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"There is one mind common to all individual men.  Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

We've all heard this term "ego" thrown around quite a bit, but what does it mean exactly?  Dictionary.com defines it as:  'the “I” or self of any person.'  Vocabulary.com defines it as: 'your conscious mind, the part of your identity that you consider your "self." '   Sigmund Freud said that the ego is the psychological component of the personality that represents our conscious decision making process. 

In other words, the ego is the part that causes you to consider yourself distinct and separate from others.  It is through this seeming separateness that we become trapped.  Let me explain.

We are all universally connected with each other mentally and energetically, but the ego tells us otherwise.  It tells us that we are separate, alone, disconnected and in constant need to survive, win and prove ourselves as worthy.  What's my definition of the ego?  I define it as our individualism on steroids.  We identify so closely with our personal identity that we forget our divine nature.  We forget that we are part of something bigger both physically and metaphysically.  This belief about being alone in the world causes us to not feel safe.  

Our collective idea is that we are separate, vulnerable, and compromised.  Survival of the fittest, fastest, strongest, cleverest and sexiest.  This represents the lowest form of who we are.  We can be so much more.  Physically, we are all genetically related to every single person on the planet.  We are very literally a family and a community of beings that are living together on this planet.  Just as we are limited in what we can detect within the visual and auditory spectrums, so are we limited in what we can detect about the finer energetic and psychic connections.  This goes way beyond the scope of this article, but I will simply declare that they exist, whether we believe and/or can prove it.  (Which we have)

As a collective humanity, we have made some very bad and unfortunate choices thus far, based on the egoic concepts that we have accepted.  We can do better.  Much better.  Instead of:  I must win and you must lose because I have to protect myself from a dangerous world, we can begin to see the world as safer and more cooperative.  Creating this kind of world will allow us to win together.  This IS possible, but only if we break out of this isolationist and selfish mental paradigm that we've created.

When we feel separate, we feel small and unworthy.  We need outside validation and acceptance of who we are.  But the irony is, most of us don't even know who we are.  Without any conscious awareness of how we developed, we get our sense of self from what we learned in our families and by comparing ourselves to others. We feel the need to create an acceptable persona to the people around us.  The identity that we project into the world is not who we really are.  It's a false sense of self.  The longer we do it, the more we believe it and the more lost we become.  That's the trap.  We live in this fantasy of separate and unequal, wearing a social mask and living inauthentically in an attempt to please others.  Sometimes we do it to punish others for what we view as wrongdoing against us.  Ego is our neediness, our unworthiness, our entitlement, our righteousness and our desire to play master or victim to a world that is not giving us what we want.

We feel the need to beat others in the game of life.  How do I stack up?    Am I stronger, smarter, better looking or harder working?  Did I outmaneuver others?  Am I winning or losing?  These are some of the questions we ask when we are in full-on ego mode.  We've been conditioned to fight for what we want by improving our societal rank.  This is what we've been taught to believe, but it's not true.  It's a lie.  One that we've bought into without questioning it or the deeper meaning of our lives.  The deeper meaning of our lives is about reconnecting to our immortal soul.  We do this by realizing that we are all connected at the deepest possible level.  We are individuated incarnations of divine source.  We are all pieces of the same puzzle.

Our ego society is geared for competition in cutthroat business practices, "win at all costs" sports culture, participating in high-stakes competition for college and job slots, outslicking and outmaneuvering each other dating women and fighting for seemingly limited opportunities and limited attention.  Look at the Black Friday shenanigans.  Need I say more?  It's insanity.  One that we can choose not to participate in.  There is enough for everyone, but not in this current mental paradigm that most of us accept.  How do we shift?  By making a conscious decision to not compete and not fight.  It's OK to stop and decide that you are not going to participate in mindless fear and scarcity.  There are other ways to approach things.

Let me give you a real world example of what I'm talking about.  In the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, a thorough study was done of what made companies great, not merely good, over an extended period of time.  It was determined that the great companies weren't driven by a fear of looking bad in the market nor keeping up with the competition, but by "a creative urge and sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake."

