How to stop your ego from controlling you
The five red flags of the egoic mind
“If you have the least desire to be better than you actually are, if you hurry up to the slightest degree in search of something, you are already going against the unborn.” Alan Watts
These next five Substack posts are my most valuable articles on the egoic mind.
This is because I truly believe that if you can recognize and transcend your ego-driven behaviours you can end most of your suffering. Once you see how your fearful and insane egoic mind behaves in day-to-day life, you can finally put it in the back seat, where it belongs. But don’t trust me. Try it out. And keep this article for reference later.
Although it’s useful, at a higher level, to understand what your ego is (e.g. a false identity that keeps you in constant fear) it’s much easier to understand it when watching it in action. That way you can see it in real time and stop it dead in its tracks.
In this article I describe five red flags that point to the most common ego-based behaviors. As you will see, all these behaviors cause significant problems in your life and can be avoided with awareness and skill. Eventually, with practice, you will learn how to stop falling into the trap of the ego and take back your true self-control and power.
Here you will see that the five red flags all result from the ego’s desperate need to feel safe, avoid pain and stay in complete control. In summary, your ego thinks that by engaging in these behaviors, you will be safe. This is a lie and it backfires, as you will see.
Here are the five red flags of an immature ego:
Judging
Blaming
Endless seeking
Controlling
Regret and worry
As you will see below, our egoic mind is absolutely convinced that we need to engage in these actions. Worse yet, our whole society accepts them as quite normal. If you are engaging in these behaviours, then you can be fairly sure that your ego has taken over. Here I describe each so you can transcend your egoic-state.
Its important to understand that your egoic mind can’t stand any pain at all and has a deep fear of all discomfort whether physical, mental or emotional. When your ego resists and rejects pain, it causes more pain but more importantly prevents you from receiving the gift of pain. The truth is that often times the pain you feel is a call to action. It’s often a symptom of something that needs your attention. In other words, pain is not only okay, but often necessary. Your ego does not know this. (Please read my other Substack articles if you want to know more about how the ego functions.)
1. Judging
The most common behaviour of the egoic mind is judging. The ego-based mind wants to label, categorize and judge absolutely everything. It starts by giving things names and putting them in categories. Then we decide which things, groups and individuals are good or bad. This helps us decide if they are safe or dangerous.
Before we can blink an eye, our egoic mind has decided whether something or someone is good or bad; right or wrong; appropriate or inappropriate; angelic or evil and so on. We will immediately either embrace it or reject it. This happens well below our conscious awareness. Adyashanti describes this process as an addiction:
“The greatest generator of conflict, both internal and external, is our addiction to interpreting and evaluating each and every moment of our experience. When we continually judge and evaluate, we separate from what’s happening. We feel a certain distance from our experience, because now we have become the evaluator of the moment.“
In our egoic-state we actually enjoy judging others because it makes us feel better. It allows us to see ourselves as a good person, more intelligent, more kind, and more loving etc. However, it comes at a cost.
First, the good feeling we initially get from judging is shockingly fleeting. It is usually followed by a sense of discomfort because we know in our bones that judging is wrong.
Second, every act of judging is a form of separation from others and reinforces the deepest human wound of separation. By rejecting another we push them away and in doing so, increase our own sense of isolation, as described here by Doreen Virtue:
“Since separation is the most nightmarish illusion, judgement comes at a high price, eliciting deep emotional pain due to feeling lonely, abandoned, isolated and misunderstood.“
Third, most judging is self-judgment. As the saying goes, “As you judge others, so you judge yourself.” Often the very thing that you are critiquing in another is a mirror for you. In fact the reason certain behaviours bother you is often because you have rejected this aspect of yourself (see my upcoming articles on shadow work.)
When we do not judge, we feel open and expansive. It not only feels good in the body, but actually unburdens us of unnecessary negative thoughts. Staying neutral allows us to stay open and connected, as described here by Adyashanti:
“What actually happens when we stop judging, when we stop resisting the flow of our lives, is that we come into an alignment where we are in a natural and clear relationship with what ever presents itself. Yet alignment is not passive, indifferent or uncaring. Instead of being uncaring we actually come into a deeper and more intimate relationship with what’s happening. We become very deeply connected. We find ourselves able, in the moment of someone’s actual pain or in the middle of our own suffering, to connect very intimately, very purely without any resistance.“
Finally, all evaluating limits us and restrains our life experiences, as suggested here:
“Judging, evaluating, and comparing are all based on the sense of the isolated self. … Our concepts, instead of helping us, form our limitations. We shut out reality because it does not match preconceived notions. Life is spontaneous and ever changing; our concepts can never keep up, and we reject life, simply because it does not fit in with what we know or expect.” John Ruskan
Here are some examples of non-judging behaviours:
I enjoy experiencing life without labeling it
I don’t judge things as good or bad
I adopt a beginner’s mind
I am open-minded and don’t make assumptions
I allow things and events to unfold in their own time
Stay tuned. In my next entries I talk about:
Red Flag number 2: Blaming
Red Flag number 3: Endless seeking
Red Flag number 4: Controlling
Red Flag number 5: Regret and Worry
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