What is ego / pain body? Can you let it go? [41 Tips & Insights]
What is the ego, and why does the ego sometimes behave undesirably? How can you solve it, let go or heal it? You could also use the word “pain body” when talking about ego. Through this article you can gain more insight into the (healign of the) pain body.
Contents of this page:
| 1 | Insight | What is the ego / pain body?
To answer the question ‘What is the ego’, it makes sense to first look at what it actually wants. The ego always wants to stand out, be special, have power, be in control, create distance, opposition, enemies, and more of it all. And even if it succeeds, it always wants more .
In addition, the ego always wants something from other people. It always has a hidden agenda, a sense of ‘not enough’, ‘insufficient’ and ‘lack’ . The gap between ‘I want’ and ‘what is’ is a constant source of irritation.
‘And how do I fit into the world? What is my place in it? What about me?’ Those are important questions for the ego.
Let’s move on to some quick definitions. The ego is a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind. Thinking is not who you are, but thinking is your ego. A ghost of who you are.
In addition, ego is also: future and past . Seeking redemption or fulfillment in the future and securing survival. For the ego it does not exist now, only the past and the future.
We are addicted to the drug of approval, appreciation, attention … It’s not about being loved, it’s about loving.
The ego is an illusion, and it creates illusions that keep it alive itself. And the trick is: it is also in billions of other heads. You reach the top in the eyes of the world and it is in your head. The fact that it is in millions of other heads does not change the fact that it is an illusion.
Everyone walks with an ego. That seems normal. Everyone will tell you that if you let go of your ego, you have gone crazy.
The ego is the idea (concept) of ourselves, the image of ourselves. So it is not ourselves. No more than that you can get wet in the word ‘water’. No more than the idea of a tree, which is not a tree.
– Alan Watts
Let’s take another angle to the question, “What is the ego?” The ego is a conceptualized sense of ‘I’ and that creates separateness. “This is me, this is my limit, there are the others, and we are not one.” Because it is also in constant fear, it also wants to protect this false sense of me, so the ego is constantly in tension, physically and psychologically.
The ego summarized in one word? Fear.
| 2 | Insight | The ego wants to be right, compare and be separated (from success)
Another well-known phenomenon of the ego is that you always want to be right . To be wrong was to die for our ancestors. That’s where the compulsive need to be right in a discussion comes from, to defend your thesis, and to declare your truth . That stems from fear. It’s a form of violence. “No, you are wrong. I know better. ‘
When you feel superior or inferior to someone, that is your ego.
The ego also constantly compares itself to others:
- To compare to…
- Better than…
- Not as good as …
The ego also doesn’t want success, love, connection and all other beautiful things. For example, the ego says:
- It can’t happen.
- It’s not going to happen.
- It cannot be trusted.
- It is not good.
Does that mean we should always hold back? It’s not that black and white. You can of course express how you feel and how you think about something. It’s more about whether you do that from ego identification, or from your genuineness (and your genuineness is always friendly).
Shyness is: fear of disapproval and criticism. Because that disapproval and criticism reduce the feeling of ‘self’.
Anyway, this article is not so long for nothing: we are going to explore this extensively in the following paragraphs.
All egos are the same inside, namely: identification and distance.
| 3 | Insight | How identification with thoughts is the recipe for the ego
Thoughts are useful to have! The mind is a wonderful tool! However, when the sense of self is invested in your thoughts, so when you live as if you are your thoughts, it becomes problematic.
The sense of self is problematic by definition: you cannot separate ‘problematic’ and ‘self’.
– Eckhart Tolle
Suppose someone is identified with their thoughts. Obsessions, deeply nested thoughts that never leave you, beliefs, beliefs, deep-rooted thought forms he walks around with, he sees all of them as ‘me’.
He sees them not as thought forms with which he walks, but he sees himself as he thinks he is thought form, his beliefs … He that person has to constantly be looking for people to join disagree. And all to strengthen his sense of me. He is his thoughts.
Walking around with an ‘I’ filled thought is a problematic life situation. You constantly experience your life as problematic , because you mainly live in the past and future, which is problematic. This present moment, on the other hand, never is. Your sense of self, when it is in the now, is not invested with every thought that comes to mind. There is still a stream of thoughts, you can, but you are no longer identified with it (the recipe for the ego).
If a feeling of ‘self’ is involved in a certain situation, it reduces your intelligence and vibrancy enormously and makes your life difficult. Because every ‘self’ is heavy. There is no lightness in life then.
Suffering only occurs when you search for ‘self’ in thoughts, emotions, forms, status, possession, recognition, understanding and approval of others … Then all those things are not recognized as just a human emotion passing by – or as a thought passing by – but as ‘self’. And that causes all kinds of problems.
| 4 | Insight | That ‘self’, or ego, does not even exist …
All those problems for nothing. Because that ‘self’, the ego, does not actually exist! That ‘self’ – with its unfulfilled expectations … and complaints … – is made of thoughts. It is a conceptualized self. All it is is a thought pattern. And yet people see themselves in that limiting idea. It is confused with the purity of who we really are. It’s an illusion.
