Does Ego or Conscious Awareness Drive You?

Eckhart Tolle said the ego is the primary cause of man's dysfunction because it craves a special identity, though it can never name what will ultimately create that feeling for us, so is insatiable. This means that what more often than not drives us is a need to feel our ego's idea of identity, usually meaning to feel acknowledged by others and life itself in some particular way. This is why we identify who we believe ourselves to be with our thoughts, material items and money, and even through our need to be right and others wrong. We tend to aim at most desired results for the sake of that ego-desired identity rather than our true identity: our I Am-ness. Only through conscious awareness of our I Am-ness can we feel serenity with ourselves and life.

If you were to live in conscious awareness of your I Am-ness, your focus would be different. It wouldn't be so much about what you could get from others or life to feel good about yourself, but about how you are one with the Creative Consciousness and your unique, at-peace, giving-and-receiving expression of it. So the next questions are: What is Conscious Awareness and how do you get it?

It usually doesn't happen that we decide one day to awaken to conscious awareness and it occurs; nor do we think, affirm or vision ourselves into it, which is an ego tactic. Instead, we allow ourselves to awaken to the truth that it's already within us, covered under layers of ego cravings for a distinctive identity, whether positive (successful, for example) or negative (victim, pitiful, as examples)... as though our I Am-ness isn't enough.

Ernest Holmes said we are affected by the limited human-race consciousness, which is our tendencies of thoughts, beliefs, and actions passed along through generations. We are subjected to the human-race consciousness starting at birth, and must break away from it to attain conscious awareness, our true identity, our I Am-ness. Holmes also said consciousness is the "inner embodiment of an idea through the recognition of Truth and a direct relationship to the Divine." That's basically what many spiritual teachers have tried to convey to us: our true identity is about our relationship with All That Is, first and foremost. Embody that relationship, and we become aligned with deeper understanding, rather than oppose it; and that alignment empowers us in our true identity.

The human-race consciousness seldom mentions that connecting to this I Am-ness in us and living it is why we're here and that it will assist us more than anything else will. As Tolle wrote, "Most people don't inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one... The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious." When ego drives us, we live in our thoughts, often as compulsive thinkers (the thoughts rarely stop), believing our thoughts are the real us and our reality. Your real reality is your true identity. Your true identity is your consciousness, which is Divine Consciousness expressing through you.

Back to the questions of what conscious awareness is and how we get it. Sometimes we get what something is by understanding what it is not, and we get it (become it) by doing the opposite. So, you're not practicing conscious awareness if:

Your ego drives your choices and life in order to define your identity;

You're attached to something or someone in an unhealthy or all-consuming way, so that loss of or contrast with it or them causes you to feel your identity is lost or threatened;

Someone has to be wrong so you can be right;

You have to complain and criticize rather than state observations and facts (calmly) to address them productively;

You have to ridicule someone or something to feel strong or superior;

You feel worried, anxious, bored, unhappy, unfulfilled;

You react to others and life from your pain-body, your ego's storage house of every past grievance it won't let go of and believes once threatened (and still does) its identity;

You believe your ego's thoughts about people and life more than the Truth;

Your ego wants the identity of having conscious awareness, rather than you just having it.

Awareness is when you're not only conscious of what's around you but also aware that you're conscious. Tuning your awareness this way puts you in the moment you're in (conscious of your consciousness) and not in the past or future, which is the ego's compulsive-thinking tactic it uses to feed its need. You can begin a practice to help you escape the ego's energy-consuming ways. When you catch yourself engaged in compulsive thinking or any of the tendencies listed in the paragraph above, pause and re-mind yourself that your ego is engaged in a struggle with identity issues, issues your true consciousness doesn't have and can't have.

If you've ever stared at fish gliding in an aquarium, and felt yourself relax, focusing your attention as described here has the same effect, only it awakens you in a serene way rather than sedates you. Get still for even just a few moments. Eyes closed or open, put your attention on the life force at work in your physical body. You may or may not feel it, but know or sense that cells in your body are at work, taking care of numerous processes on your behalf. Listen, with inner stillness, to the sounds around you, without thought, judgment or attachment, just awareness. Feel your aliveness and the aliveness of everything around you that you are part of and is part of you. It's a good practice.

Practice makes progress.

c Joyce Shafer

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Joyce Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She's author of "I Don't Want to be Your Guru" and other books/ebooks, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles and free downloads. See all that's offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com/guest-articles.html