Taming Your Inner Two-Year-Old: Checking Your Ego While In Recovery

Nowadays, we often hear a lot of talk about the ego. Once known as a foundational and integral piece of the human psyche, the ego has come to be known as an internal dragon that needs to be slain at all costs.

Death of the ego is often the ultimate goal for serious spiritual seekers looking to breakthrough to their divine, authentic self.

For the every-day folks who may not want to embark on a disciplined meditation practice or to ingest ayahuasca in the Amazon to (temporarily) slay their ego, we still have to contend with our ego at every step of our lives.

How we decide to interact with our ego and how much power we give our ego is the real objective.

Ego should not be looked upon as either good or bad.

Instead of looking at ego as a noun, and something that is, it is more helpful to look at the ego as a verb, and the function it performs in our life.

Ego can serve as a protector, a negotiator, a mediator and an insulator. The way we need to look at ego is, “Is my ego helping me or hurting me?” “Is my ego serving me or am I serving my ego?”

Learning to discern the ego is the first step.