You can’t find yourself anywhere . You are yourself. Otherwise there is a split. This split is explained in the article on non-duality.
Realize the truth of no-self. It is not in form, thought or emotion.
– Anantha
Then what is there when it is empty there, when the mind is quiet? It is something, but it cannot be defined because it has no form. Every word you use is wrong. We sometimes refer to it as ‘mere consciousness’ or ‘soul’.
| 5 | Insight | How did the ego / pain body come about?
And how did it come about? The sense of ‘ I ‘, or ‘ self ‘, is created by the most fascinating mentally constructed story in the world: the story about myself, with associated emotions and all identifications with it: all reactive patterns, all knowledge, all opinions, points of view, successes, what you have achieved and what you have not achieved … These are all thoughts!
It starts in childhood when a child says, “This is my toy.” This is the beginning of a thought-created ego, the beginning of a story. The thought form is important, not the toy, because the thought form gives a sense of self. 20 years later: “This is my BMW.”
– Eckhart Tolle
| 6 | Insight | Let’s just look at the pain body for a moment: what is it?
The pain body is an alternative name for the ego made popular by Eckhart Tolle.
The pain body is addiction to emotional pain. Including ( unprocessed ) pain and emotions from the past . This old pain is still alive and has accumulated within you.
The pain body is the living past in you. And maybe you knew: a victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present.
Did you once feel like a victim and unconsciously rage against others? In that moment you ‘loved’ being absorbed in negative thoughts accumulated within you as an entity. There is then an energy field of pain, of past experiences, that we carry within us, and that sometimes manifests itself when it becomes active: the pain body.
Anger … painful emotions … deep sadness … fear … a very dark state of mind … the desire for pain and drama … addiction to emotional pain … It emerges temporarily and periodically as the pain body – sometimes even in a continuous stream if you don’t bring awareness to it.
The pain body loves pain and the last thing it wants is to be free from pain, because you are the pain body then, it takes over you . Sometimes the period that a person’s pain body ‘is’ can last months! This deep need for unhappiness is unconscious or it would never survive. Awareness is therefore the medicine.
The ego is paranoia: it sees everyone as its enemy, and it is afraid of them too. The ego makes the whole world look hostile to you, so you have to be afraid of everything. Of course that creates a lot of pain.
– Eckhart Tolle
There is a mind-made entity made up of thinking and thought patterns, and it feeds on resistance and reactivity. And it wants more and more . It’s never big enough. This ‘little me’ is never enough.
Sméagol, or Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings, comes closest to what the human pain body looks like.
– Eckhart Tolle
But the truth is, we already know enough … The pain body is an addiction to unhappiness . It wants to renew the pain of the past by feeling it again. Pain is pleasure for the pain body , and it wants more and more of it.
You will think you are the victim are . Once you are identified with it, you don’t want to lose it. The ego does not want an end to its problems, because they are part of its identity. The ego’s greatest fear is its own end. So it also has a fear of ending ‘my problems’ because that means the end of ‘me’.
A gigantic shift takes place when you let go of the attachment to suffering. Attachment and (ego) identification is the source of all suffering in this world. Especially the attachment to suffering itself.
You’ve invested in that emotional pain, so you don’t want to lose it. You believe you are this fiction. You would rather be the pain, the pain body, than explore the unknown and lose the known. Observe your attachment to the pain of your unhappy self and the curious pleasure it gets from being unhappy.
Your ego only exists in your head. Furthermore, it does not exist.
Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with feeling the pain body – in fact, that is the solution – but we will go into that further in the article.
| 7 | Insight | How the pain body feeds on things like conflict and complaining
The remarkable thing is: people taken over by ego love their prison cell. A strong characteristic of the ego is: seeing yourself as a victim, which manifests itself in complaining, for example. The ego does not want an end to its problems, because they are part of its identity. All those problems and all that complaining defines your self-image. It makes you someone. The ego, or the pain body, will therefore want to attract more negativity, so that it can complain more.
Complaining is one of the favorite ways the ego wants to strengthen itself. By doing this you make others or a certain situation wrong, and right yourself. By agreeing with yourself, you feel superior. And by feeling superior you strengthen your sense of me. In reality you are only amplifying the illusion of ego. It needs conflict, comparison with others, distance and most importantly, more. “This is me and I am not.”
You have no restrictions at all. You’re just addicted to it. In fact, our problems are the biggest drugs of our lives.
Doesn’t it make sense that we don’t want conflict and distance? Not for the ego. Ego-acquired people reinforce their sense of identity by being in conflict with others, or by making a comment that diminishes another’s sense of self. This happens unconsciously. These comments are unconsciously designed to diminish another person’s sense of self and thereby slightly enhance your own separate, loose, isolated sense of existence. All this means is that the illusion of I has been increased. So they have only increased their illusion. It feels great for the illusion …. Just for a moment!
The pain body sustains itself by fighting against what is there.
