Who You're Not! The Ego Explained in Plain English

There are many different interpretations of the word "ego". The word was coined by Sigmund Freud who saw it as a kind of mediator between your desires and your personal morals. In common language, it means the arrogant part of you that thinks you are in some way superior. Neither of these definitions really get to grips with what the ego actually is, so here is a simple yet full explanation:

The ego is basically the mind's "autopilot", the things you do and think by default. The ego is not "you"! It is in fact a reflex response just like blinking, but very highly sophisticated, with a whole range of diferent responses that are triggered by different environments. Unlike blinking, which is genetically hardwired from birth, the ego is flexible and can both gain and lose responses. The ego is a set of learned reflexes. This gives human beings and other animals with similar mechanisms an immense advantage - it means we can adapt and learn new behaviours for new environments, enabling us to survive and thrive almost anywhere on the planet.

Unfortunately, amazing and useful though it is, it is not infallible. Because of evolutionary forces, it is biased toward childhood experience, particularly in the age range 4-10, as in this period language is used to label and associate experiences with responses and other experiences. A traumatic or antisocial experience in this period can leave a person's responses permanently warped and unadapted for adult life. Most problems I encounter as a therapist boil down to this mechanism.

The ego is so fully integrated into your mind that the majority of people understandably assume that their egos are what they are - they say things like "I" get angry when I see... No you don't! You experience the feeling of anger triggered by a certain situation, but it isn't intrinsic to who you are - you have acquired that response due to a prior experience, and theoretically at least you can also unacquire it.

The only part of you that is truly "you" is the part that actually experiences, ie your awareness, and your true intention. Your awareness never truly sleeps - even when you are deeply asleep you have awareness, although it is all inward. Only a general anaesthetic can properly turn it off.

Up to this point, you may have considered your thoughts were "you", but they're not - they're simply your ego in action - it is responding to data that is either fresh from the senses or equally as often from memory. You are aware of this because your own thoughts can upset you, are not what you want to think, are nonsense or completely contradict each other. They are not your intention, which is to do with self-worth, safety and creation.

Most people will spend their entire lives on autopilot, not being truly themselves but being controlled by their ego. This is fine if your default attitude is bright and sunny - why wake up from a good dream? Unfortunately most egos are not! They are fearful, sad, lonely or bitter, and for many life is spent trapped in a dream of disappointment, which by their behaviour they inflict on the next generation.

There are a few people who are so sick of being sick of it that they become determined to find a way out of their own negative thought, and it is these people who discover ways to override their egos and discover true happiness - not from the world around them but from within themselves. Such a discovery is called many names, such as awakening, enlightenment, epiphany or self-realisation.

It is beyond the scope of this introductory article to point you fully in the direction of being liberated from your ego and learning to control it rather than vice versa. However, most sources agree that the first step to liberation is learning to calm the mind. A calm mind turns off the ego and you can begin to see things clearer.

A final point - your ego is not your enemy. It is there for a good reason - to help you survive, and enable you to multitask. It is a wonderful servant, but not often a good master. Learn to tame it, and your life will be powerful indeed.

Peace of Mind

I have spent large parts of my life wishing I was put to sleep and woken up only for a rare experience of ecstacy, then to be put back to sleep again - literally and honestly. It seems that near his end, Michael Jackson felt the same, but had the money to make it happen - and had the fate of many who seek an external chemical solution to their problems. For so long, life was just awful, or more accurately felt awful. Suffering, I have since discovered, is really just a decision that things are bad. This decision is made by creating an idea of how it should be, an idealised fantasy where everything does what you think it should, and then measuring how it actually is against that fantasy standard.

It has taken more than half a lifetime for me to deconstruct this perception and manage my thoughts in such a way that doesn't leave me permanently miserable. Even then, this awakening has taken place because I was forced into it by necessity. Others, particularly in my family, were going to be deeply affected by my attitude and behaviour. I didn't want to let my issues spoil their lives, as my parents issues had spoiled large parts of mine.

I am not immune to being blown off course by circumstances and the attitudes of others, but when alone, I am no longer torturing myself, and have that most precious of all life's qualities, peace of mind. Nothing else really matters. Peace of mind is the ultimate bliss that life can offer. I would trade in any other experience for it, as it is the only one that really satisfies. In fact, the Law of Attraction only works to full effect when you are at peace with yourself first.

The absence of peace of mind boils down to fear, and fear is an ongoing product of the mind itself. Yes, past trauma, injustice and bad circumstances play their part, but these things only go on hurting us when we are ruled by fear, and your fear also incidentally hurts not only you but everyone around you. Fear, in the absence of an imminent threat to life, really does ruin everything. The first step to free yourself from this tyranny of fear is to tame your own mind, because left to itself the mind has an infinite capacity for bringing up things to be afraid of.

The ultimate cause of fear boils down to a sense of separation from the reality you perceive around you. Many of my clients express this very feeling, that they are innocent little fish thrown into a nasty pond full of horrid things. I have to then deconstruct this perception of reality and show them it is something they created themselves, a popular but false adopted concept that life sucks. It only "sucks" if you start with the assumption that your life is all about whether your conscious mind is in control of everything.

When you start to examine what your conscious mind actually is, and what what you mean by "me" "myself" and "I", and what these things actualy are when you look at them closely, your clear ideas about being a distinct little fish in a big mucky pond start to break down and then get completely turned on their head. It turns out that you are the pond experiencing itself through the fish. The universe is experiencing itself through you!

This startling conclusion comes at the end of a prolonged journey of discovery. It is a journey embarked on only by a minority, who are so absolutely sick of suffering, and yearn so desperately to be free that they are determined enough to embark on it. My clients in their own ways are all similar. They have tried everything else and are so fed up with their issue or utterly bereft of a way out by themselves that they turn to me. Fortunately for them, so long as they trust me and do what I tell them, I can help them, as I've already "been there", be it addiction, despair or distress.

Most of my clients rarely need to undertake the full journey I have - if they have a single issue, they need only to learn how to draw on their own hidden inner resources. As they learn to trust in themselves, their self-belief starts to dispel their fear and life becomes rich and fulfilling, without any need to go into the nature of existence itself. As the healer and therapist however, it is essential to my own personal ongoing succes.

For most people, and the majority of my clients, it is sufficient to see oneself as simply just as worthy as anything else in the pond, with a valid and worthwhile contribution to make. The sense of separation becomes less acute, fear dissolves, at least to a manageable level, and peace of mind is experienced. But occasionally I get the odd client whose belief system is so negative, so utterly distorted and so self-defeating that nothing less than a complete paradigm shift in their fundamental assumptions about life is required, and I introduce them to the reality of who they truly are.

If you wish to experience ultimate Peace of Mind, which is life's ultimate bliss, you need to become aware that you are not a separate distinct thing from everything else, but rather a unique expression of everything else, in the same way every wave is a unique expression of the ocean, or a snowflake is a unique expression of snow. What some people call "enlightenment" is not transforming into an angelic being, but rather the letting go of what you have thought you are to become what in reality you have always been. To experience that reality, begin the journey by sitting down and asking the question "exactly who/what am I?"