Accept everything about yourself and you’ll be free
You can’t get very far with meditation or spirituality without hearing about ego death. Most of us are familiar with the ego — something that we perceive as ‘separate’ from our true nature, yet it gets in our way sometimes when it expresses itself as pride or prejudice. These things weigh us down. So, the idea with ego death is that you can destroy these dark things about the self in order to perpetually stay aware and happy.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t really work. One reason is that the ego is part of us, so there’s no way to kill it and still be a person. Another reason is that the ego isn’t our enemy anyway. It’s our attachment to it that’s the problem.
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The goal isn’t to destroy anything. Nothing needs to die. What is needed is a mindset shift to accept the way things are.
I’ll explain what I realized in my journey. That my ego is a dimension of me that has allowed me to manifest into this existence, down through the subtle and mental layers of life into the physical. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to sit here and write this story as me. I’d be a part of the great oneness, unable to write stories and participate in humanity.
I’m pretty content being a me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Let’s talk about the alternative to ego death and how to attain it.
“Enlightenment for a wave in the ocean is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. “
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Your ego is an essential part of your existence.
You can’t be a person in this world without your ego. Yes, it’s true that we are all essentially part of a collective consciousness, and remembering our source can be freeing. It inspires us when we get a glimpse of the ego-less existence. That’s who we are at one level of our existence.
We are simultaneously one with the creator and also individuals experiencing a life. Isn’t that wild?
Some of us get so excited when we discover our true nature as humans that we assume it’s time to try to destroy everything about our individuality.
But the ego is necessary for this existence. We are able to manifest here on Earth, on this beautiful planet in this crazy adventure only because we are individuals. The ego helps us experience individuality so that we can live a life — the biggest miracle of creation.
So, why would you want to “kill” that?
Attachment is the root of all your suffering.
Your suffering in life isn’t because of what other people are doing to you. And it’s not even the existence of your thoughts in your mind that are the problem. These are things that will always be there.
All you need to realize is that you’ve attached yourself to these things.
You’ve been telling yourself a story about who you are, what makes you sad, what you need to be happy, and how life works. And those are all stories made up like a myth in a children’s book.
You’ve made up these stories. Things occurred in your path, so you took them with you and formed a whole narrative around them.
Maybe as a kid, you had a health problem. Doctors told you that you had a problem, you believed it, and a story was formed. Maybe they told you that it would never go away and it’s chronic. You’ll have it all your life, they told you. So, you took that and kept it, attaching yourself to it as an essential part of your individuality. “That’s me,” you might have said, “I’m a sick person, that’s just who I am.” Your ego formed all kinds of beliefs and judgments about life based on this attachment. But you could have let go of the attachment any time you chose.
And don’t even think about blaming yourself for creating these stories. How could you have known?
The object is to let go of the attachment. if you feel guilty for having an attachment, then you need to let go of that, too.
The stories and the guilt still exist, but they may no longer have a hold on you. You don’t destroy anything, you just become self-aware and see that these stories are just stories.
You’re here playing a role. Your individuality allows you to be a beautiful human being. The stories can drift away like mist in the breeze. You can then feel that connection to the ultimate source of creation while gracefully experiencing life.
That’s happiness.
The goal is to be perfectly at peace with everything.
As you let go of the stories that surround your life, losing the attachment to who you think you are, the peace and stillness come in. You begin to be grateful for everything you have.
You begin to live in the present moment.
There’s no painful “ego death” or the destruction of anything within you. There’s no avoidance of some part of you that you thought didn’t belong.
You will begin to realize that every part of you, including the ego, is exactly where it’s supposed to be. It always has been.
You begin to feel complete acceptance of everything in the universe.
Your ego is your friend.
The ego you are traveling with on this journey is not your enemy. When you accept everything about it and yourself, you will know that it’s your friend.
Love yourself. Love everything.
Realize what you really are, and understand that there isn’t a single part of you that needs to die. Ego death is not the way because it entails that there’s something abhorrent about you. And that just isn’t true.
