Editor’s note: This series is still helpful and practical, but contains some slightly out of date info. It reflects my journey and understanding at the time, which has evolved since then. In essence, I no longer believe the terminology - what I called the ego - is accurate, but the actions and steps are still relevant.

This is Part Three of the series on dealing with the common and most dangerous traps people fall into upon discovering the ego, check out Part One and Part Two.

In this post, the final part of the series, we’ll discuss the expansion of awareness and the return of the ego – which are opposite sides of the same coin. What do I mean? As you know by now, awareness is the key to freedom. It’s the opposite of the ego – the more aware you are, the less hold the ego has over you.

Getting frustrated

So what’s the danger now? The more awareness you have, the more you’ll see how much the ego has saturated your life. In the original post, I took an example from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth where he described how even little social events like spreading the latest news can be tinged with ego. In the brief moment you say “Oh, you haven’t heard?” the ego has stepped in – it made you feel superior simply because you knew something the other didn’t.

Sometimes, when this realisation hits you, you get frustrated and despair. “How much ego is there to bypass? Will I ever be free?”

Other times, the dysfunctional aspects of the ego take over despite your best attempts at awareness. This is especially likely if emotions are involved – the rush of emotions before the ego steps in makes it difficult to resist. The frustration builds when you realise this fact afterwards.

We get even more distressed when we think back to old mistakes we could have avoided if we had acted from our core being of peace.

Half of this trap has already been explained. Isn’t this demonising the ego and living in the non-existent, egoic past? Forgive yourself for slipping – we have been operating under the ego for so long, and the habits have so much momentum that it’s almost inevitable we slip.

What’s the other half?

Adding another layer to the ego

Many teachers warn that the search for freedom from the ego is often another egoic goal in disguise. It took me a long time to understand what this meant. Allow me to explain the two factors in that statement.

Firstly, think of awareness as a skill. Like any skill, the initial stages are the hardest - you always make the most mistakes as a beginner.

But mistakes are not wrong. Only the ego makes them wrong. When you were a child learning how to walk, you didn’t hate yourself whenever you stumbled and fell. You didn’t give up, cry, get disappointed or look at the other kids to see if they walked earlier than you did. You simply got back up and kept trying until you got it – you were too young to have had an ego.

Secondly, knowing that the ego causes unhappiness puts you under a lot of pressure. The perceived price of “failure” weighs heavy on your mind.

But these two are paradoxes - what is causing the pressure? The ego itself. Which part of you worries about “failure”? You guessed it - your ego. Your search for freedom has simply added another layer on top of your unhappiness. Instead of simply being unhappy about whatever was bugging you, now you’re also pissed off at the ego for making you unhappy.

We’ve discussed how hate and frustration are egoic traits. By that logic, you’re using the ego to hate itself. Crazy? You bet.

The building of concentration

Awareness is similar to concentration. Have you ever tried to concentrate on something fully? A long drive on a lonely highway? A boring lecture? Empty-mind meditation? Even things you enjoy can be hard to concentrate on for long periods of time.

Let’s expand on the first example – when you have been driving for hours without a break, your mind tends to wander. You want to daydream, call a friend, light a cigarette, anything but focus on that boring long road. But as Master Yoda says, pay attention you should, or road-kill an innocent will become.

This is a state in which you have no awareness at all. You can probably think of many other situations where you have blurred out – being in a haze where you are 100% identified with your ego and thoughts. You are lost in them instead of using them as a tool, which is how they are meant to be used. You are spiritually blind - your eyes are closed and no light is coming through. Sadly, most people are in this state at least 90% of the time.

If the mind does shut itself off, people have no idea that it means the awakening of awareness. They enjoy the brief moment of peace without grasping what the potential in that slim ray of light, and then they go “blur” again. They don’t know that they have conscious control over it – sometimes they think it was a result of something else, and go around chasing that “something else” instead.

Before I discovered the ego, for example, I thought one particular woman was the key to happiness. Why? Because whenever I looked into her eyes, my ego turned itself off and flooded me with peace. I associated that peace with her. And that began my futile search for peace and love in all the wrong places – outside rather than inside. Other people associate this peace with travel in foreign countries, by being with nature, and so on – but these activities and places merely help still your mind. They are not the source of peace in themselves.

Full awareness, on the other hand, means that your eyes are fully open and seeing. You are totally in the situation. You do everything to the best of your ability. There is no doubt, no fear. The only thoughts you will have are the thoughts required to perform the task at hand (read more in Egoless Part 1).

Awareness, also called consciousness, is the light that shines into your eyes. If you have only ever known darkness your whole life, then even the tiniest sliver can be enough. Unless you mistake it for something else, as discussed above, you realise you have been blind. You realise you are only blind by choice. And most likely, you want to open your eyes even more.

Is it a chore?

Until you are fully awake, awareness demands constant internal alertness and self-regulation. When your eyes want to close again, awareness is being alert enough to realise what is going on, and courage is reminding yourself to keep them open.

And that’s where the problem lies. Like concentration, awareness is easy to break. You’ll get distracted. You’ll fall back into old habits. You’ll get lazy. And worst of all, you start demonising the ego again.

Is that what you are thinking now?

“What a chore!” “So tiring!” “How much effort will I have to put in?!”

Far from it! Do you remember that what lies underneath the ego – when your eyes are fully awake? Peace and unconditional love. It is the furthest thing possible from a chore. How can it be tiring to allow bliss to shine through?

How awareness drops

When does awareness drop? In most cases, in situations where the mere force of habit dominates. You worry about the future every time you drive, for instance, and you automatically fall into it again despite knowing better. There is plenty of information on the ‘net on breaking bad habits. (Most of the free ones are rubbish though – maybe you should wait for the Urban Monk dot Net post on it, hehe! I’ll give you a usable sneak preview in a moment.)

But there are times where maintaining awareness is harder than usual – and not just a habit. Personally, awareness drops in discomfort – lack of sleep, high work load, fatigue, poor health, or when I’m doing something I hate. More on this in dynamic goals, if you are interested.

A New Earth gives additional examples: Drinking, certain types of drugs, violent movies, and excessive TV watching. