How to Tame Your ego and Reconnect with your Intuition.
1: Who is Driving Anyway?
Have you ever noticed yourself arguing with something inside you, maybe at those times when you are stepping up, trying something new? Do you find yourself full of inspiration and an optimistic happiness one moment, only to doubt yourself a minute later? Do you find the enthusiasm, the energy slip out and waste away and you push away what seemed so interesting and possible only moments before? Or when you are trying to sleep and instead a thousand thoughts start chasing around inside your head and you realise it is a disjointed conversation?
Do you let life happen to you, feeling powerless to change anything?
Have you ever wondered who is in control of your mind, because once you ask that, you are also asking who or what is in charge of your life. Thoughts become things, so who is this who has the power to change your mind, your emotions, your life?
It brings to mind a time when I was driving and my passenger was clobbering me because she, afraid and alert for kangaroos, thought 80kph was a better speed. That surprise clobbering was more dangerous than any non existent kangaroo. I was the driver, but the car was not under my control, because of her fear.
In my Back Seat Driver analogy, the driver is (or at least was and can be again) your Intuitive Self, your connected Knowing Self. The passenger is your ego. There are many names and titles this being goes by: ego, persona, who you think you are. If your Intuitive Self stays in charge of your vehicle, the ego can take a nap. If you go off line, which is what we all do, then an unqualified part of you has to reach over and take the steering wheel of your life.
The back seat driver is not your adversary by nature but by default.
Once upon a long time ago, when you were very little, long before anything corrupted your confidence, you were pure potential. You were born perfect, body soul and spirit programmed with love, in harmony and communion with All That Is, connected with golden threads to everything in a dance of oneness, the start of everything, the beginning of a journey through the labyrinth of life. You were born a triumvirate being of body; your physical self, your soul; your emotional thinking self and your spiritual self.
The body learns all it can learn through its physicality; through what it hears, sees, smells, touches and tastes.
The soul, that part when all the emotions and thoughts, also learns through your senses. It was like the water of a pristine ocean, through which your body had clear access to your spirit.
Your spirit is that part of you that is all knowing. When these are integrated, you experience your true essence and step into a powerful freedom.
The disintegration is caused by fear. Fear of not belonging. Fear of being wrong. Fear of rejection. Big fears related to survival.
This beautiful, clear ocean of your soul, so full of beauty and clarity, over time, became darkened, scarred and damaged because the world got in the way. It introduced fear and doubt and censure. The dark oil of fear, of neglect, of criticism, of conditional expectation begin to drip drip drip into this ocean and the water of our souls, the home of our thoughts and emotions, clouded over, lost its transparency and the body and spirit lost the clear connection. How the ego grows, depends on the conditions it finds itself in. It is like a computer program, everything is stored and with enough repetition, run automatically. It is however, vulnerable to the infiltration of viruses, that slowly, insidiously, alter the original program. It is the same with us.
It happened in a million small ways as you began to put together ideas of what keeps you safe in this world you found yourself in. You began to experience yourself as a person. You learned every day.
Your ego, that part of you that you think of as ‘self’, managed all the information you were sequentially gathering, in its attempt to keep you safe. It stored it, categorised it and filed it. It learned values and beliefs from your caregivers and community. It learned how to survive, how to belong.
Over time, you forgot that you were unlimited, a unique little miracle and learned to accept limits and rules, to please, to avoid displeasing and sometimes it had to be wholly concerned with immediate survival. The human need to belong, to feel safe is the core need on which everything else is structured.
The wise, knowing part of you grew less distinct, as the ego grew larger, until you were disconnected from your intuition; that part of you that knew what it could not know, imagined what had not yet been, created possibilities and brought them into being. In so doing, you gave up the intuitive power that I intend to lead you back to.
Life rerouted you in a sense. Whereas before, you were an instinctive being, you now have a persona, an identity, a sense of self, complete with inherited beliefs and values, accepted norms and ways of thinking.
The direct access, that clear water conduit now detours through these systems of ideas, beliefs and experiences.
The ego is your helper but over time, it can become a limiting straight jacket, if it is not balanced by your intuitive Knowing Self. It is when this happens that it morphs from passenger to a back seat driver ready to responds to a power vacuum for which it is totally unqualified.
