Soi rọi "bản ngã" (how to recognise "ego")

Một ngày bạn soi gương bao nhiêu lần?

Mỗi người trong chúng ta soi gương ít nhất hai lần trong ngày: buổi sáng lúc vệ sinh răng miệng, chải chuốt trước khi đi làm & buổi tối lúc vệ sinh răng miệng, chải chuốt trước khi đi ngủ.

Chúng ta thường có xu hướng chăm chút, chải chuốt cho cái bên ngoài sao cho nó trông đẹp nhất, đường hoàng nhất mà nhiều khi quên đi việc chăm chút, soi rọi cái bên trong để cho nó đẹp, sáng, đường hoàng hơn cả vẻ đẹp bề ngoài của mình.
Nhân đàm luận về đề tài này, tôi xin trích lược một bài viết về cách soi rọi bản ngã như sau:
Egoic Mind
Egoic mind is the negativity inside us that makes us feel disempowered, hopeless and pessimistic about the future.
Once you are able to spot all the patterns and traits of such negative state of mind, you will be able to diminish the ego and finally get rid of it completely.
In this article you will find out what patterns the ego uses to operate, how to spot them and in what ways you can set yourself free from the burden of the ego.
How to recognise the ego
Egoic mind is the negative side of your thinking. It is the silent voice in your head which tries to discourage you from doing, achieving or changing.
Egoic mind separates you from others and sees people as completely disconnected from each other. It sees differences in people rather than what we have in common. It judges, makes assumptions and introduces limiting beliefs.
It classifies people according to their wealth, character and appearance. That's why when people ask 'what do you do?' it is almost always asked to classify you in their mind.

Someone could be genuinely interested in you, but that rarely happens. And when that happens, you feel that the person is asking a deeper question compared to the majority of shallow questions you get.

Once the person (considering it was a shallow question) gets the answer to 'what do you do?', his/her ego immediately classifies you as to which class you belong to. By doing this, the ego decides if you bring any benefit, what tone you will be talked to and if it is worth talking to you in the first place. That is how the egoic mind works.

It is the egoic mind that is called 'evil' in Christianity and other religions. This negativity can control you without you even knowing about it. It is as if you were possessed by some kind of entity. And you are in some form possessed. Egoic mind has a firm grip on people who complain, consider themselves unlucky or those that have anger inside them.

It is the egoic mind, not the true you, that responds to insults of others and starts fights. The ego does this because this way it feeds itself to survive. If you cut the sources of life of the egoic mind, it will die. But to do that will require immense willpower and observation of your thinking (I will explain how to do this later on).
Egoic mind gets attached to things and intangibles like status, power and authority. People completely ruled by their status is ruled by their ego. Egoic mind loves to be separate from others therefore it likes to rise above the masses. This way it establishes itself even more on you.

However, the need for achievement can arise both from ego and from your consciousness. When you achieve something that was driven by an ego, you feel emptiness and sadness inside. You may feel good for a while, but after some time you understand that it is not enough and you want something more.

On the other hand, if you achieve something from the state of consciousness, you feel joyful and fulfilled.
How to know the difference between these two desires when they arise? There are two ways to know that. If the need to achieve something comes from higher self, you will not question it; it will just feel right and you will not have any doubts as if to take a step towards that desire.
However, if the desire comes from the egoic mind, you may seek for others' opinions or question yourself if this is really what you want. You will feel doubtful and unsure.
Egoic mind can not only feed itself on high achievements, but also on low emotions such as fear, disempowerment and the lack of self-confidence. This is because the egoistic mind does not like change. Therefore if you live fearful life, it will make sure that you do not rise above it, and if you have power over others, it will do everything to keep the status quo.
The power of present moment
Ego wants you to live in the past or the future, but never in the present. And so most people live to completely serve their egos by ignoring the present, and clinging on to either past or future.
These both ways of living expand the ego. You may not even realise what damage you do in living this way. I do not mean to say that you do not have to plan anything for the future, but you should plan from the present moment, and not daydream about it.

When you live in the past or the future, you waste your energy thinking about events or things that do not even exist. By doing this, you leave little energy for the present. Therefore when you take action in the present, you get poor results. This will certainly not give you great future. The foundation of great future depends on the quality of action you take in the present.

Once you learn how to live in the present, your whole energy, your whole purpose goes into the present moment. This means you put everything you have into the present action, and that action becomes perfect basis for the perfect future.

If you take time to live in the present and observe, touch, smell and feel what is around you, you put your whole mind at rest and start seeing real colours of life. Your ego does not have anything to feed on since you are not using your mind to worry, plan or guess about the events to come. All that is left is your awareness, which guides you with intuition and feelings as to how to effortlessly achieve everything that you desire.

