Ego or Intuition?
We received a really good question this week
about the difference between ego and the true self,
and how to recognize the voice of the ego,
versus the voice of the true self.
When you are talking about ego,
what you are talking about is the identity.
So, your true self is the eternal part of you.
It is the Source energy which is expressing itself through you
in this physical life.
So, the you that you call by a name,
whether it’s Teal or Tiffany...
~ Laughter ~
that is what could be considered the “I” of the equation.
And that is called ego, it is the identity.
It is the part of you
which needs to quantify what you are and who you are.
So, it’s a temporary identity
which the Source side of you,
(your Source Self)
is practicing in this lifetime.
The ego is concerned with being separate from that which is other,
as opposed to the eternal self which is
immersed in a perspective of oneness.
When a child is born,
the child does not have awareness of the self yet.
First, what it does is it learns what “other” is,
and it begins to form a kind of self-concept
through its adults which surround it...
mother and father.
What the mother and father think of it
is what begins to create the idea of
“what am I?”
in the child,
and that is the birth of the ego.
So, in other words,
the ego is the accumulated identity.
What accumulated identity means is,
it’s basically your self-concept,
your personality traits,
the reflections of other people's opinions of you.
And ego really cares about one thing,
which is survival.
It cares about separating itself from that which is “other”.
The reason that ego was...
born, you could say, in the first place,
is because when Source said:
I would like to understand self,
“What am I?”,
you can only really understand oneness from the platform of separateness,
and ego is that separateness that we are speaking of.
That’s the same way that you can only know what is real,
by what is false,
and you can only know oneness by separateness,
you can only know white, from what is black.
So, ego is a development of Source's
in order to know itself.
It’s unnecessary to make an enemy of ego,
because ego is simply
a practice of perspective.
That’s what you intended.
We’re no more making an enemy of ego,
than we are making an enemy of physical life.
Your Source Self intended for you to come down and experience
what it would be like to have the perspective
of your individual self in this life.
The problem comes about when
the tool of ego is in control of you,
instead of the other way around.
As a species, we became very entranced
with our physical senses.
We lost our connection with the Greater Self,
because of the density of our physical form.
And ego began to fill a role which it was not suited for.
Meaning, it took complete control of the ship.
It is so incredibly oriented towards survival,
that even in the very beginning
there were biochemical and evolutionary physical developments
within our species,
such as the fight or flight within in the nervous system,
that came as the result of
this true ego desire
for the preservation of identity.
So, while ego kept us alive long enough
to learn in this physical dimension,
it’s also what gets in the way of spirituality.
So, the ego lives and feeds off of anxiety,
and off of fear,
and off of resentment, and off of judgment,
and it basically feeds all kinds of attachments and also resistance.
So, because of this, the tool of ego
is now a tool which controls its own wielder.
So, when we are talking about spirituality
and getting in touch with the true self,
it’s incredibly important to learn to distinguish
the voice of ego from intuition,
which is the voice of the true self.
So, even when you have awareness of the ego,
so when you are watching the ego work...
that awareness means you have stepped outside of the ego
and so you're no longer living in the ego,
you are your eternal self watching the ego operate.
And then once you are at that point,
you can then,
once you have distinguished
what is the voice of intuition versus the voice of ego,
you can make sure in your day-to-day life,
not to cave into the voice of ego
and the urges which ego is trying to get you to go towards,
and instead, give your power over to the voice of intuition.
To do this takes power away from the ego,
to the extent where it's something you have control over.
So how do you distinguish
the voice of intuition versus the voice of the ego?
I think the most simple way to go about distinguishing these two voices,
is by understanding that the voice of the true self
will not interfere with free will.
Ego, on the other hand,
knows it has free will,
so it has no trouble taking full control and full advantage of this.
Because of this,
the voice of intuition will be very, very quick.
It’s usually the first thing that strikes you,
there’s no enunciation around it,
it’s very quiet, and has a transcendental kind of peace to it.
That’s because from the perspective of where your Higher Self is,
from Source Self,
sitting in the space of oneness,
it’s void of these emotional ties and attachments and fears.
And so, there’s not that intense resistance to the concept of annihilation.
So it’s very quiet,
it has this feeling of transcendental peace,
and there will never be fear involved in the message.
Even a warning message from your Higher Self,
is not going to come with that intense note of fear with it.
And it’s very patient as well.
The voice of intuition is not an urgent voice.
This is because the perspective
of this most expansive eternal view of yourself,
does not align with human fear.
The ego voice on the other hand,
wants complete control.
So, your ego voice will keep you separate and alive
for fear of its own annihilation.
Because of this,
the voice of ego, is going to sound very urgent.
Everything is going to be a:
“You better do this right now or something bad is going to happen”,
type of an energy to it.