Complaining (also in our heads), mentally labeling people (face-to-face when you talk to others or when you think about them), yelling, physical violence, complaining about what others have not done, what they have said, what they should or shouldn’t … This all creates distance, and the survival of the pain body depends on it. The pain body loves it. It feasts on misery, pain, complaining and conflict.
Feel the compulsion you have for grief and victimization. Feel the emotional attachment you have with it. Just notice this. You don’t have to do anything else. With consciousness comes freedom.
– Eckhart Tolle
The ego likes to complain about people and situations. When you complain, the implication is that you are right and the other is wrong. There is nothing that feeds the ego more than being right and the sense of superiority. You want to blame someone at such a moment to reinforce your sense of ‘me’.
“I really have nothing to complain about!” ‘Indeed! Even though you want it so badly! ‘
| 8 | Insight | Identification with conflict, complaining, old emotions and problems …
You probably know those people who constantly complain: the whole universe is against them. The world is their enemy. They have identified themselves as ‘me the complainer’, with ‘me and my problems’, ‘me and my complain.’ Could they answer the following questions?
- “Who are you if you stopped complaining, if you don’t think about me and my problems all the time?”
- Imagine: there is no future and no past. If I took that away. What’s left of you? ‘
“I don’t know,” could be their answer. The truth is, complaining doesn’t improve the situation. The solution for these people? Acceptance and surrender.
You do not want to get rid of the pain body because otherwise you think you will lose ‘yourself’ (the ego).
The story of ‘I’ is defined by problems. The little me is looking for something to be up against. A person, a situation, a place … Always complaining. You have people you can say who would they be without their problems ?
You must have met a few. ‘Where’s the grease stain? There he is. They should have done something about it a long time ago. It’s terribly ugly, don’t you think! ‘ “You’re wrong, I’m right.” The feeling of ‘I’ in such a person has increased enormously. Who would be such a person without his problems?
I am right and the whole world is wrong.
Now you think you know a little bit more about yourself. The feeling of ‘I’ has grown somewhat. By complaining. The anger and frustration then set in, because nothing in this world can live up to the expectations set by your mind-made self, because you never find it complete.
Constantly the little me thinks: ‘Complete me. People, things, complete me. ‘ And sooner or later frustration sets in because it cannot be realized. You are already complete, and when you take the veil off the ego, you see it.
Know that you are defending an illusion.
And emotions? Do you allow the pain body to identify with old emotions (it gets a kick out of it) or do you process the emotions in a healthy way, after which you can let go of them and continue? I included this question. You can play the audio below.
Ego wants to strengthen the image of who you are. The image of the ghost self that arose when thoughts, a great blessing as well as a great curse, began to take over the happiness of the connection with Being, the Source.
| 9 | Insight | If I don’t complain anymore, doesn’t that mean I’m beng used as a doormat?
Complaining should not be confused with informing someone about an error that can be corrected. There is no ego if you just tell the facts , for example that the soup is a bit cold and can be heated. “How dare you serve me cold soup!” That’s complaining, the ego. There is an ‘I’ there who enjoys being personally attacked: the ‘I’ who enjoys blaming someone. The pain body often doesn’t even want a change, so it can keep complaining.
Does that mean you let yourself be walked over, that you become a doormat? No. Suppose someone asks: “Can I have a thousand euros from you?” Then calmly say, “No.” What you don’t do: ‘How dare you! Etc.’
Good actions come from saying yes to the now and sometimes that is a no.
– Eckhart Tolle
“I respect your opinion and I appreciate you sharing it, and no.” The human being is accepted, the behavior is also what it is, and you say no. It’s not a reactive no. It is therefore even a powerful no.
| 10 | Insight | Being right is even more important to the ego than peace
You want peace. Everyone wants that. There is only a part of you that wants drama, conflict and distance, and is constantly struggling to survive. It makes you put on a louder voice. It’s your mind racing to defend its position, to justify itself (for example, if someone questions something about you), to attack. This part would rather be right than be peaceful. And all those negative experiences, such as that attack, that’s what the pain body loves.
Defending your own mental position is terrible, but it is considered normal.
Consider the following story in a work situation. “Did you know that this method takes way too much time for you?” “Yes, I know.” And he continued with that method anyway. He admitted it, but somehow it gave him pleasure, even if it was harmful. It was an ego reaction: “I’m not stupid, nobody tells me what to do!” He was defending his ego.
The ego does not like (inner) peace.
What if there was presence in him at the time? Again: he did method a, the colleagues come and ask, “Do you know it’s harmful to you?” He says, ‘I know, you are right. It gives me so much pleasure to do it like this. I can not help it. I know you are right, but I love method a so much, and I have it. Then his true power would have awakened!
Then there is vulnerability and honesty without having to defend an image. While the ego says, “This is weakness, defend yourself!” It could therefore have been a wonderful meeting, with love. But the ego would not allow that. It wanted to defend itself.
| 11 | Tip | Become more vulnerable and pieces of ego will then die
Be vulnerable. Drop your defenses, walls, masks and shields. The ego will find this weakness, but it is the most powerful thing you can do.
You have to lose yourself.
– JesusUnless you become children again, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
– JesusDie before you die.
