You Don’t Need to Kill Your Ego

The ego isn’t the source of our suffering; our identification with the ego is.

We all have an ego. It’s part of the human experience. It would be shortsighted to try to kill the ego, because if our ego dies, our personality dies with it. Our ego is what creates the beautiful individuality of who we are.

What we do want to kill is our identification with the ego, which clouds our ability to identify as our inner consciousness. It’s okay to have an ego, it’s even okay to love our ego, but when we live as our ego, we suffer. This is because the ego is subject to desires, aversions, attachments, fears, judgments, and fluctuations between many thoughts in any given moment.

Alternatively, yoga seeks stillness. The ego is not still, but the ego can exist in spaces of stillness. It may try to pull us out, and that’s okay. Get distracted, leave the moment, notice that you left, and return back. It’s an ongoing process.

And one day, perhaps the ego will accept its role as a small part of the greater whole of the spiritual experience of human life. Until then, we practice ❤️