Competition is a mindset.  It's desperate, not creative.  When we compete in that way, we live in fear and scarcity.  We fear we are not enough, don't have enough or that we don't stack up.  So we fight like hell to get what we need.  This is the ego in action.  If we can shift the paradigm from one of scarcity and fear to one of abundance and cooperation, that's how we all win.  Not just the lucky few.

"Among the things that distinguish our species from others is our combination of idealism and artistry, our desire to improve the world."  Daniel Pink

Some may argue that we are mammals and that all mammals have a pecking order.  Well, in case you hadn't noticed, we are not your typical mammal.  Other mammals don't kill each other with weapons and on the scale that we do.  They don't destroy the balance of nature, as we do.  We are the only mammals that speak language, play music, build rockets, control heat and fire, and manufacture drugs.  No, we are not most mammals.  We are different and we are special.  So let's stop thinking of ourselves as some characters out of Wild Kingdom.  We are something different entirely.

So what are we?  We are beings who have the ability to transcend our circumstances and transcend our limitations.  We are problem solvers.  We can morph and change as no others can.    We have the ability to totally reinvent who we are on many levels.  A skinny guy can become a big, strong guy through diet and strength training.  An uneducated person can learn, study and improve his understanding and even capacity to use new information.  An unfit person can condition himself to run a marathon or climb Mt. Everest, an undisciplined person can train to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, an ignorant person can cultivate expertise on coral reefs or alternate energy sources, an honest, decent person can learn how to be a criminal, and a criminal can learn to be a good man.  We can even change genders sometimes.  A person can learn to do many, many things - change and alter circumstances through persistence and will.   We have the ability to change our energy based on how we focus our minds.  We are magicians and creators not slaves to genetic or societal rankings.  But the ego would tell you different.

We don't have to rank and judge each other to make sense of the world.  When we live in our heads and accept the ideas of lack and limitation, we buy into this ego structure machine that society has concocted for us.  But it's not real, it's only an idea.  It's an illusion - the matrix of our minds.  We can see past it.  We don't have to believe it's true.  Society tells us that we are limited and we have to live by certain rules, but we don't.  Everything is a choice.  We can choose to buy in...Or not.   We can accept the limitations attached to us...Or not.  It's all in how we choose to perceive ourselves and our relationship to the rest of the world.

In order for us to thrive and become the highest version of who we are capable of being, we need to embrace who we truly are and to see past the limits of who we've been conditioned to be.  We must work together, not based on some Kumbaya sentiment, but because at our core, our true essence is cooperation, understanding, kindness and love.  We fight each other because we believe resources are scarce.  But what if they weren't?  We don't have to fight each other to get what we want, despite what we've been taught.  Abundance exists - if only we will open our minds to it.  If we can learn to work together and support one another in the most productive and positive manner possible, we will all benefit.  By calling upon our individual and collective ingenuity, creativity and genius, we all will win.  That is our higher nature.

Ego says we are divided individuals, but we are much more than that.  Transcending the ego is not about giving up our individualism.  It's about embracing who we truly are at the highest level and enjoying our greatness within a bigger context.  Without the need to prove ourselves, manipulate or discredit others and defend our little corner of the world, we can finally thrive in a more joyful and connected way - working to support others by giving our true gifts.

Instead of buying into the idea of societal rankings, let's buy into the idea that we're all creative, smart, talented and adaptable beings that are capable of much more working together than separately.  In order to create that, we must let go of the idea that we are small and separate.   We are all big and we are all powerful.   

We all thrive when we are in an environment that is friendly, cooperative and co-creative.  It starts by each of us owning these qualities in ourselves first.  When we start believing it about ourselves, then we can start to see it in other people.  When we imagine a world where we don't have to trample on each other to get what we want, then change can happen.

The world is abundant.  We are abundant by nature.  Unfortunately, our system, as we now operate it, is one of scarcity, one of separateness, one of struggle.  When we see past the illusion of this concept, our culture can shift and change into something better.

We all have common goals and desires.  We must stand together for this to be possible.  How can we ALL get what we want?  Let's start with that question.  We can transcend ego by seeing past our fears, our limitations and our separateness.  We can see past not being enough and embrace our true nature as a powerful and important part of the collective.  We have the ability and power to create anything we want by working with and not against our brothers.

- See more at: http://www.manpowerproject.com/blog/transcending-the-ego