As a child growing up I always thought someone with an ego was someone who was deemed bigheaded or conceited.  If you had a big ego, you were far too impressed with yourself.

In the past 5 years or so through the exploration and study of Eckhart Tolle’s two seminal books, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment and A New Earth, both which I’ve read and re-read many times, I’ve come to see and understand the word ‘ego’ in a much more expanded light.

According to Tolle’s official website, “at the core of Tolle’s teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet.”

In his book A New Earth, Tolle defines the term “ego” as an “illusory sense of self”.

I now equate my ego with my mortal mind and mortal self and because of this probably now deal with the concept every day of my life.  I see my struggle with Pete’s ego to be really the main problem to overcome while I’m here on Planet Earth.  No longer is the concept limited to my blown-up impression of myself, but now it’s taken on a whole new and wider range of concern and therefore investigation.

Because of this it’s not such a horrific word anymore that I look at in embarrassment; rather it’s a concept that I think about with a certain practicality daily in most all of my dealings.  “How is my ego, my mortal mind, controlling my experience today?”  I try to identify myself as being apart from my ego and the more I’m able to do that, the happier I seem to be and the more truly conscious I become.

I call this ‘ego management’.

If my true consciousness can be the master in my life and not my ego, well then, I’m better off, living more connected with my surroundings and in better touch with my Maker.  It strikes me that what really gets each of us off the path in life is our individual egos and their penchant to control our emotions, our relationships, our creativity and ultimately our destinies.

The trick of life, for me, has become to reduce my ego down to its native nothingness and allow my true consciousness or self, my spiritual man perhaps, to emerge.  To a certain sense I see the spiritual me sitting back there behind some curtain all too often while the ego runs rampant through my life and mucks everything up.

When I’m unhappy or angry or depressed or just down, I’ve come to see that my life is mostly ruled by my ego.  If I can stop and get a hold of my true consciousness and reduce ego’s power over me, I can always reach a turning point and begin the healing process.

But it’s not always easy because ego is clever – it has decades of experience in fooling me to believe that it, in fact, is the captain of the ship.  Ego says, “I am the leader!  Follow me!!  Listen to none else!!!”

And because I have habitually done this or allowed this for all these years, I often get fooled by habit and follow dumbly along.  I use the word “dumb” because it’s just that.  There’s simply not a lot of true intelligence governing the situation and so I follow along without thinking.

Don’t we all.

So I try to reconnect more often now periodically during the day, to re-organize my mind, to stop and do periodic mind checks to gauge just who’s in control and how it’s going.  If I see that ego is running the game, I can try to shift the weight from ego onto a more spiritual basis.

But ego doesn’t like this.  Ego loses power and identity when I do this, so often it’s a fight to put it down.

The management part comes when I ask myself, “Well, who really is the boss here? Who am I empowering at this moment?  Clear headed consciousness or giant ego running amuck?”

Sometimes ego wins.  It’s good at winning.  It has decades of experience.  It knows all the tricks – anger, jealousy, apathy, hurt feelings, greed, self-pity, pride and on and on.

The trick is to stay on top of my job.  Be a better manager.  Stay organized and do systems checks regularly.

If I were a store manager, would I not walk through the aisles of my store daily to stay on top of how my product was being presented?  Would I not go stand outside the store and look at the signs to see that they were all working?  Would I not keep the storeroom clean and well organized?  Would I not work to make my customers happy?  Would I not care for my staff and see that they performed well.  Would I not pay moment-to-moment attention to the details of the day?

So I’m trying to be a better manager.  So far, it’s a bit of a roller coaster ride.  Some days are better than others, but one thing has become very clear.  When ego is in control, I am less myself, who I really want to be, how I want others to perceive me.  Simply put, when ego is in control, I am less happy or often having trouble with those around me.

When ego is lessened and controlled, I am more productive, creative and loved.

When ego is diminished down to nothing, and I’m sad to say that this happens far too seldom my life, then I’m connected spiritually and exist in small periods of time in an altered state – a state of higher consciousness where I’m living in a state of pure joy or bliss.  I sometimes ask myself, “Why can’t I stay there?”

I’ve come to know that the culprit is my ego.  Often in those moments it fights the hardest for its identity because it knows it’s really losing.  It sees its own end and fights for its own survival.

What a battle!  What a strange life we live.  This dual existence is often befuddling to me, but as I grow older and hopefully wiser, I am able to see the folly of it more and separate it all out more and more.

My quest for the rest of my days here is to become a better manager.  If I can accomplish this, I believe that I can vastly improve the state of my human consciousness.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
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