Eventually you will free yourself from the demands of the ego.
I am not suggesting that you conquer, defeat, or despise the ego. It is important to honor and love all aspects of ourselves. This includes the visible world of sensory perception and the invisible world of divine spirit.
The following suggestions will help you get in touch with and transcend your ego. You will free your authentic self from the power of the ego self.
• Make an attempt to know your ego. Try to determine when it is operating as the dominant influence in your life. Ask yourself, “Am I listening to my false self or my higher self?” The more you can be aware of the presence of ego and how it is manipulating you, the less influence it will have over you. For example, if you are boasting to someone about yourself, or in any way feeling superior about your appearance, abilities or possessions, recognize that this is your ego at work trying to convince you of your separateness from God and your superiority to other human beings.
• Begin to view your ego as an entity that sits on your shoulder with a purpose. This invisible companion is always with you. It tries to convince you of your separateness from God, your superiority over other and your specialness in the universe. The more you listen to this entity, the more you are off your sacred path. As you begin to recognize the signs of ego’s presence, gently say to yourself, “There you go again. You allowed me to take the bait and I got trapped in my self-importance.” You will find that most of your thoughts and actions are prompted by this invisible entity perched on your shoulder. It wants to feel outraged when you are wronged, insulted when you are not stroked, offended when you don’t get your way, hurt when you lose a contest of argument. As you recognize and name this entity, you eventually will be able to ignore it. Ultimately it will no longer play the dominant role.
• Practice listening to others and keeping the focus off yourself. Concentrate in your conversations on what the other person is saying and what they are feeling. Then, respond with a sentence that begins with “you” rather than “I.” For example, if someone is telling you about a hospital experience. Instead, say something that either paraphrases what they said or that convinces them that you really heard both their words and their feelings. You might say, “You really had a scary experience, didn’t you?” This is called active listening. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much you will learn and how purposeful you will feel. This is a way of restraining your ego and allowing your higher self to participate.
• Keep a Journal. In it, describe what offends you about other people. Try to discover what being offended does for you. If you can be objective about it, viewing it from the perspective of the witness, you will find that what offends you is really a judgement about how others should be behaving. Yet, by itself, being offended in no way alters the offensive behavior. So try to take an instance of your being offended and merely witness it. Just notice that you feel offended and observe how it plays out in you. As you get proficient at observing your ego at work, you will find that this act of observation will defuse the inner angst. With the technique of observing yourself, you will come to see that what offends you is your ego at work, hammering into your mind over and over that the world should be different, that people have no right to treat you in ways that you find offensive. Your ego insists that you have a right to be offended, hurt, miserable. These judgements are that false idea of yourself, working hard convincing you that the world ought to be as you are rather than as it is.
Higher awareness demands a new agreement with reality. Keep in mind that your sacred quest is really all about having your higher self make the daily decisions of your life rather than being dominated by your ego.
— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
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