What is ego?
I always thought I was born naturally shy and that my lack of self-confidence was largely down to my personality type. I believed it was an inherited trait that I didn’t have much say over. Now I’m not so sure. As I started delving into ways to increase my self-confidence, I came across the spiritual concept of ego versus intuition.
Basically, intuition is your higher self, that sixth sense, a deep knowing that isn’t always explainable in words. It’s a gut feeling, a sense of unease when you’re in a situation that doesn’t feel right. It calls to you spiritually and manifests physically and emotionally, sometimes as loud as a shout, sometimes as subtle as a whisper, sometimes in the most unusual of ways.
Ego, on the other hand, attempts to pull you away from the calling of your higher consciousness and universal existence. It’s that voice in your head that berates your choices and dreams. It tells you not to be so stupid and to keep yourself in check. It criticizes, ridicules and erodes your confidence, stirring up fear, begging you to change tack and abandon your ideas. It’s often unkind and relentless.
The inner critic
I never truly understood ego though, because I didn’t feel like the critical voice in my head was ever me. Why would I need to create my own internal critic when I had one implanted in there for me from birth? All the words I berate myself with came directly from him.
- “You’re going to fail.”
- “No man would ever marry you!”
- “Don’t breathe on me. You’re disgusting.”
- “Be quiet!”
- “Stop agitating me!”
- “Get out of my fucking house.”
- “You’re in a dream world!”
- “No way you’re studying a wishy-washy course like that.”
- “Get to your room!”
- “You’ve disgraced yourself.”
- “You’ll regret this when I’m dead.”
- “Why are you hurting me like this?”
- “You’re evil.”
In addition, these are some of the things I was often called…
Lazy. Selfish. Ugly. Inappropriate. Disgusting. Self-absorbed. Agitating. Shameful. Embarrassing. Nasty. Cruel. Evil. A failure. Needy. A wimp. Unattractive. Dirty. Bad. Noisy. Boring. Uptight. Unemotional. Weird. A scrounger. A user. A nuisance. Stupid. A bully. A hamster. A prototype. Domineering. Bossy. Pathetic. Cold. A lesbian.
Well, at least he got the last one right.
The legacy of persistent criticism
I read these words used to describe me and I just feel numb. But they are horrible words. Perhaps I should be more angry or upset? I think of my daughters or friends and it would absolutely break my heart if they believed such awful lies about themselves.
It’s translated into some deep-rooted core beliefs that are extremely hard to shake. I’ve always had this persistent sense that I am a horrible person, who doesn’t deserve to be loved, that I have nothing interesting to say or contribute, that people are better off staying away from me, and the fear that if I let people too close they’ll see through my charade and be able to peer in and see the evil rotten me, the one that my father described. This is the place from which I would fall into the deepest rabbit holes, using alcohol to numb myself further and escape for a few hours from what I thought was the horrible truth of my existence.
Trusting myself
One of the worst things is that even now I don’t always fully trust my ability to judge whether someone else’s behaviour is crossing a line with me or not. I often need to consult somebody else to double-check. My intuition can be screaming “red flag”, but until I’ve confirmed that with a friend, I am liable to assume it’s something I’ve done to cause the behaviour, or I’ll make excuses for them. After all, I’m the “defective” one. I’m so used to being treated badly and excusing it, that I’ve partly lost my ability to discern what is normal and what isn’t.
I think this is sadly a common reaction to abuse. It partly explains why so many people fall into relationships that mirror in many ways the ones they had with previous abusers. Their bullshit radar is basically completely skewed.
And sadly, there are people who take advantage of this.
Shame
I’ve always felt deeply ashamed to talk about the things I was called when I was a child because I thought they were all true. I was also scared about effectively handing over free instructions to people so they could potentially hurt me in the future. They’d know exactly what to say to drive the stake in the deepest. I look at these words now though and I know they are lies. I know this intellectually and I know this intuitively. Yet, the scars of their impact remain shadows at such a deep level that they still affect my self-confidence and self-belief.
I am shifting that though.
Release
Today I choose to free myself from the weight of these untruths. By airing them, I am releasing them. I’m letting them go because they aren’t mine. They never belonged to me. I am the only one who gets to decide who I am and what I believe about myself. What other people think is none of my business.
It’s time for me to clear out the falsehoods and embrace my own ego, the one that is defined by my deepest fears, doubts and self-criticisms, no one else’s. It’s only once I’ve stripped away the lies and deceptions that come from outside of me that I will be able to see more clearly the path to my higher self. Just as we need dark to appreciate the light, I believe we need our ego to embrace our spirituality.
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