– MohammedDie and be reborn. Until you learn that, you are just a dull dude on this dark planet.
– Goethe
Since distance and separation (ego) is the root of sickness and pain, all healing begins with the dropping of your defenses, walls, masks and shields. Healing begins with giving up your secrets, asking for help, reaching out your hands, receiving, letting others in, being intimate, and joining yourself with others.
Read more about vulnerability here.
| 12 | Insight | Love VS ego that takes everything personally
The ego takes everything personally, but the truth is, when someone makes a nasty comment, it isn’t a human making the comment. There is then only human unconsciousness making the comment. Such comments are never personal attacks. They seem so only through the eyes of the ego.
Do you know people who seem to devote their lives only to spreading grief? They live in a state of no surrender. Forgive them. There is nothing personal about it. That’s not who they are. Because what we are is love.
What people say has nothing to do with you. Even if they say it very directly. “You did x!” They are actually angry about it because they have conflict within themselves. Someone cannot have their day. It doesn’t mean that person doesn’t like you. It is their own judgment of themselves. It is your choice what to do with it.
The truth does not have to be defended. You defend yourself. Or rather the illusion of yourself. Truth is just a bundle of thoughts. Thoughts can point to the truth, but they are not the truth. Can the truth be put into words? Yes, but the words are the unnatural. They just point to it.
People used to be killed for it: putting the truth into words. If you believe that only your own religion is the truth, you are using it through the ego. You are the truth. Do not seek it outside of you. Connect to it. Then all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all the life you experience deep inside. That is love.
Let’s also take a look at ‘your’ problems. The ego thinks that conflicts are his / her. But also for conflict and suffering: nothing is personal. Do you really think your Passion story is exclusively yours? Do you think no one else has those thoughts (such as fear)? I can promise you that those thoughts are not yours, especially that you are not your thoughts.
If you are suffering, realize that it is not coming from your mind, but from the mind. Some people think their problem is totally unique.
| 13 | Insight | The ego does not want to change, while everything is in constant motion
The ego wants to hold on to what was: the old cycle, but you have to become the strongest version of yourself, and you cannot do that by holding on to the old. Realize that you cannot become who you were last year. It’s a year later now. Let that guy die. You may be different a year later, especially if you’ve been through things that give you wisdom. It’s hard because the old me was popular, had friends, did cool things … Change in the face of the people who appreciate you. That’s the hardest part.
At the same time, you must let this difficult and painful process of change take its course and do not want to climb up too quickly: the butterfly that is helped out of its cocoon too quickly by a human being is deformed. So accept that it takes time to develop yourself.
Another common example where not wanting to change the ego is a problem is stress … Stress is a changing, fleeting condition, something temporary. So it is not something you always have to live with. Don’t be misled by investing in it and thinking it is your identity. When you relax, you can solve everything.
Stress is a fearful response to the constant changes in life. It’s an excuse we often use for not taking responsibility for getting to our feelings. But playing the victim doesn’t change the situation. The next time you experience stress, ask yourself, What are you afraid of?
| 14 | Insight | The pain body consumes energy
You sometimes see in people who suddenly develop a very serious illness or handicap that the ego disappears. These people with huge egos become very kind, wise and affectionate when they are sick. The pain body needs a lot of energy. When you are sick you have little energy, and all that available energy goes into your healing, instead of your pain body.
You will often find that people who heal slowly keep their ego as it consumes the available energy. The ‘I’ consists of a bundle of thought forms, and eventually it dissolves. Sometimes even before the body dies. It then becomes too heavy to also have that ‘me’ there.
| 15 | Insight | The ego cannot surrender to joy
Pay attention to the attitude of the presenter of the program in the cheerful video below. Do you recognize this attitude in yourself and in others? “I think this is strange so I will certainly not give everything to be able to experience this fully.” A beautiful resistance of the ego, which is afraid of being embarrassed. Afraid you might like it. Afraid to get the most out of it.
The ego cannot surrender to joy. It always includes a bit. ‘You should not be completely free and happy, even during joyful activities like dancing …’
| 16 | Insight | Sometimes the ego does find happiness! But for a moment …
Temporarily, the pain body may be in a state of relief. It can’t afford to be what it isn’t for long.
Not long in peace … Not long in joy … Because all those things only arise when there is no opposition to what is there: peace and joy are a deep embrace of what is. The existence of the pain body depends on not accepting what is there. The need for conflict returns …
| 17 | Insight | The collective ego
Groups, minorities, majorities, religions, political parties … The little me joins other little selves. That little me then becomes us. “I against the rest of the world” becomes “we against the rest of the world.”
Think of nationalism, hooligans or many religious people who have been wronged. In this way there is a personal pain body (also of your family) and a collective pain body (all of humanity).
Power over other people is weakness disguised as strength. Real power resides within, in the now.
| 18 | Tips | How can my ego / pain body let go? Can it be healed? A few tips
Below you will find a number of ways to learn to deal with the pain body:
| 19 | Tip | Observe the pain body, allow it, feel it and just become aware of it
Do you want to dissolve the pain body? All you have to do is look at it – become aware of it. It’s incredibly powerful but simple. It can be taught to a child.