You should always live in the present moment and never worry about negative things that can come into your life. Why to do that in the first place? Your worries usually never come into reality anyway, and even if they do, how can you help yourself by worrying about them? Worry serves no purpose, it just makes you moody and hopeless, which feeds your ego.
When some obstacles arise in your life, you should deal with them when they come. When problems come, you should entirely focus on what's happening and completely accept the situation.
When you accept the situation for what it is, the action you will take will not be a defensive action originating from your ego, but the action that comes from the higher self, from all the consciousness there is. Such action will always be the most appropriate one to take.
How ego prevents you from getting what you want
When you feel any lack, it is the egoic mind that tells that it wants more things and experiences. When you feel disillusioned, it is your ego telling that it does not know what it wants.

In truth, you have everything you need. Abundance, happiness, peace and all good things you can think of is already in you. You should only look inside you to bring those features to the outside.

Yet if you are ruled by your ego, you will believe that all good things are outside and you need to compete and struggle to get what you want. But by doing this you will never get anything because if you do not feel that you have some quality inside, you cannot get it from outside.
However, you can use outside world to bring out some inner qualities so that you will be able to eventually attract your desires. For example, if you want to be abundant, firstly you have to feel abundant. To bring out the feeling of abundance in yourself, you can observe the abundance outside.
You should direct your attention to abundant things like the lushness of nature, plenty of food in stores, waters with the abundance of fish and so on. Such observations will awaken your inner abundance, you will start resonating it (because you will get into the abundance vibration) and this way you will attract the outside abundance to yourself.
How to use unpleasant situations to diminish the ego
Whenever you lose material or immaterial things, you cause your ego to reduce. When that happens, egoistic mind will try to regain the power by producing the need for new things or qualities. If you give in and start feeling negative about losing something and wanting to gain something new, you have just caused your ego to rebuild itself.
Therefore to diminish the ego, you will need to acknowledge the situation of loss without reacting negatively.
This also applies when facing confrontations. When someone insults you, your ego shrinks as it is the ego that was insulted. In this situation you should not fight back as by fighting back the ego rebuilds itself.
In such confrontations, you should stay quiet and fully accept the situation you are in. You may take action if you want to, but the action should come from the higher self, the consciousness, rather than the lower self, the ego.
So if someone insults you, you might say that it is wrong to talk this way about you. This answer will not contain any negative energy as it will state the truth. So this way you will prevent the ego from rebuilding itself.
How to completely get rid of the egoic mind
To get rid of the ego you firstly need to recognise it, then understand that you are completely separate from it and start observing the patterns your ego uses.
To recognise the ego you will need to recognise its features that were described in the previous section. Once you notice that your act derived from the ego, you will need to acknowledge that as soon as you become aware of it.
Once you start observing such negativity in your mind, you will start noticing certain patterns. For example, some person can always trigger anger in you. So by being aware of your anger as soon as it has been triggered, you are starting to break that pattern.
For some it might be hard to disidentify from the negative emotion that was triggered in some way. So here is the explanation of how to do that for the pattern to be broken.
Let's say someone has just insulted you. As soon as you become aware of this, you will need to understand that this situation is just what it is. The words that person said to you are just words. The you reacting negatively to the words is just your ego responding to the trigger. The responding to the trigger establishes ego's control over you.
You are the observer of the trigger and the reaction of the ego, you are not the reaction. With practice you will be able to become aware of the reactions of your ego. When you no longer associate yourself with the reaction, the reaction to certain trigger will gradually reduce until it completely dies. This way you will break the pattern and diminish the ego.
Common Misunderstandings
Many try to fight the ego when they notice it inside them. But that only gives more power to the ego. Whatever you resist, always persists. You should never fight any negative situation, as by doing so you give your energy to it, causing it to become stronger.
To get rid of the ego you only have to become conscious of its patterns. Once you are conscious of all the patterns of the ego, it will gradually be diminished and eventually disappear.
By being conscious of the patterns, I mean being able to separate yourself from the reaction some trigger caused. For example, if you get angry and you are aware of the fact that you are angry, this alone is diminishing your ego. Yet the majority of people do not even know when they get angry and the anger completely overtakes them.
Conclusion
If your ego rules you, then you think that you are that negative self-talk, you identify completely with your thinking process, you get easily attached to things, places, people, status and power; you always try to fight back to any remark made at you; you start fights with others; you forcefully and emotionally express your disagreements.
To completely remove egoic mind from your life, you will need to learn how to consciously live in the present moment and put your whole energy into any action you take. You will also need to learn not to react to triggers (e.g. insults or unfairness) and observe your mind.
I understand that there are many things you will need to observe to get rid of the egoic mind. But it is worth doing so as the only way to gain freedom and happiness is by surrendering to the higher you and letting the ego dissolve.