How does our persona go from being a necessary part of survival, to a potential mugger on the back seat of our life? There are many answers, but I would say fear is the main reason.
‘I feel a little unsure’ you say.
Your ego is there to keep you safe, you currently feel you are not, so it immediately seeks safety. As it searches similar experiences, similar data from the archive, it encodes the current feelings with those old feelings. You have just been dragged into the past. You have no power there. As your ego searches for ways to make you safe, the search only reinforces ‘unsure’ as a valid emotion.
It is a loop.
‘This feels uncertain’ you say and the same process begins.
When we experience the world as an unsafe place, which indeed it can be, fear is a healthy and useful response. However when fear is the emotion we attach to being unsure of something, that is certainly not useful.
The problem with existing this way, is that your ego only has the past to look at which makes it very vulnerable when it is faced with the unknown. It has nothing to go on, no advice, no direction, nothing, when facing something new in its mission to keep you safe. Over time, in its mission to keep you safe, it develops shortcuts. In essence, if it can stop you changing things up, it can rest. To do this, it just needs to amp up fear of change. Job done, blanket and feet up time.
So, it trains you.
It develops some pretty big guns.
Who do you think you are to…..
It’s not broken, don’t fix it……
Why would you try that? You know what happened when….
That’s risky! You could lose……..
All these make its job a little easier. But it is not you, it is a hybrid persona constructed of thoughts emotions and experiences saying these things, creating the feelings, feeling the threat. It is not connected to that quiet knowing part of you. It is a mask, a protective device that has developed over time until it has grown so large, so influential and so familiar that you do not even realise it is not you. You become smaller as it grows. The quiet knowing voice that once used to guide you has been smothered.
Ego’s voice is louder, more insistent, more emotional than the Knowing part of you that is actually peaceful and uses few words. The ego is often afraid, and its advice, while keeping you safe, also keeps you very small. It only got to be so dominant because you abdicated.
‘I don’t know what to do’ you say and it groans. It is not qualified to drive. It has worked hard and just wants to cruise along happily on the back seat keeping an eye out in case of attacks by wild tigers, or such calamities.
It has never passed any driving tests and it knows it, so when you take your hands off the wheel, it is terrified, and rightly so. It can barely see over the steering wheel in fact and the only mirror it has is the rear view one. Yet when you abdicate the driver’s seat, when you allow fear and uncertainty to paralyse you, your ego, fearing everything, reaches its long arms over, grabs the back of your seat, pushes you aside and grabs the wheel.
So, there you are, careering along the road, you with your hands over your eyes, the backseat driver madly trying to steer for both of you, in a state of sheer terror. All the while, it is desperately looking for the emergency lane to pull over in to. That is why you keep stalling and getting nowhere. How can this change? Where is the map for this?
If we were raised to listen to our wise Self, we would be able to remember the situation without feeling it as though it was current and move more gracefully on to ask your intuition how you dealt with it. We would, in other words, stay in the present moment and stay conscious as to what we are experiencing.
We are body soul and spirit, born perfect and then forgetting.
This journey is to reconnect to a higher state of consciousness, fully awake and fully alive. Before we can do this, we first need to take a close look at what is going on in our minds.
2: Learning to Tell the Difference Between the Back Seat Driver and the Self.
Find Stillness First.
We are not our thoughts. Most of them are the inner voice of our avatar, our ego.
Once we recognise we are not our thoughts we can begin the process of taming our ego by taking back control of our minds and from there, our lives.
But how can we possibly do this?
How do I reach that sacred, peaceful place of of simply being, of experiencing myself as ‘I am’.
Part 1: Who is ‘Thinking’ me?
- Sit quietly and observe your thoughts.
- Do not judge them, resist them or feed them, just accept and acknowledge them.
- Allow the thoughts to come and go. Simply observe them.
Now look at the thoughts analytically.
What do you notice about them?
You may notice some or all the following characteristics of your thoughts:
You may notice that the most persistent thoughts are not novel, they are not new. They are familiar visitors and as you observe you may see that these are the basis of the things you worry about.
You will probably notice the following characteristics
‘Should’ features a lot, as do could and would. The thoughts are often critical. They are often anxious. They are taking you back to things that have happened in the past, uncomfortable feelings and painful memories emerge when you engage with the thoughts.