Can you feel the pain body coming up? We don’t fight it, nor try to get rid of it. We observe it, allow it, see it, feel it and allow what is there, including the pain. That is very powerful, it implies that you are present.
Focus on the feeling in you. Accept this feeling of the pain body. Don’t think about it, feel it. Don’t judge and analyze. Don’t make it an identity. Stay present and remain the observer of what is happening in you. Become aware of this emotional pain and of the person who perceives it. The silent witness.
Consciousness is the realization: you are not the pain, it is old pain. You are acceptance to the old pain. You therefore do not identify with it. This leads to forgiveness, and you cannot try to have forgiveness. It is a natural consequence of presence.
What you can also do, for example in a relationship, is to simply become aware of the pain body, in yourself or in your partner, and tell each other, ‘I feel that pain body again. You had done A then and then I felt B. ‘
Suppose you feel frustration and a certain identification with it (good news: you are already aware!). It’s okay. You notice it. You see it for what it is. That means: you are not the frustration. You see it. If you hadn’t seen it, it was you …
Awareness is so simple but it works! That sense of identity likes having problems, conflicts, enemies … But it will never tell you openly. It must remain unconscious, because if you make it aware you will laugh at your patterns and that is very liberating. You see conditioned thought patterns. There is nothing personal about that. But you see them. Seeing is the beginning of being free from it. Seeing means that you are no longer completely identified with it.
That which suffers is not you. By being aware of the pain body, you distinguish between experiences and identity. ‘I am with fear. I am not fear (is). ‘
It’s like being an actor on stage who is acting out a powerful script, forgetting that he is acting out a script, and suddenly remembering that this is just the acting of a conditioned pattern.
| 20 | Tip | What can I do when the pain body rises? Acknowledge and accept it
The ego is not bad. It’s just … the ego. Have love and acceptance for your pain body / ego. Be fully accepting of every aspect of yourself, including the dark sides.
You become a space of unconditional love and acceptance through this and that also ignites other wonderful people.
Acknowledge it, but not in the sense of identity. Not “I ‘m unhappy.” But yes: ‘There is unhappiness in me. This has nothing to do with identity. ‘ The trap is to create a sense of self based on the content of the mind. If nothing can be done about it, you accept that too: ‘This is how it is. I can either accept it or feel bad about it. ‘ Do the following:
- Focus your attention on the feeling in you.
- Know that this thinking is the pain body.
- Accept that it is there, along with the negative emotion.
- Don’t even think about it. Then identification with yourself stops.
- Don’t let the feeling turn into a thought.
- Don’t judge or analyze.
- Don’t make it an identity for yourself.
- Stay present.
- In addition to the feeling, be aware of the person who is observing. That is the power of the now, your own conscious presence.
- See what’s happening.
- You prefer to stay in pain for fear of losing your known ‘identity’.
- Watch all this consciously!
- You can be attached to your suffering. You want to keep yourself intact and suffering has become an essential part of yourself. The moment you realize that, the bond is broken.
- Observe the resistance in you. Observe the peculiar pleasure you get from being unhappy.
- Feel the unwanted feeling without Labeling it. Let it be separate from the person who caused it. No victimization.
- Without time, negativity cannot exist. Die for the past (after processing it).
Difficult? Do you feel resistance to unidentifying the pain? That’s because it is familiar to you. This mind-made fiction seems to be a solid part of who you are. You would rather be the pain rather than plunge into the unknown and risk losing the unhappy, familial self.
Observe that resistance in you – and the attachment to your pain. And the remarkable pleasure you get from being unhappy. The resistance is now conscious. Suddenly seeing that you are attached to the pain breaks the attachment.
| 21 | Tip | Detach yourself from your material possessions
No longer identifying with material possessions ( detachment ) is another way of softening the grip of the ego. We are more than that.
Cars, houses and ornaments are still clearly recognizable, but it also passes into subtle thought forms: identification with other people’s opinions about me: what does the world think of me? Am I considered important? Also ‘the image of you’ or ‘status’ is a material possession.
So also admit your mistakes. I’d rather be around people who sometimes make mistakes and admit this, than people who think they’ll never make mistakes.
| 22 | Tip | Acknowledge the lamenting voice for what it is – a conditioned thought
Can you catch this complaining voice and acknowledge it for what it is? Namely the voice of the ego? It is nothing more than a conditioned thought. Then you also realize that you are not the voice, but the person who is aware of it. Ego implies unconsciousness. Consciousness and ego cannot live together. You cannot fight your ego in the same way that you cannot fight dark. So acknowledge the consciousness within you. The light of consciousness is all you need. You are that light.
| 23 | Tip | Trust (the Source)!
And so let go of all attachments, desires and fears, and the will to be in control. And say to yourself, “I trust you, body. I trust you, spontaneity. I trust you, subconscious. I trust you, the intelligence that guides me. I trust everything that goes through me and everything that happens in me. ”
| 24 | Tip | Practice mindfulness to get into the here and now
In addition, coming into the here and now is a direct solution against the ego. One means for this is mindfulness .
