What is the EGO?

It is only consciousness that actually “knows” anything.

The ego doesn’t actually knows anything because it is simply a mind program that is
designed to give feedback.

The ego basically gathers in all the incoming data that consciousness is observing and then
it begins to colour that data with a personalized sense of self. So it starts to label and define
and form opinions and conclusions about the data.

The ego can only relate to reality in disconnected piece, whereas consciousness always
relates to reality as one interconnected piece.

You cannot become friends with a software program (ego), you cannot develop a healthy
relationship with something that doesn’t exist. The ego is not a real entity that you can have
a relationship with, it is simply a man made program that is running you and pretending to be
you. It is not autonomous, it doesn’t have any free will, it is just reacting to stimulus and
forcing you to give into its reactions and triggers, so it is redundant and unnecessary.

The ego is not your instincts, intuition or intentions. The ego is the reflexive
mechanism that commentates on your instincts, intuition and intentions.

The true self is responsive, the ego is reactive.

In life we have pain and suffering. Pain is a result of the physical body and experiences that
it goes through, suffering is the mind’s narration on top of the pain that makes is a lot worse.
The ego is responsible for every aspect of suffering in your life, so without the ego you would
still experience pain but you would not experience suffering.

The origin of the ego

The ego is a product of darwinian evolution. It is a product of natural selection, survival of the
fittest, fight to get to the top, etc. Because of this, it is inherently selfish by nature.

The entire universe is in a state of evolution and the universe is constantly evolving in order
to aid in the expansion of consciousness. Consciousness is infinite, so if it wants to
experience itself (to experience what it’s like) it needs to create some kind of finite
experience. In order for that which is infinite to have a finite experience it has to project the
illusion of being a finite entity. So consciousness needs a filter to condense itself down into,
to have a localized experience - and that is what our brains and our bodies do for
consciousness. We are one unique filter that consciousness is looking through.

The ultimate goal of consciousness is to express its free will into a finite individual
form which is “you and I”.

In order for our brains to get to the point where they are today, where they can be a big
enough filter for consciousness to have that kind of experience we needed some sort of
survival mechanism to guide us through those million years of evolution.

The ego has acted as a chaperone for consciousness through millions of years of evolution.
Without it we would not have had the natural impulse to go on reproducing, hunting,
gathering and surviving, and so our species could not have evolved to get to the place where
it is today.

The function of the ego

Because the ego is built through evolution, it is survival oriented. Because it is survival
oriented, it is inherently focused on the negative.

That’s why our egos are constantly make us doubt and second guess ourselves and why
we’re always complaining and worrying about everything. The ego doesn’t know that we’re
not actually in danger because it’s not a real entity, only consciousness knows what is real.

The ego can only label and define the information that is getting, so it’s automatically doing
what is designed to do. So there is no wonder that no matter what good things happen to
you in life there is something in your mind that always makes you second guess or doubt it.
Even when there’s nothing to worry about there is some reflex in your mind that is trying to
make you worry about something because it’s actually trying to help you, it needs to have
your best interest in mind from its perspective, being negatively oriented is the safest way to
keep you surviving.

The ego is obviously formless, and because of that it will identify with whatever is placed in
front of it. (an idea, a role you play, an identity you have, an idea you are attached to)
Everything that is placed in front of the ego with your intention and your interest is then
endowed with a sense of identity.
And so then obviously the most common things that are constantly being placed in front of
the ego is the body and the mind. So the ego doesn’t just say I have a body and a mind, but
it says I am the body and the mind - this is what makes us vulnerable to suffering, because
when our mind, ideas, opinions are threatened or when our body is threatened we feel as
though we are being threatened, when in reality we are pure consciousness that is simply
observing the body and the mind.

When you know yourself as pure consciousness you can’t suffer from the activity of the mind
or the body. When you believe you are just the body and the mind, that is what makes you
vulnerable to the suffering that the ego creates.

Because the ego is trying to help you survive, what it does is that it has to fabricate a false
sense of control on reality and it does that by coming up with a definition and a label for
every object that it can perceive. Once the ego develops a label for something, then it only
ever communicates to its label. It only ever relates to its projections but never to the actual
thing itself.

The ego can only be an unconscious movement. The moment you are aware that a thought
has come from the ego, you begin to drain it of power and influence. The ego was designed
to be sort of an autopilot for consciousness. Once consciousness matures and expands
enough, these programs are no longer needed and once they are recognized they begin to
dissolve themselves. It’s only the light of awareness that can dissolve the programs of the
ego.

The ego dies when you no longer have a use for it anymore. When you are no longer giving
attention to all these triggered mind programs they begin to break themselves down.

When there is no more mind made entity constantly narrating your experience, all that
remains is that natural and organic peace that is inherent to existence itself.

In order for anything to be known expriencelly there must be some sort of contrast so the
ego being negatively oriented provides this necessary contrast for the God to know itself
because the ego is based on lack, on separation - so what happens is that consciousness
projects itself into what we call a soul and that soul projects itself into a physical body. The
soul continues to project itself into physical bodies over countless different lifetimes. Over
time it learns lessons and grows and evolves towards the source again (its true essential
nature).

The ego has served as the catalyst for the expansion of consciousness. Without the ego,
consciousness could have never evolved. (like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly)

The ego constricts us and causes us to suffer and to become tired of being weighed down
by those mind programs that make us inauthentic, unhappy and it’s only through the
suffering that the ego creates that we desire self-realization - and it is only through desire
that consciousness evolves. In this way, the ego is a beautiful catalyst that gives us the
motivation and gives us the resource to actually desire to know what we are really like.