Now try not to think. What happens? Take your time. Try again. Observe.
BUT…part 2:
If you are the one observing the thoughts, who or what is thinking the thoughts?
This process is necessary for you to discover for yourself, perhaps for the very first time, that you are not in control of your own mind; the thoughts are in effect, controlling your life. The good news is that you would not be able even to notice this if you were not also an awareness, an observer. This is where the power lies. You can turn all this around. You can take your power back.
There is a chart you may have seen, as it is all readily available on the internet, that charts the frequencies of different emotions.
Thoughts, like everything else, are forms of energy. The feelings that accompany thoughts resonate at the frequencies of the thoughts charging through your head. The word emotions is from the Latin emoter which literally means energy in motion.
Check how your persistent thoughts make you feel against the chart developed by David Hawkins and adapted by many other practitioners.
What do you notice?
What I notice is that the thoughts seem to precede emotion, to even generate emotion.
For me, the most repetitive thoughts visit with feelings of guilt, grief and desire. I understand why I feel stuck so often. At frequencies between 30 and 125, they are closer to death than peace. Emotions at the Alpha or beginning point of this chart is energy at its most contracted.
Do you find that persistent unmanageable thoughts trouble you as well? Do things make sense as you look at the ranges?
Do you find that the persistent thoughts, the ones you cannot seem to control, have a low frequency? Do any of them get above 250?
What is going on here? No-one would choose to deprive themselves of joy, yet here we can clearly see that the monkey mind appears to be stuck in a range of 20-250 on this scale.
Why?
Because most of the thoughts that enter our mind are not ‘us’ at all but they create emotions within us, which is how we experience ourselves.
Most thoughts are from our ego, our lower-case self, our avatar creation; that part of our soul that was only ever intending to keep us safe. What happened? Why did it become so dominant? And why is it stuck in low vibrations? Our ego has become our ground control, our go to adviser, our navigator. The fact that it changes over time, is an indication to any thinking person, that it is in fact, not a reliable source.
Perhaps the answer lies in the reason for its growth in the first place. Remembering its function was to keep us safe, perhaps the necessary question needs to be ‘safe from what?’ This question is a vital one, a necessary perspective if we are to recover. By asking ‘Safe from what’? our ego will tell us what part of us it is protecting.
Our emotions are as complex and numerous as wildflowers in a European woods. Thinking of how most children were raised, of what measures were employed to teach those children acceptable behaviour, many of us would agree that for many of us, we were trained out of certain thoughts and behaviours by the mostly unconscious reliance of caregivers on the tools guilt, fear and shame. These are powerful tools for the powerless and unconscious to use. It is how we were raised and how our parents were raised so….. and on it goes.
These three are probably the strongest negative emotions a human can experience. Shame and guilt and fear are also powerful creators of ego. They are strong messages that we are faulty. Feeling faulty is not a safe experience. Adjustments must be made. It is a matter of survival when young, to be accepted. No-one wants to be thrown on the scrap heap, rejected or ignored. See how low the vibration of shame is? 20. That is why people feel they want to die when overwhelmed with this emotion. Fear resonates at 100 which is 10% of possible good feelings! This is where we begin to create this adjusted version of ourselves. Think of it as a mask or an avatar, with codes and programs to run it.
It is timely here to take a quick look at the vibration and impact of pride, desire and anger; the other triumvirate that builds a different, but equally inauthentic egoic or avatar self. We can learn that certain attributes or behaviours will elicit praise; which feels good so we code this into our ego as well. Too long in these emotions creates all kinds of disorders of personality.
The vibration of our ego rarely rises over 250!!! That is the plight of the unconscious person, and the credentials of the Back-Seat Driver that is currently in charge of your life!
Now, ask yourself once again, ’Who or what is this part of me that is observing my thoughts? If I am not my thoughts, can it be that I truly am this entity that is quietly observing my thoughts?’
Yes. While the ego is reactive, loud, demanding, this Observer is wise, calm and neutral. It can be all this because it is the higher, knowing part of you that you were created with, that is itself connected to ALL THAT IS. I refer to it interchangeably as the Higher Self, the Knowing Self, The Observer and your Intuition. It is all the same.
