“Transforming your identity is like performing surgery on yourself. You must act as both doctor and patient.”
-Deepak Chopra
The ego is a powerful thing. It urges us to look for love in all the places where true, lasting love doesn’t really exist. It has us believe that we are separate and isolated, and that we are fixed in our identity: male, female, gay, straight. Ego adores absolutes. It has an affinity for binaries. It is not particularly sensual or tender.
When we expect a different result but keep doing the same thing, a good place to look is the ego. By examining its motivation we can better understand the impulses that drive our behavior. The ego may be after recognition, praise, security. While there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, they deter us from our larger desires and goals.
Consider the ways that you cling to a false sense of self. What do you wish to let go of in order to more genuinely connect with your true essence? By identifying our habitual patterns and thoughts, we move closer to who we truly are. This doesn’t mean the accumulation of more things. It does mean shedding relationships and attachments that no longer produce the outcome we long for.
Many of us live our lives half-asleep. We follow the crowd and are content, at least on the surface, maintaining the status quo. We dress how others tell us to dress; adorn ourselves with accessories and makeup that harm people, animals and the planet; and consume media without thinking about its effect on our mind. We routinely reject suffering and cover up our fear by acting out with aggression and violence. This numbness of the soul is also what leads to brutality and war.
Love – of self and of others – stems from this place of transformation. Love generates (and is generated by) creativity, change, flow, spaciousness, consciousness. The rest – all the striving and struggle and psychic unrest – stems from illusion, from ego. Each moment lets us choose which we will follow: we can continue to go down the rabbit hole of despair or we can use our precious life as a vehicle for awakening.