The evolution of consciousness is motivated by desire - if you have no desire to be free you
will not be free.

How to break free from EGO

Spiritual awakening is realizing that you have been a prisoner to a system that has been
running you and pretending to be you, you’ve been living with the assumption that you really
are a separate entity inside of a physical world that actually has free will. But now you realize
that actually you were controlled by a mind made program that you believed it was actually
you. You see that is just a system of automated triggers which causes us to perceive, to
think and react in ways that at our core we do not truly want to.

The ego can only be an unconscious action, the moment you are aware of the fact that you
were in ego the program loses its grip and influence over you - because it is dependant on
your unconscious belief in order to sustain itself.

Step 1 - Answer the call from your higher self

When you suffered enough at the hands of your ego, there is an aching desire that develops
to be free from the suffering - this is your higher self telling you that you are ready to
transcend these programs.
You start to become suspicious of every thought that appears, consider if you actually
choose each thought or whether they are appearing automatically. By investigating this you
will realize there are two shelves at play in your consciousness:

a)The automatic self - EGO (every thought that makes you feel bad)

Thoughts are just arising automatically according to your personal conditioning - there is no
thinker of thoughts - The ego tries to endow you with a personal sense of ownership over
every thought that appears.

b)The natural self - YOU (always feels good, it is already whole and complete, it is always at
peace with itself)

Anything which causes you to feel less that that is coming from the programming and not
from the true self. Those programs appear in the form of an identity or a belief so these
identities and beliefs that we hold about ourselves become the anchor points that allow the
ego to have influence over us.

Step 2 - Remove the anchor points of the mind

The ego thrives on 3 main anchor points: the body, the mind, memories.

The ego needs you to believe that: I am the body and the way that it looks, I am the mind
and the thoughts which appear in it and I am my personal history. I am the things that I’ve
done and what has happened to me. None of those identities are real, don’t try to get rid of
them, just see their unreality.

There is no separate self living an individual life, it is an illusion. There is only life itself, and
you are life pretending to be a person in order to take part in this evolutionary journey.

Begin to identify what ideas you are believing in about yourself. What external things that
you think you need in order to be happy, what roles are you playing that you have identified
with.

Eg: If you are an aspiring musician just be a musician and make music because you love it
but do not allow the mind to get you convinced that you are a musician. The moment you
condense an identity you attach your sense of self worth to it. If someone doesn’t like your
music then you feel your sense of self worth is being threatened - now instead of making
music because you love it, you make it because you need approval and validation and
you’re always doubting and second guessing yourself. And so that which used to be a
source of joy for you becomes a source of suffering, and whenever you suffer from it you
strengthen the program and it grows even stronger.

Step 3 - Don’t be swayed by appearances

Let go of fear, doubt and disbelief - free your mind.

Thoughts can only gain influence on you when you take them seriously, but thought can only
audition for your intention and when they are not regarded as significant / believed in they
vanish.

The only reason that the thoughts you struggle with now are making so much noise is
because you’ve been giving them so much attention in the past. So you simply need to drain
them of oxygen by ignoring them - they may be bringing some painful feelings with them for
a while but they will pass.

Don’t get involved with the thoughts and the feelings of the mind, simply remain as the
witness.

EGO is not your friend

The ego wants you to either love it or hate it but it cannot compute the idea of its own reality.
The ego can never have the realization of not being real. The world of duality is the ego’s
playground, you cannot become friends with a software program.

Ego and self love are not the same thing - eg: self love affirmations - that is not self love, that
is insecurity trying to convince itself otherwise - when the ego sees you doing this it is licking
its chops because the ego’s entire belief system is the idea that “Your value depends on
what you do”.

The ego is a product of natural selection, it is a modulation of our biology’s fight or flight
system that was put in place once humans became self aware and started creating more
intricate social systems within our group dynamic. A part of our brain needed to evolve to
keep up with this new development, so the ego became much more complex and intelligent
to help us survive not just physically but socially too. This is why our fight or flight response
is almost exclusively triggered by human interactions and social situations.

As ancient humans began forming tribes, the status in the social hierarchy became another
important variable in the ego’s list of survival. If your status in the social hierarchy dropped
then you’d have much more trouble finding a good mate and you might even have a harder
time accessing food and shelter.

The ego is the part of your mind that nature has designed to ensure that this won’t happen
so if someone attacks me, I attack them back. If I make a mistake then the ego better make
me feel so awful about that mistake that I would never do it again. Everything in the ego’s
world revolves around survival - it knows nothing of peace, love or acceptance. Although the
ego is the cause of your suffering it is not evil by any means. From its perspective it’s just
trying to help you survive. The ego is inherently neutral - it has learned how to use the
body’s emotional fight or flight response to its advantage.

To over simplify, the ego is a psychological machine that only produces thoughts of guilt.

Guilt is the mechanism that the ego created to trigger the body’s fight or flight response.
When the ego tells us that someone else is guilty it triggers FIGHT which is anger. When it
tells us that we are angry, it triggers flight which is fear. The ego can only relate to you on
this basis and no other way.

It can only tell you that you are lacking something, that you are incomplete and that other
people are the source of your problems - it is only capable of self preservation thinking.

The ego does not exist, the ego is not your sense of self, it is your false sense of self. All
that’s happening is some thoughts are being constantly created by the mind, always
changing all the time and they’re being given an identity as if they were an entity.

All you need to see is that you are not responsible for what the ego thinks, thoughts are just
another bottley system that you’ve inherited which are running autonomously.

You are not the thinker of thoughts - if it was really up to you, you would never think a single
thought which causes suffering, you would always think thoughts that make you happy and
at peace.