That little I is based on the past , or rather: based on interpretations of events in the past. It has created an image of ‘me’ in your head over the years. Things have happened in the past, but that’s not who you are. The ego makes you believe it is, because it wants to reinforce the feeling of ‘I’.
Become aware of this and dive into the ‘newness’ of the here-and-now.
You are absolutely at your best when ‘yourself’ (ego) is gone. That is in the here and now. The personality then avoids. You achieve that with meditation.
– Joe Dispenza
| 25 | Tip | Become friends with the ego and work with the pain body as if it were your teacher
Become friends with the ego! This is the most powerful transformative tool. The ego needs enemies (not only in the form of people but also in the form of situations, conditions and places, for example) to maintain its sense of isolation, distance and separateness.
And his nemesis? That is the present moment. The ego is always opposed to the present moment, always opposed to it. It makes the present moment something you have to be ‘against’.
And what is the present moment? Life. Because life cannot take place in any other place or moment except in the now. So make friends with the pain body, and you do that by being friends with the now. It is part of now.
We are not sending the pain body away. We don’t wish it doesn’t exist. The current evolutionary phase of humanity simply has a pain body and you cannot escape it. There is nothing personal about that. It is not a problem. It is not your personal dilemma.
Besides, there is nothing personal about presence and awareness. The whole idea of ’person’ can be thrown away. There are no more masks. The picture of me. You are then. Jii and ‘are’ are then one.
Work with the pain body as if it were your teacher . The pain body can become a great teacher for you. It’s a good thing. The pain body becomes your ally. The pain body is incorporated in your practice to develop more presence. The more often the pain body comes, the better it is. You are lucky if you have a strong pain body as it is good for your exercise.
The ‘story of yourself’ – which can be quite unpleasant – is dreamed by consciousness. Consciousness wants to dream the dream and it also wants to wake up. The need to wake up is built into the dream. Unpleasantness – the pain body – is the built-in alarm clock.
– Eckhart Tolle
Even the pain body has a function and is fine as it is: it provides fuel for consciousness. It becomes your spiritual teacher. It is energy in you (which is just kind of stuck in you), because every emotion is energy.
It is and remains life energy. Only it has been caught. Caught on a low frequency. Free it and you will feel yourself more and more full of living energy.
Coals are transformed into fire. The fire of consciousness. At first it was a heavy and dark substance and suddenly it burns and becomes a flame. Pure energy. So even the pain body has a function – your spiritual teacher – and is good as it is.
– Eckhart Tolle
Remember: the pain body, the pain, is simply not who you are. It is energy that lives in your body for a moment. Get friendly with it. This is the most powerful thing you can do.
| 26 | Tip | So feel the pain body – that’s how you accept it
Become kind to the pain body. You are then friendly with the now. How? Simply accept that it is there. “There it is, I can feel it.” And that implies that you know it is there. And that again implies that there is enough presence / awareness in you to see it. That means you no longer hurt the body are .
That consciousness can not if you hurt body are . And the pain body is then not friendly! So feel it, accept it and perceive it.
‘There you are, pain body! How does that energy field feel in my body? ‘ That’s all you have to do. When you are the pain body, you cannot be kind with the now. That is in the nature of the pain body. When there is presence in you, you can accept the pain body.
There is a dissociation! You were in it but now you got out because You noticed. And now there is no more identification with the pain body, but an identification with the witness, the silence, the rest, the peace, the consciousness.
The pain body is still there, but it goes out, because the pain body can no longer renew itself. The more present you are with it, the less it can use you to renew itself.
It’s a kind of meditation. You seem to lie on it. Then it can’t keep doing what it did for long. As a result, it can no longer disturb things. You are too aware. Consciousness and old pain cannot live together for long.
Notice it. That’s all it takes: knowing it’s there. After that you may also be able to observe, accept and feel it. That raw emotion. Including the need to involve others. How does it feel in you as an energy field? It’s fascinating when you do this.
It’s not necessarily pleasant, but check it out. Allow it. The energy that was trapped will now transfer to positive energy: vitality, vibrancy and feeling good!
Make the shift from head to body.
| 27 | Tip | Let go of the need to be ‘special’
Be okay with just being. Moreover, when you are present, your need to be special / perfect disappears. In the perspective of the ego you are then very normal. However, your true extraordinaryness is hidden in your ordinariness.
| 28 | Tip | Be non-reactive (but proactive) and forgive the egos of others
You can certainly do something about the ego of others: being non-reactive to the ego of others is actually strength. It is not personal, you no longer behave accordingly. You also bring back health in others. Not being reactive is also forgiveness . You look through the ego at health as the essence of the other person.
Forgive and delete.
– Gabrielle Bernstein
| 29 | Tip | Know your mission: that always transcends and overcomes ego
Know your mission. Once you fully focus on your mission, you have no fear. Read more about this in the article about the logic levels.
I’m not afraid. I was born to do this.
