention is to raise the consciousness of the planet. His videos based on the book have helped me a lot.Eckhart said: “Once I recognize I am acting out of ego, its’ power goes away.” Cool! He said if it comes back, tell yourself: “you’re doing okay.” It lets me be patient with the process. If noticing the ego erases it, then I am going to bring it out in the sunshine to destroy it more often. Then I can connect with my inner essence, which is love. The ego is the opposite of love. Thanks Eckhart!If egoless nirvana is possible, some of the time, I was trying to figure out what provoked my ego so I could extinguish it most of the time. Here is what I have found works for me. I hope it helps you too. Once you move through the pain of the ego, you reach the bliss of your real self.

How to Detox From Your Ego Listicle:

1. Acceptance — Your ego lives in your thoughts and emotions. Reality is what is — your thoughts are what distort reality. Meditation helps to relax your mind, so you can hear the thoughts that are disturbing your inner peace, and discard them. Our work is to accept what we cannot change.

2. Awareness — The ego can’t survive awareness. If you‘re aware that you are bragging, then the ego has no power over you. Others may also brag to you, as they may try to gain your approval. Try to discover what causes you to brag. Do you feel threatened by someone or something?

3. Identity — Stop attaching your identity to events and other people. If you lose your umbrella, your ego wants you to identify with the loss and turn it into an epic drama, when the solution is to buy a new umbrella. If you blame yourself and allow the loss of your umbrella to ruin your whole day, you strengthen the “I” ego. Your IDENTITY gets wrapped up in the lost umbrella. Then “I always lose things” becomes part of your identity, although it is normal to lose things occasionally.

4. Gratitude — By being grateful, you can appreciate being able to shop for a brand new umbrella instead, and maybe you can sit on a bench afterwards and enjoy the sunshine (but not for as long as Eckhart did).

5. Change Is Good — Wanting things to slow down so you are comfortable is not living in the present. Life is changing every second, and resisting it is futile. Embrace Change. The best time ever to live is right now.

6. Trust — that your real self will be able to handle whatever comes your way, without the frustration that comes from trying to manipulate things and people that are out of your control.

7. Humor — When you stop taking yourself too seriously, you can laugh at your fallible human nature and chase the ego out of the room. Being goofy and open minded is the antidote to ego. Life is full of nonsense to embrace and enjoy. Humor relaxes you and allows you to recognize your vulnerabilities in a fun way which helps you to improve on them.

8. Real Reason — Ask what is the real reason you are doing something. Once you identify what triggers your ego, you no longer feel powerless to change the behavior. You may deceive yourself and say “I wanted my son to do the html to save time”, but actually you wanted him to do it because you were afraid to do it in case you crashed the computer.After the little scuffle with my son I thought about why my ego got the better of me, and before I could say html, I had my answer. The real reason? FEAR! I feared I would crash the computer. By not fixing the problem, I couldn’t ruin anything, but I also couldn’t learn anything. My refusal to admit that I didn’t know how to fix it, allowed the ego to gain on me.I was thinking about why the problem occurred with my son and how I could react differently next time, and was grateful for all the teachers on-line who can help me change to live a better life. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my son. He asked if we could work on my computer problem together so I could learn how to do it next time. Both of our egos left the building at that moment. The ego hates when you co-operate with others and grow.Sometimes your best teachers live right in your house.

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• Here is a link to some of Eckhart’s ego videos: https://goo.gl/ds3rx3.
• previously published on Medium.com