7 Ways the Ego Tricks You
The ego’s greatest fear is that it will cease to exist. Therefore, the ego has assigned itself one mission: Do everything possible for more safety and security. If the ego can assure those conditions it believes it will then be immortal and happy. This leads to many ways the ego tricks you in its relentless pursuits.
Everything the ego does is rooted in its survival and it is in fear of anything and everything that it thinks might threaten it’s very existence.
The irony is that the ego is actually just a projection of conclusions and beliefs which create an identity that believes it is a real being. Actually, it is more like a program of recordings of many perceptions. In other words, the ego is like a fictional character in a movie.
The ego doesn’t know it isn’t real. It just thinks it must perpetuate its existence as long as it can so it has a bag of tricks it uses to convince you that you are the ego and that’s all that you are. It has a creative variety of ways the ego tricks you.
1. Trick #1 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: Your Emotions are Proof The Ego is Real
The ego uses your feelings as validation to prove that whatever the emotion is proves that it is real. In actual fact, the emotions prove the opposite.
Emotions derive from beliefs. For instance, if you believe that something is threatening that creates fear whether or not there is a real threat. In most cases, what is feared never happens and therefore the threat is not real, but the fear feels real.
The good news is that what you feel you can heal.
Your feelings are one of your greatest assets for dismantling the constructs of the ego, and coming to clarity on the ways the ego tricks you. Here’s how that can work…
When you feel an emotional reaction such as fear, ask yourself, “Who is feeling this?”
There are two possibilities. (1) It is either coming from your soul, or (2) it is coming from a thoughtform (memory recording) that is part of the ego. That’s it. There are no other possible sources.
If the feeling is positive it is coming from the soul, but if it is negative then you have identified a thoughtform. Thoughtforms are like subtle-energy recordings of past events and reactions. The ego is composed of many thousands of these.
Once you have made the identification you can assert that the reaction is not who you truly are. That is called refuting and results in disidentifying yourself from the false belief.
At that point if you also apply a subtle-energy clearing procedure you can completely eliminate that negative thoughtform which allows more of the soul to emerge and take over.
2. Trick #2 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: Reality is What Your Senses Experience
All the ego knows is what you have experienced in this life or another. Those experiences were recorded from sensory input most of which seem to have occurred spontaneously without conscious choice. That is sometimes referred to as being asleep in a dream, and yet all the while you think you are awake. You have been tricked.
After many lifetimes you begin to “wake up” to the fact that ego programs have been running your life and you can make choices to change that.
Waking up is becoming consciously aware of the soul’s qualities which are fundamentally loving, kind, and generous. The soul is actually what is real.
You are right now in the process of awakening and that process continues until all the components of the ego are replaced with the reality of the soul.
3. Trick #3 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: If You Accumulate MORE, You Will Be Safe and Exist Forever.
If there is one attribute that defines the ego’s motivations it is a perceived need for more. The need for “More” is driven by a variety of fears and therefore the accumulation of more is seen as a means of increasing security and safety.
So the ego is perpetually on the lookout for more of anything that could possibly mitigate any threat or lack. The ego is therefore in a relentless pursuit of a wide variety of more accumulations.
This can include more of practically anything such as more money, more love, more possessions, more control, and more power.
The ego thinks it needs lots of money to have security. It thinks it needs love and acceptance of others feel fulfilled and complete. It thinks it needs to look a certain way to be accepted, liked, and safe. It thinks it needs to be successful and respected in your career choice to feel you are fulfilling your life mission.
One really big problem with this agenda is that there is never enough of anything to reach absolute safety and security; hence, the continual pursuit of more.
4, Trick #4 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: Fear, Anger, and Guilt Lead to Greater Security.
I know that sounds weird. Well, the ego is basically insane so trying to make sense of any of its motivations leads you in circles.
If you pay any attention to the news you’ll see this in operation everyday.
Guilt is actually a form of fear. It fears punishment for being or feeling guilty. Anger is also another form of fear because when you are angry you fear something. Anger is a reaction to feeling threatened. Feeling threatened derives from fear.
Fear is the deepest core of the ego. It is what drives an ego controlled person to enact shame and guilt on itself and others in a vain attempt to lead to an improved condition. In societies fear and guilt are the strongest motivations institutions use to manipulate their population to conform to the ego needs of those in control.
However, this creates increased stress, confusion, resistance, resentment, denial, arguments, and conflict. It can also drive you to conform to what those in control want from you, and, when you think about it, you’ll realize just how effective it has been. In more extreme cases it leads to war.
5. Trick #5 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: If You Are More Spiritual You’ll Be More Safe and More Happy.
