TLDR: My inward journey leads to new outward sharing and an expanded ego study that builds on mindfulness lessons learned during the past decade of corporate work. We explore how each of us can create a digital record that influences the future of humanity. The ongoing Israeli / Palestinian conflict is evaluated in the context of our egos and a desire for a new paradigm that provides a pragmatic path to peace. I prepare to head to Guatemala for Yoga Teacher Training on November 29.
How do we tip the scales in a world with so much love and so much pain?
The past couple months have been such a sweet time to further meld my business / corporate background, with deepening personal improvement practices focused on mind/breath/body/movement/energy. There have been hard days grappling with my purpose in life, but overall it has felt liberating to explore. During this time I had meaningful visits with family, spent 3 weeks road-tripping across California, went deep with close friends in my favorite Midwest spots, and continued my inward journey with both personal practices and time spent learning from brilliant coaches. I have used the mindfulness tools I leveraged to de-stress and work through anxiety in my fast moving corporate career, and made these a launch point to go wayyy deeper on the discovery journey of making this life the best it can be…I am consolidating these learning into techniques any person can use to achieve their best. In addition to lots of time spent meditating, hiking, studying, reading, and journaling…I picked up certifications in Reiki and Breathwork, and have begun Yoga Teacher Training. In the past months I’ve had incredible experiences sharing these modalities with friends and also coaching new clients that are trying to create their best life.
I see so much stunning potential and awakening happening with humans today, and yet this is also a world where dissatisfaction is at an all-time-high in the United States. Corporate folks are reporting the highest dissatisfaction on record, and devastating inequalities are on display daily in the United States and around the world. It’s also a world where the devastation of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel can occur, paired with immense Palestinian suffering occuring before and since October 7. It’s a Russia/Ukraine world, a world where the people and environment of the Congo are being devastated to mine raw materials for our life in the West, a world where the immigration crisis at the US border shows no signs of slowing, a world where socio-economic and racial injustices persist…and the list goes on and on.
In the midst of all this…I have been asking myself more and more, “how can I raise my voice more often for good, and help balance out so many voices that are being used in destructive ways”? If you have any belief in manifestation, then you know that our thoughts create actions that create our reality. As an eager leader across my professional and personal endeavors, I aim to more vocally be a voice for good in the discourse we see play out online. Humans today are the first in history that get to create a digital record of our life and values on Instagram/Tik Tok/YouTube/Blogs/etc. We see karma occur in real time, as messages trend that cause hearts to either harden or to expand. One message I feel strongly about bringing to the world, is the incredible positive impact that occurs when we get to know our ego in an intimate way, and in the process loosen the strangle hold it has on our lives. Everyone of us has an ego, whether or not you can recognize yours today. As Karl Jung famously put it, “until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”. Would you rather have control of your mind, or allow your ego to run it for you on autopilot?
We’ve all heard of the ‘ego’…so how do we get control of the voice in our head?
Each of us has the ability to work to discover and understand who we are at our core, and then make our life reflect that. It’s that simple true’ism of “be yourself, everyone else is already taken”. I’ve been fascinated by the human ego since I first read Eckhart Tolle’s work in 2013. In recent months I studied deeper to learn more about how the ego operates and expended much energy engaging and reigning in my own ego. Through this I have come to understand that our human minds must be awakened and even conquered by each of us, in order to create a life where purpose, passion, and calling can be realized. Folks keep talking to me about a lack of meaning in their life, and I fully believe this meaning-gap is resolved on the inside. Getting our egos under control is a foundational step towards finding that meaning.
For each of us, our egos form during our childhood and expand into adulthood. This helps to create our unique personality, but also results in emotional walls being built that were originally designed to protect us. As adults, our egos will undermine our ability to connect with others and have peace with whatever life throws our way. They try to keep us in the safe space of what ‘we know’ and away from ‘scary change or things we’re afraid of’. Our egos convince each of us that we are different from others and separate from ‘them’. Our ego is filled with ‘likes and dislikes’ such that everything that happens in life gets an automatic reaction based on preferences we built along the way. Realizing that these preferences no longer serve us is a critical path to growth. Our egos guide us to identify with the roles we play (e.g. profession, family, hobbies) or groups we are part of (e.g. social status, political party, spiritual community), while moving us away from our true self that exists at our center.
- Ego identifies with ‘us’ while highlighting our separateness from ‘them’.
- Ego feels the need to be ‘correct’, and will fight to prove this rightness when opposed.
- Ego loves the duality of good/bad, right/wrong…and will fill you with preferences that cause reactions that make it much more difficult to be happy, peaceful, objective, and rational on a moment-to-moment basis.
- Ego is the opposite of abundance, it thrives on scarcity and on fear, convincing you that your success and protection can only be achieved by struggling against the forces that would take these things from you.
- Ego thrive on judgment, creating dopamine hits when thinking/expressing opposition to something ‘bad’ and similarly judging others for the shadow-side characteristics we hide from ourselves because they’re too painful to accept.