– Joan of Arc
| 30 | Tip | Think about other people instead of yourself
Are you feeling bad? Then ask yourself: who am I thinking of? You will discover that you only think of yourself (and that ‘self’ does not even exist). Stop that. Think about other people and you will notice that the miserable feeling disappears. There are also many studies that prove that making someone else happy is the best way to be happy yourself.
By the way, this is one of the most important components of excellent listening skills : the ability to have all attention available to the other, because the ego no longer demands all the attention for itself.
| 31 | Tip | Stop believing in the lie that conflict is real… Only love exists
You can also realize that conflict only exists in our heads: you believe in your drama, you believe in your lies. It is not true for the rest of the world.
Learn about how we love and always return to it , and learn about non-duality , which teaches us that conflict does not exist.
‘Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing: they didn’t know any better. They are not aware. ‘
– Christ
| 32 | Tip | Now that you know that the ego causes so many misidentifications … remember who you really are!
Remember who you are: your soul, or intuition! It is your lack of trust in your soul, or intuition, that leads you to dark places and stories. Every time you betray and leave your original source of power and innocence, you enter illusions of distance, effort, smallness, fear and inferiority.
Fear (the ego) is the only problem ever. However, all fear disappears when you ask your Higher Self (Soul) to interpret all your problems.
So: reconnect with your wisdom and light (through meditation) and everything will be fine. That is true healing.
When you attune your personality to your soul, you can distinguish between fear and love. Then love can overcome fear in everyday events.
Tune in to your soul / intuition instead of fear / ego. For example, be quiet for a moment and …
- Stop the world. Close your eyes. Arrive in the silence.
- Descend to your heart.
- Let each inhalation be a symbol of your intention to connect with unconditional love, life and joy.
- Let each exhalation symbolize your willingness to let go of fear and isolation.
- Keep going until you stir something infinite. Keep going until you connect with your unconditional self. Eventually you will discover the soul of who you really are. And all the angels will cheer and applaud you.
| 33 | Tip | Pray to invariably return to Love, which you really are
Use the power of intention , prayer , the law of attraction, or whatever you want to call it, to invariably return to the love that we all are.
Prayer for the ego: “Oh God, today I let go of the thoughts of distance and separateness and remember who I am.” The prayer of the ego: “Look out!”
Ask for help through prayer so that your thoughts are organized back to love. and do it again and again so that eventually the fear is removed and love remains as a habit. Fear will still return, but you will return to the light out of habit.
Only love is real. We always return to it. We cannot live in the light all the time, but we can return to it quickly. ‘We are of spirit.’ We are made of love. Sometimes there is a bubble of negativity that we get caught in. As soon as it bursts, we are that love again.
| 34 | Tip | Just let go of the ego like hot coals in your hands
How do you let go of the negativity? By letting go! How do you release hot coals in your hands? Feel that it is negative and painful and let it go. Fear cannot survive in the now. Let go of all resistance. That is called surrender. Surrender is not a weakness, but there is a lot of strength in it. You are then free internally.
| 35 | Tip | You can always be more egoless: there is always more profit to be made
You can always be more egoless. Take the great manifestations like Jesus as an example. When you are very honest with yourself, you often do things because you expect something in return for yourself.
You may be praying for the well-being of your family because you need them. You may be crying for your partner’s death because it makes you feel lonely. It is difficult to leave that ‘busy with ourselves’ behind us. We can almost always profit from this.
| 36 | Insight | See through the illusions and paradoxes of the ego
Who is this ‘I’ who wants to feed more and more with thoughts and with identity, a feeling of ‘I’? When you talk about yourself, when you say “I” you are normally referring to “me and my story.” This is the ‘me’ of your likes and dislikes, of your fears and desires, the ‘me’ that is never satisfied for any length of time.
However, it is one created by a thought: the sense of who you are, conditioned by the past, and seeking to fulfill itself in the future.
You have no life. You are life.
Can you see that this me is only a temporary thing? Who is the one who sees this, who is the one who is aware of this? That’s me. This is the deeper me, which has nothing to do with past and future. What will be left of all your fears and desires, and all aspects of your troubled life situation, that take up most of your attention every day? A stone on your grave. A depressing thought for your created self. But this is liberating for you!
I am not the content of my life. I am the life. I am.
We also think that we can become complete through the ego. Other’s opinion of me: ‘Someone thinks I’m great. I am recognized by others
When I receive recognition from others, when others recognize how great I am, then I have found myself. ‘ This, of course, is not the way to find fulfillment.
The simple pleasure of ‘being’ cannot be there for the ego. There is only room for fear or ‘wanting’. There is only room for reaction. The ego is constantly seeking pleasure or even pain.
Fight Club and The Matrix teach us this in a fantastic way:
- It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
- Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon. - You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind.
- Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You’ve never used them before.
| 37 | Tip | Use your language so that it does not contain false identifications
In your daily life you can use your language in such a way that you do not give feedback on an identity level, but on a behavioral level. Use the logic levels model and the feedback model for this .