The problem with this one is what the ego thinks being spiritual is. The ego doesn’t actually know what spirituality is. How could it? It operates only through the senses, and true spirituality is a matter of consciousness realization beyond the mind or senses.
Because of this the only thing the ego can do it speculate about spirituality, and it uses knowledge and the intellect to gather definitions and methods for accumulating more of each of those.
There are many spiritual scholars who have vast funds of knowledge gathered from ancient texts and the words of spiritual teachers. Some, of course, also have true spiritual realizations, but in many cases they mistake knowledge for realizations.
A certain baseline of knowledge is part of the spiritual realization process but it is not the same thing.
What this premise does is motivate and even reward a person for gaining knowledge on spiritual and religious topics. The ego will inspire and assist a person to keep pursuing more knowledge, more understanding, more techniques, and more initiations.
As long as you are doing something along these lines the ego mistakenly believes you are evolving spiritually. The ego believes there is more security and happiness when there is more knowledge and information you have accumulated.
When you think of a spiritual person you probably have some images in your memory banks based on what you have seen and been taught. This can include a certain type of clothing, postures, demeanor, appearance, vocal tone, and practices.
Not that there is anything wrong with that list, but it can divert you from understanding what a spirituality is. It is not anything external, but if you pursue anything external in a mistaken belief that you are progressing spiritually, you have fallen into trap #5 of the ways the ego tricks you.
Pursuing anything externally can be major diversions from what really serves your spiritual evolution. In fact, anything invested in externally actually ends up feeding and strengthening ego needs.
Furthermore, all the external pursuits are like trying to grasp “a carrot at the end of a stick.” No matter how delicious it looks, you never reach it and end up disillusioned and dissatisfied.
You can find yourself thinking you are so close to attaining the spiritual state yet you are ever pursuing but never quite reaching it.
Eventually, all the outer seeking gives way to the realization that what is being sought is already present within you and can be accessed and experienced.
You arrive by pausing the relentless external pursuits and deeply observing what you are experiencing in any given moment and asking some simple questions. Here’s a short list to get you started:
- How did I arrive at what I am currently experiencing?
- What beliefs have I concluded from my experiences?
- What have I been resisting?
- What can I release and let go?
- Who is experiencing this?
- What does my soul and spirit tell me about this?
6. Trick #6 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: Suffering Leads to Spiritual Rewards.
The ego harbors a mistaken belief that suffering and struggling are important parts of the spiritual path. The more you suffer, the more that is evidence you are spiritual.
Somehow the ego has concluded that pain, struggle, and suffering are all payment for its sins and defects. Therefore the more pain, the more progress.
Of course, you can learn from struggles but they are certainly not prerequisites to spiritual evolution. In fact, a true spiritual path leads to relief from pain and suffering.
That doesn’t stop the ego-mind from believing that being martyred for its beliefs is a high spiritual calling.
To think that suffering loss is a foundation for a high spiritual realization is an ego trick. You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” This means needlessly suffering in a vain attempt to solve a problem and better your condition.
Suffering can make you think you are progressing by making you think God is testing you and refining you. Of course, suffering can help you awaken spiritually but it is certainly not a requirement, nor is it an evolved approach to your spiritual evolution.
This is an ego distortion of spiritual evolution. You do not need to suffer to experience the soul or to awaken spiritually.
7. Trick #7 of Ways the Ego Tricks You: It is Somebody Else’s Fault You Suffer.
The ego has a dilemma. It doesn’t know why it suffers. In some cases it criticizes and blames itself for being imperfect and bad. In other cases, it projects the blame on others.
Obviously, others have a role to play in your life and they may not understand you or accept you, but what you conclude and how you react depends on your own beliefs.
If you blame others it causes the ego-mind to feel exonerated and validated, so the ego feels a little better about itself.
Suffering is primarily due to internal processing not external circumstances. Breaking through this ego trick requires that you recognize your role in creating, attracting, and sustaining the conditions you experience.
That is often not an “easy pill to swallow” because it requires a high degree of honesty with yourself including admitting your part in the creation of the experience.
It also means that you are responsible for your interpretations, conclusions, and beliefs about your life. It also means that the degree of happiness you feel, the spiritual realizations you have, and your responses to life all emanate from within you.
The reality is that nothing outside of you can give you what you don’t give yourself internally.
It is time to ask yourself in what ways the ego tricks you. Each of the ways the ego tricks you enslaves you to ego control which means you are not soul directed.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to reject and release the ways the ego tricks you and embrace your deep soul truth by merging with the soul and letting go of everything else.
