Time and time again I’ve come across clients and friends who say “How do I get rid of my ego?” or “ This is your ego speaking “. This is especially common in spiritual circles. It is important to know that you can’t get rid of your Ego, but you can work on having a Healthy Ego.
Getting rid of your Ego would mean being like an empty shell unable to say yes or no, unable to think, unable to do anything. Imagine personality breaking down and not functioning, that would be the bad scenario. This does happen and there are countless books about it and of the recovery too. Two that I highly recommend are “Breaking down is waking Up” by Dr Russell Razzaque, and “Spiritual Emergency When Personal Transformation becomes a Crisis” by Stanislav Grof, M.D., and Christina Grof.
However you can have a Healthy Ego, and that is a great work in itself.
We all develop a personality (Ego) that overtime changes and the healthier your Ego is the easier it will deconstruct and adjust to life natural transitions in development. I know, easier said than done.
We begin to develop our little personalities as we grow, and that is a joy to watch. We have brothers, sisters, friends and no two of us are the same. This is the beauty and uniqueness that we all share and universal paradox. We also share thinking that we are different, everyone that I’ve met in my practice desires to be normal or more like those normal people who they don’t know that well. We share thinking that we don’t belong, we share our own rejection.
Then we also admire those who have embraced their uniqueness, quirkiness, the so-called free-spirited, the brave.
Here are some examples of unhealthy ego: arrogance, pride, greed, neediness, resistance to change, avoidance of responsibility. And for some of those on spiritual path denial of darkness.
I recognise all of the above in myself and have seen this in others. The good news is that we can work on these distortions. The Ego has many faces and can also mask as “poor little me”. Playing the I am not good enough game. I bet we all recognise this one.
When you decide to work on everything (step by step) that is limiting your self-expression. For some, it might come as a surprise to learn that what they need is strengthening and building up their Ego. They might discover that their development was arrested at some point and that they have some catching up to do, and that is OK. We all have a different kind of wounding, and support available or not to process what life brings our way.
So my spiritual friends work on your ego so it is a healthy expression of yourself. Understand the necessary movement from personal to transpersonal to universal to One and the Unknown …