There are no alcoholics, cancer patients, anorexics or psychopaths. Let’s not identify people with their illness or anything that goes on outside of their true selves. Acher that disease is still wholeness. Your wholeness can be darkened but never turned off.
| 38 | Tip | Use ‘the flipside’ of the ego: your intuition and all these powers of your soul …
With what can you put the ego offside? Many tips have already been scattered in the text of this article, and we can add these extra tips:
- The most important thing is to develop the opposite of the ego: your soul / intuition. Here you will find 89+ tips.
- Don’t fight the ego. Have compassion for it.
- Also have compassion for other people. You can read how to do that here.
- Bring kindness into practice.
- Forgiveness goes directly against the survival of the ego.
- Humor is the secret weapon that can suddenly surprise the ego.
| 39 | Tip | What to do if you come across someone else’s pain body?
Do you notice the pain body in someone else? Is someone unconsciously seeking a conflict? Then stay present yourself and without mental judgment instead of reactive.
You allow the unconsciousness in the other. You stay in your body. You perceive it all and remember in this moment what brings you the state of presence.
You sit there, deeply connected to your body, bringing your presence to the situation, instead of the reactivity of the ‘I’.
Allow is the most powerful thing you can do. You fully accept the current state of mind of the people with an active pain body and you let go of the desire to be understood by them. Because they won’t.
You feel a weight fall off your shoulders. You no longer want them to behave differently and you no longer blame them for what they did or didn’t do.
There was no one who did anything wrong. It was unconsciousness. There is no one there at the time. It’s not a personal thing.
Afterward, you can point to it to help the other to be dissociated and more easily raise awareness of that situation. “Oh it’s coming again, can you feel it?”
| 40 | Tip | The best books about the pain body (ego)
There are two books where just reading the words causes the pain body to become peaceful . The books also deal with the subject of the pain body in the most clear way.
Maybe you already knew, but I’m talking about the two indisputably masterful books by Eckhart Tolle: “The Power of the Now” and “A New Earth.” If you don’t have them yet, purchase them. You will be truly amazed at how much peace these books convey to the reader.
| 41 | Tip |Use these meditation texts
The good news is also that you can train your ego, for example with a guided meditation text.
Thank you very much for reading this comprehensive article on the ego / pain body. You are welcome to leave a comment at the bottom of this article.
Thanks for the comprehensive article, one of the best pieces I ever read about the ego.
I myself also suffer from my ego, it is already much less than ever before but in recent weeks he has popped up again and I am working very hard to prove myself again and that is really destroying me for that I went again looking for info on this topic.
Lately I have been busy almost all day and also at night with having to perform and impress and how to achieve that, I will not get to anything else, but this afternoon I had to laugh about it and I was aware of the patterns of the ego and I hope this is the beginning of a better period and that should work with this info.
Great that you could laugh about it, that is the ultimate perception of the ego!
Wonderful article. Read with great pleasure and then shared in an attempt to contribute to the collective consciousness. Thanks!
Thanks Erik
This article comes at a good time.
We are looking for a form of association with someone who gives one sneer after another, completely unexpected too. We never do it right and just when the atmosphere really gets nice there will be an uppercut that will make your pants fall off. the solution so far: avoid contact. But it is family and more: it could help us to practice that the problem is with the other person and not with me. Yet it triggers a lot. Would you like some feedback on how to deal wisely and lovingly with someone who keeps hitting you below the belt?
1744 / 5000
Vertaalresultaten
Hi Esther,
What immediately comes to mind is that you can make sure that you respond automatically wisely and lovingly after the other person gives a sneer.
How you can do this automatically is by applying a Swish technique to yourself. That’s kind of a quick visualization. The steps of this mindset technique can be found here: happyrubin.com/swish
The next time the other person snorts, you will almost naturally respond wisely and lovingly if you have done that visualization recently.
What also comes to mind is this:
Crying a little.
Give love to your own pain you get after such a sneer. Thus, you can also understand why other people do certain things and thereby also be a space of compassion and patience for them.
Would it help if you give in to the pain? You may already be doing it, but it’s just something that comes to mind.
Learning to deal with your ego and being ‘spiritual’ does not mean that you can no longer display ‘negative’ emotions.
Now you say you get hit below the belt, and my question is, do you feel it too? Really sit with that sneer feeling for half an hour or more?
If that person hits you below the belt and it does something to you, I think it’s good to feel that pain. Just look for a room where you are alone and where you can feel that emotion and where you can cry and / or huddle. Then there is pressure off the kettle for yourself.
I can’t say what will happen next, because that could be anything. Because suddenly space has arisen within yourself and there is a good chance that you will react peacefully afterwards.
When the pain body manifests itself in a bad dream (nightmare). Then what is the remedy?
Hi John, I don’t know much about dreams, but I sometimes have bad dreams (nightmares) myself. What helps me personally is that I don’t pay any further attention to it, but that I reconnect with my wisdom and light (through meditation and positive activities).
Thank you for this wonderful article. I wish that these concepts would be incorporated in schools at a young age. There is so much unnecessary suffering in the world. Namaste.