This powerful part of you is in fact the real you. The I Am presence is who you are. It just got blocked out over time, that is all. It is still there. You will feel the difference when you step into the Observer role. You will notice that it has a higher frequency. It is free of fear, unlike the voice of our ego. It is love based, not fear based. There are no limits to how good it can feel.
The question now becomes ‘What is consciousness and how do I reach it? How do I take back control of my mind?’
Like anything that is worth attaining, it takes commitment and practice. The antidote to over thinking and hence the key to this process is to retrain our minds by becoming aware of our body, our physical selves.
We have now experienced the truth about our mental activity and have realised that there is an Observer. To connect with this, we need to find a way to stop our incessant thinking, but we cannot do this with the same tool that created the monkey mind. It is like using a nail to hammer in a nail. How exactly then, can we quieten our minds? The answer lies in dropping into our bodies.
- Bring to consciousness a time when you were pure sensation; sitting in a tree, swimming in the ocean, lying in a comfortable warm bed…..
- Sink into that feeling and experience it fully
- Stay with that, with the goal of being free of intruding thoughts for 3 seconds
- When a thought intrudes, observe it, let it go and return to feeling
- Rinse and repeat
- Practise being able to drop into this state at will, at any time, until you can. Practise this until you can stay there for 3 uninterrupted seconds then expand it. Until you master your mind the Back-Seat Driver will be in charge. Is this what you want?
You may find a gratitude list is another useful tool for when the hamster in your head takes off. If you are finding it hard to be still or feeling rotten, reading this list can interrupt a low energy and stop it taking hold.
As you practise this you will find that your brain begins to change. When it takes off in its old direction, you as the Observer will notice and be able to bring it back. By practising holding higher vibrational thoughts for a time and using these to go into your body instead and stay with the feeling, your brain will be developing new pathways. You will be able to interrupt compulsive thinking simply by reading this list. Then you will be able more easily to drop into that peaceful space between thoughts. These two practices work together. Use them both.
Summary:
- We are not our thoughts, we are the Observer of our thoughts.
- We are unconscious until we realise we are unconscious.
- We need to become conscious.
3: Finding the Warrior Within.
Nothing changes until we learn the difference between living automatically and living with full awareness, being conscious of our bodies, our surroundings, our thoughts and our emotions. The part that is aware of all this is, to me, quite difficult to find the words for. It is hard to find words for consciousness. What is this awareness that can observe? Atman? Over soul? It is my essence and it acts as an overseer. I can see why the term Higher Self is so popular, because there is an eagle like quality to what I am grappling to find the words for.
It is always there, the gut instinct, the intuition, this wise overseer, so why is it that we think so little about it? Why is it not spoken of? To me, it goes back to how dense the creation, the avatar, the persona we build and walk around in, is. It is dense as in heavy and thick, and dense as in thick… you understand.
One thing it most definitely is not, is the Back Seat Driver. If anything, it is more like a flight controller. It is also our essence; that which remains when all else passes. Ground Control. North Star. Guide? The ‘us’ that we thought was ‘us’ is a construct that we have built over time. How can anyone know they are unconscious? In a way it is the same as the dream state. Mostly, we are unaware while dreaming, that we are dreaming. In the same way, we are unaware, while we think we are living, that we are unconscious. How do we become aware?
I think it only happens when we realise that we are thinking… and that if we are aware that we are thinking then there is an eagle within all of us. But this only happens when the wind dies down, when the ripples on the waters of our mind settle, when we achieve stillness, that we connect with the life changing question: Who is observing the thinker/feeler/sensate creature? In this stillness, we can watch the movement of thoughts. It is only when we become objectively aware of our thought process that we even begin to understand that everything we thought we understood is now up for review. It takes practice to maintain enough consciousness to be able to actually do this, to observe ourselves thinking.
The moment comes for all of us who walk this track, this overgrown bramble filled uneven path when we realise that we (the person we have assumed we are) is not in any way, in control of our thoughts! Our thoughts think us. Our thoughts run wild and we have no idea. We are so used to thinking unconsciously that we are not aware at any given time what we are even thinking. It is all going on automatically. When we begin to become aware of thoughts as entities, it is alarming at how slippery they are, how, rapid, how relentless. It is only in deep stillness that we are abele to break through the illusion that we are in control of our own minds. Mostly they are a shitstorm of data, impressions, beliefs and outside voices that we have internalised and not even been aware of.