If you have not taken the time to get to know your ego and done the work to separate your ‘auto pilot reactions’ to life from the being you are at your core, now is a great time to start this journey. You can first begin to become aware of your ego by the simple act of sitting in silence and observing the ‘voice in your head’ that continuously creates thoughts. You can continue to observe this inner mental dialogue as you work, play, and experience all that life brings your way. Awareness of the ego is a first step towards taking back control from it. Are there times when your brain is churning up thoughts and feelings that are not helpful for the current moment?…perhaps you find yourself resisting something that is occurring at work or trying to cling to a friendship that is fading. This is probably your ego at work. Any energy we put towards resisting or grasping creates discomfort and wastes away the precious energy we could be using for problem-solving and living. Reaction is often ego. When you accept whatever is occurring and respond thoughtfully, you have elevated your actions beyond ego-ic conditioning. A deeper study and increased awareness of the texture of this internal voice unlocks the ability to connect with your true self, and separate it from the conditioned ego-ic version of your personality that shows up in the world and can easily run your life on autopilot. Happiness happens when we express our true self with authenticity. Living as our true self creates meaning in life.
Each of us adults has an ego that formed during our youth and continues to transform itself throughout our adulthood. When left unchecked, the ego dominates the voice in our head and produces the thoughts that lead to our emotions, feelings, and actions. The ego is a natural evolutionary adaptation intended to protect us, though eventually it undermines our ability to live a happy life unless we overcome it and make friends with it. The goal of the ego is always the survival of itself, by convincing you that your uniqueness and differentness are justified, and that you must hold onto these characteristics to protect you from the scary world out there.
Being a Voice for Good: The ego and the Israeli / Palestinian conflict
Let’s land this back in the exciting reality that you are the first human in the entire ancestry and lineage of your family that gets to create a digital record of your life and values…which in turn influences the collective views of society today, and will be absorbed hundreds of years from now by your descendants when they want to understand where they came from. I invite you to reflect on the type of content you see being shared on social media today, and specifically what you choose to share. The current ‘us vs them’ battle playing out between sides supporting Israel and Palestine is a fitting spot to begin our ego work in the context of the digital record we are creating. As someone who spent 2 decades studying the history/religion/expectations of this conflict and visited Israel & Palestine, I can share that I have experienced countless tears for ‘both sides’ in recent weeks, and want only to contribute to a path of peace.
A path to peace will require a new paradigm for this conflict…a paradigm that is not stuck in the death grip of collective egos. Indeed my study of the history, religions, and people that form the core of this conflict has convinced me that if you have chosen a side, unwittingly you have become a barrier to peace. ‘Both sides’ can produce compelling arguments rooted in justice that use the history of the past 75 or 2000 years to explain why ‘they are right’. Horrible actions have occurred repeatedly on ‘both sides’. Both antisemitism and anti-Palestinian actions are never ok. The quicker we break free from a broadly generalized ‘good vs bad’ lens, the quicker we can move towards pragmatic solutions that take into account the realities on the ground, where majorities want peace. There are already many groups working to forge a new middle-way path that pragmatically gives lasting peace a chance. Each of us can contribute to this noble work by examining how individual and collective human egos are driving cycles of oppression/violence, how history is being mis-used to reinforce ingrained beliefs, and how we choose to speak about the people hurt by this conflict. These are simple but tangible steps each of us can start putting into practice to shift hearts, expand minds, and someday make peace feasible.
You and I have an opportunity to change the dialogue compared to what is being pushed by biased news outlets and spiraling across social media by individuals who are unwittingly gripped by the ego. I invite each of us to take an authentic human-first view of the conflict, and then reflect on how we will think, feel, and act when engaging with others. This is a great opportunity to get to know your own ego better. Journal about your current feelings and beliefs, including the things you have said to others about this conflict or perhaps what you post on social media. After journalling, examine this for the tell-tale signs of the ego and perhaps discuss your thoughts with a friend. Reflect on these questions as you write:
- Have I placed myself squarely within ‘one side or the other’, such that I see my side as more worthy than the other side?
- If I associate with ‘one side’, have I thoughtfully and thoroughly understood the positions of the ‘other side’, so I can at least rationally understand why so many millions of people feel different than I do?
- Do I have a personal attachment to being correct, that would make it hard for my views to shift or soften?
- Is fear or scarcity the driving emotion between any of my beliefs?
- Am I picking and choosing what I think is ‘good vs bad’ or ‘right vs wrong’, to support my current opinions?
- Can I feel gratitude while exploring this topic?
- How do I feel about humans who hold a different perspective than mine?
One-at-a-time, each of us that leans into our shared humanity begins to shift the energetic make-up of this conflict and weakens the collective ego-ic grip that is currently at play. When enough of us are acting as humans first before identifying with our ego, the leadership in Israel, Palestine, and the US will shift as well, and a political solution becomes feasible. This eventual solution is not going to be achieved through military might…eventually that path will run out of gas, indeed it already is. The emergence of empathy, forgiveness, trust, and compromise is the alternative to violence and domination that both sides can choose.
Where do we go from here?
My hope with this post is to inch some individuals towards more openness, to introduce nuance where previously there was none, to give you some tools to examine your own ego, and to consider if the digital record you are building reflects the legacy you desire.
On November 29 I am heading to Guatemala for Yoga Teacher Training at an off-grid farm on Lake Atitlan. This will be a time to go deeper on my yoga practice, but also to step away from society and use the time living in a spiritual community to continue my discovery journey. My vocational future is starting to come into glimpse again…perhaps a tri-union marriage between my authentic ability to develop others, extensive business skills that fast-tracked my career to-date, and ever-increasing passion to guide inward journeys that manifest purpose, passion, calling, and fantastic outwards results. I have begun to accept clients, so feel free to get in touch if you are interested in growing with me and transforming how you experience this world.
Sending you all the love and deepest gratitude.
