The Negative Ego

negative ego

We Are Not Our Shame

The strategy of the negative ego is to keep us occupied in vain pursuits that feed it but do not feed us. If it can keep us focused on our greed and desire, the negative ego is assured of maintaining its power. To defeat the negative ego at its game, we must realize that we are not our shame. The territory of toxic emotion that the negative ego tries to hide from the world is not who we are. It is what prevents us from being who we are. To identify ourselves with our shame is to keep ourselves from our freedom. It is the error of identification that the negative ego wants us to make. It is the mistake that drives us to utilize our desire nature to flee from facing whatever false self we have erected and have come to believe that we are.

The whole rationale behind the power of desire is that if we succeed in fleeing from the pain of our shame, we can hide ourselves in material pleasure. The problem with that rationale is that pleasure always ends. Sooner or later, our pain will return and overwhelm us. As long as shame exists, it can never be entirely silenced.The strategies of the negative ego have a short shelf life.

The Adversaries of the Soul

What we must eventually realize is that what we fail to confront is much more dangerous to us than that what we choose to face. What we shrink from facing shrinks us. While we can actualize our desires, our desires cannot actualize us. Our soul contains our identity, our path, and our purpose. The negative ego only contains our unhealed wounds. The negative ego and our desire nature are the adversaries of our higher connection.

When we finally realize that the three forces of alienation- fear, greed and desire – are a dead end and lead nowhere, we are finally ready to enter the Elimination Zone and begin the path of personal evolution. What we need to keep in mind as we enter the Elimination Zone is that when we stand up to our fear, our fear will stand down. We regain our power when we confront the inner darkness and the negative ego that would otherwise diminish us.