‘I think, therefore I am’, is not quite right: I am aware that I think, therefore I am, might be closer.
Thoughts are the landscape of our egoic self while awareness is the territory of a much higher state of being, the one we were born with but forgot.
Until we are conscious, we are hurtling along the road with our eyes covered, forcing the Back Seat Driver to try its best to keep us alive.
4: Learning to Accept What Is.
The Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference. (Reinhold Niebuhr)
The second tool to develop in this journey to regain control of our own minds and to be able to stay present and not lost in the past or the future, is the art of true acceptance.
What is, simply is. We confuse ourselves by trying to reorder, realign and change circumstances, people and feelings that are outside our sphere of influence. Buddha states that the cause of all suffering is the attachment to desire. We often skip over the most important word here which is attachment; the inability to let go and let be.
While I am not advocating passivity which in effect makes you the spectator of your own life, I am suggesting we learn to recognise what is within our sphere of control and influence and what is outside of this.
We are ultimately only in charge of ourselves. We are free to alter what we think, our behaviour and our choices. Yet so often, we find that when we are in a state of resistance, we are stretching, trying to fight what cannot be fought and often, exert control over another, and we are suffering.
The really ridiculous thing that we humans do, is assume we can bring about change if we dislike something enough. Wiser souls teach us about how energy works.
Each human is an autonomous, sovereign being. While we may influence them, it is not our right to attempt to change or control them in any way. Once we accept that, we can draw all our own energy back to ourselves, where it rightfully belongs. Resistance is a state that allows our energy to bleed out. There are some things we need to find the serenity to accept.
Nothing feeds the ego more than a state of resistance. We don’t like something, we feel misunderstood, we wish it was warmer, colder, we feel inferior or superior, we feel dissatisfied, we wish things were different. All are states of resistance.
Remembering that we created our ego in the first place, it helps to be aware that it is when we drop into a lower vibrational state that we are leaving the Light, descending into a lower frequency. When we are faced with any kind of change, when we are unwell, tired or experiencing loss, when we are faced with a fork in the road and need to make a decision, we are vulnerable and can easily become afraid and unsure. These are the times when we are likely to find it most difficult to remain in Observer mode.
Looking at the frequency chart, we see that fear and desire, resonate at a frequency of 100 and 125. You may be curious about the resonance of desire. We are told by many gurus to set goals, to define our desires, to proclaim our intentions, so why is desire resonating at only 125? The reason may well be that desire often has its origins in what we feel is lacking in our lives. They are often verbalised as wishes. If you consider this for a moment or two, you will feel this sense of lack. Here I also think of the Buddhist wisdom, that the attachment to desire is the cause of all suffering. Desire itself, if it is not coming from a place of lack, is not a ‘bad’ thing. However, when we attach and cling to that desire, we are heading for quicksand. Attachment is the hallmark of ego. Any time you feel you must have something, it is your ego..
Feelings of inadequacy are thus often attached to our desires, generated from old original shame or guilt, close neighbours, which is why we often find ourselves affected by thoughts of inadequacy. We have all heard these thoughts: ‘Who do you think you are to…’ If we are not able to recognise that we are being spiritually mugged, we are likely to slip into apathy and give up on ourselves and our dreams. At the same time, to protect you from disappointment it will also tell you that you don’t ‘deserve’ it or something similar. It is a complicated mess when we don’t know what we are doing.
This is not to say that we cannot create and manifest our desires. There is nothing wrong with having desires at all. In fact, it is essential. The key is within the chart.
We begin with the desire. Then we start to step up the ladder. We find the courage to express it and to begin to take all the necessary steps towards attaining it. Then almost paradoxically, rather than attaching to that desire, repeating affirmations and the like, we need to let go of all attachment. Attachment drags the desire down with the feeling that somehow, we will be incomplete without it or that achieving it is a struggle. The higher way is to instead move past attachment into the vibration of willingness and acceptance. Once we have identified our desire, and courageously taken whatever practical steps that it is our responsibility to take (remembering we are creators and not spectators in our lives) all that remains to be done is to be willing to allow our desire to come towards us, in whatever wonderful way that may be, while at the same time, removing the obstacles that the ego will attempt to put in our way. It is a process similar to gardening. Apply water and nutrients and remove weeds.