It will sound like fear, it will sound like judgment,
it will sound like criticism,
cynicism, discouragement...
because these are all control tactics.
Also, the true self does not question worth.
From its perspective, there is no idea of:
“more or less” worth.
And so, it sees the world more horizontally.
When I am talking about horizontal,
I am talking about
“other” is the same as self.
Ego, on the other hand, feeds off of both extremes.
So the ego sees the world vertically,
where you are either better than or less than,
where you are either living a sort of self-defeating shame,
or self-defeating pride.
And the ego seeks to pleasure itself and avoid pain, also.
So it lives sort of in a world of duality,
so much so that it’s never in the present moment.
The present moment is the realm of the true self.
So, from there, how do you strengthen your connection with the true self?
There is an old adage, “seek and you shall find”,
and this is completely true when it comes to
re-finding your Eternal Self.
Go looking for it.
Ask who it is that’s living and dying.
You can’t fight the ego.
This is where a lot of confusion exists.
Anytime you feed the ego by fighting,
you have given in to it.
You can only become aware of it,
and in that awareness you are removing yourself one step from ego,
so you are no longer owned by it.
You can train yourself to be aware
in the moment that something is happening.
And eventually when you do that enough,
your ego will fade,
and the illusion of separateness
will fade.
One of the best ways to help this process along,
is to open up the space for stillness in your life.
It’s only through stillness,
that this voice of intuition can really shine through.
You have to teach your mind to deliberately focus,
and also to become very soft, in order to receive.
And meditation, in my opinion,
is one of the best ways to achieve this.
It’s a very incremental process,
but that’s how most of these spiritual processes are.
You have to begin to let go of the need
for the illusion of separateness between you and others.
You have to let go of needing to win,
of needing to fight,
of needing to be right,
of needing to be different,
of needing to be superior, of needing to have more.
All of these desires and needs are the function of the ego.
You will find quite often
that ego feeds off of need,
whereas the true self feeds off of desire.
Desire is a very pure vibration.
Need is not a pure vibration.
Need is actually the focus on lack.
That’s why it’s got that feeling of desperacy present within it.
So anytime you are feeling an intense need to
do something or have something,
it comes from an attitude of lack,
which is what your ego is doing in order to convince you
that you are not enough,
and that you must continue to live
by what it says you must do in order to justify your own existence.
You have to begin to live at the mercy of self-love,
which if some of you have watched my earlier videos,
one of the best ways to do this is,
all day long throughout the day, ask yourself:
“What would someone who loves themselves do?”
Especially when you have to make a decision,
because that answer is very rarely in line with what the ego says.
And the ego is taking into account what that person wants me to do,
what society says that I should do,
what I must do in order to preserve my sense of self-worth.
Let go of defining yourself by your story line.
What you’ve experienced in this life,
is just an experience that you’re eternal self has had,
just like millions and millions and millions before it,
but it is not what makes who and what you really are.
Your achievements and your mistakes are nothing in this life
except for an experience that adds to the expansion
of who you are and your eternal incorporeal self.
They are not what you are.
So, they are something that the true self has experienced.
And until you get to that place
where you can dis-identify with your own story line,
ego is really what has control of your life.
You also have to learn to be in the present moment,
which is really the space of the eternal self.
That can be really simple,
you can do that on a daily basis with little activities,
so it’s really hard at first when you are in the ego
living in either the future or the past,
what has happened to me and what will come.
It’s pretty difficult to teach yourself immediately
into being in the present moment all the time.
So, what you want to do is set it up so you are telling your brain
"During this activity, I’m going to be in the present moment.”
So you can do this while you are washing dishes...
Let’s say that at nighttime you a have twenty minute period
where you are going to be washing dishes;
Normally you would be, while you are washing dishes,
thinking about all the things you had to do tomorrow,
maybe thinking about that person that really bugged you today at work...
Instead of doing that,
you want to keep re-training your mind
to come back to the feeling of the water
cascading over your hand while you are washing the dishes,
the warmth or the coldness of the water,
the textures of all of the plates
and knives and spoons that you are washing.
You want to really train your mind
to be focused where you are,
and not let what was or what is,
in the future,
to come into the now.
And you also want to learn to distinguish,
if your urge that you are having comes from a negative emotion,
or if instead it is an inspiration
which comes from a positive emotional space.
Because urge is the call of action of ego,
whereas an inspiration is the call of action of intuition
and the true self.
So, I think that’s all I had to say today
about the difference
between intuition and the voice of ego.
The more that you are able to liberate yourself from ego,
so that it is a tool that you have control of,
versus a tool which has control over you,
the greater expansion you will find in your spiritual life
and the more happiness you will find in your day to day life.
So, I wish you the best of success.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com