Our travelling companion called the ego
Within our journey of being our best, we have a travelling companion which is our own “ego”.
This companion has started to appear in our early childhood by a process of personalisation that is constructed according to the norms of society and managed by the good intentions of our parents, teachers and influencers within our community ... this is the way we [including yourself] are and do things around here! We therefore need it as our basic interface to this world in order to survive within it. Eventually, the ego also takes over our sense of identity in the form of a personality ... our personality.
Subsequently, your ego, as your travelling companion, suggests your sense of who you are, and who you are not ... how you see yourself ... the roles you have to play in life.
However, your ego is not you ... it is simply an “adopted” sense of self overshadowing your essential and authentic being which was there from the day you were born. Without this ego we would have ultimate freedom to simply BE, with no limitations of who we “think” and “feel” we are or are not!
There are distinct characteristics differentiating the presence of an egocentric person versus a egoless person. An egoless person is a person where the ego is normalised to its basic interface role and is transparent to the presence of one’s essential and authentic being.
An egocentric person has a “sense of separation” from the community he or she lives in. In order to survive there is a need for command and control in order to protect this position. It’s about the exclusive me, or the shared we as an exclusive club; having conditional relationships in the form of bartering – I will do this for you if you do this for me. He or she operates from reason and emotion as thinking and contracted feeling. In essence the egocentric person always wants to be right and to look good, hence the others must be wrong and look bad if challenged.
The egoless person has a “sense of oneness” with the community he or she lives in. This lead to acceptance and trust as well as surrender to the higher being within. It’s about being inclusive, expressed as us, within the community; having relationships with unconditional love as a basis. He or she operates from intuition expressed as an inherent knowing and sublime feeling.
So, the question now is that within our journey of being our best, do I “own” and manage this travelling companion ... or does it own and manage me ?
Copyright © : Dirk JO Devis – Frontier Coaching - 2012