At resonances below 175, we are not hearing from our Higher self and have lost this vital connection. Is that why people caution us to ‘be careful what you wish for?’ Just an interesting thought. If the ego is the needy part of us, and Our Knowing Self only ever desires that which is for our highest good, what does that tell us about some of the things we want?
By now, the benefits of becoming aware of the presence of the Back-Seat Driver are becoming clear. We need to quieten our minds so that we can reconnect and lift ourselves to a happier energetic state. We need a level of control of our thoughts to be able to recognise what is happening in our inner worlds. If we cannot, then we cannot see when we have taken our hands off the wheel, or know when we need to put them back on. Once we can still our minds, we access the Wise Observer within. Then we see clearly. By mastering our minds, we are preparing to grow, to improve, to lift ourselves out of low energy and into the Light.
5: Now What?
A tool is only a tool, until you know how to use it.
In my own journey to gain control of my mind, I drew on the wisdom of many others wiser and further down the path than I was. I also turned to my Runes. I had not read them consistently for many years. Then one day when sorting and tidying, I found them again and began to study them. I journalled their messages every day. The first author I consulted referred to our Higher Self as our Knowing Self, a term I use and love. The battle of the Spiritual warrior, he also said, is always the battle of the self with the Self. He had this adaptation of an old poem from the Hindu Text, the Bhagavad Gita in his book:
Lift up the self by the Self
And don’t let the self droop down
For the Self is the self’s only friend
And the self is the Self’s only foe.
I was fascinated.
It is often only when we are at a point of great need that we are receptive to wise counsel. At the same time, I went from a casual relationship with Tarot cards to a commitment to learn their language. Both Runes and Tarot are excellent tools to connect to our Higher, Knowing Selves. Oracles of all kinds connect us to our inner world, which is where all the answers we seek lie.
As much as anyone reading this, I also have times when I am not sure of my path and feel I am lost or stuck, which is why I was drawn to both systems. They are useful tools to either prevent an ambush from the Back-Seat Driver, or to deal with the effect of one.
I devised the four energies Tarot spread as a useful guide for this very reason. https://www.taraacie.com/types-of-tarot-readings/four-energies-reading/four-energies-reading/
Going back to your took kit, consider how different your life will be once you decide you are going to take the steps to reclaim control over your mind. Imagine. Feel the possibility of a life without fear or inadequacy running the show. These are only a few tools in my growing arsenal but they are the most important in building a solid foundation for my evolution. Truly, until we become conscious and can experience the peace of being reunited with our Knowing Selves through realising that ‘we’ are not our thoughts but that still, wise presence that observes our thoughts, nothing else will take root in our lives.
There is no better way to spend your time and energy than in aiming for and achieving peace of mind; a mind without clutter, without loud chatter, without sabotaging thoughts. It is simple and that simplicity fools some who continue to ask for someone outside of themselves to do the work for them.
Do not let the simplicity of the steps fool you into thinking it is TOO simplistic. And yes, that thought is a perfect example of what the Back Seat Driver will hiss at you when you start the process.
It is up to you whether you allow the fear based ego to continue overseeing your life. It does not like change. It has grown used to being in control and these steps, should you choose to begin this journey, turn all that upside down. Expect resistance, but recognise where it comes from. Invest the effort into yourself with these simple steps and see how quickly your life changes! In nature, all things change. The Wheel of Fortune turns. The Fool in the Major Arcana of the Tarot is my hero, my trail blazer, the keeper of wisdom, the egoless free traveller I truly desire to be. I will keep my ego relaxing on the backseat. It can travel with me, keeping a lookout for real danger if is so desires, or it can sleep. What it can no longer do, is hijack the car. Do not abdicate your responsibility through fear or insecurity. You can see over the wheel. That is a great start. Let your ego rest. Thank it for all it has done for you. Hand it a blanket.
Tell your ego ‘I’ve got this.’ Then drive.