If the Ego Won't Go Away, Send It to Go Buy Some Humility

There is a kind of ego that offers no respite or rest: it is one that suffers because the world is not to its liking, and can’t stand not always being right. There is no worse slavery than living attached to an oversized ego because being happy is in the soul. One who is able to let go humbly can be connected to the world again from the heart.

It is striking, for example, to see how the ego tends to compare itself to other people. If we are lucky enough to adjust to that pattern it will adore us, but if we excel, we will undoubtedly be the focus of its attacks and slights.

We’re sure you know someone with this kind of behavior, and even though you may not be aware, at some point you too act with a certain dose of ego. As the Chinese proverb says, “It is more difficult to change the course of a river that the character of a person.”

The ego and the egoic mind

Eckhart Tolle is a writer known for encouraging people to live in the “here and now.” In his works he identifies the most common sources of internal suffering that prevent us from being happy. In books like “A New World Now” he speaks of the egoic mind as one of the most complex sources of personal suffering.

For Tolle, people characterized with an egoic mind “are owned by their own mind.” There is an obsession with one’s thoughts, judgments, values and emotions to the point of completely living “attached” to their own history. There is nothing beyond this exclusive and personal horizon.

The egoic mind is persistent and repetitive, thus causing a type of very destructive psychic energy. We cannot forget that this personality also seeks to differentiate itself from other egos and dominate them. It falls gradually into a kind of struggle as useless as it is frustrating as the “fight” between egos only results in psychological suffering.

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How to encourage the rest of the ego

The person who is dominated by the ego at every moment always seeks to change others without trying to change himself. All this leads to frustration. In fact, it is quite possible that at one time you’ve met the typical person who complains that “relationships are very difficult” without seeing that the source of the problem is them and not others.

Eckhart Tolle himself tells us that he too had to make the same transformation: to break away from his ego, from “the more I have the more I am” and all that inner buzzing that prevented him from tuning in to life and others in a whole and humble way.

Although it is not easy, it can be achieved. You can cope better with a person of “high ego” and also disable some of the behaviors that go along with it in yourself.

Keys to detach ourselves from our ego

• To defend ourselves from these dysfunctional egos that are in our environment, it is best not to react to such behavior. Ignoring is responding with wisdom and is also frustrating to those who want to be the center of attention.
• A technique to “put out the ego” is to find one’s inner calm, turn off the mental noise. The ego is always looking for something: add a little more of this or the other to be complete, challenge it with something that is beyond in order to be right.
• The source of suffering associated with the ego will end when we focus on the present moment to look for a more noble, more humble end. As they say, “No one comes to learn the meaning of life until they submit their egos to serve their brothers.”
• When we connect with others with empathy and understand that “being is not possessing” or that “the more I have doesn’t necessarily mean the more I have” we are immediately freed from endless burdens. That’s when the egoic mind turns off to turn on our valuable emotional mind.

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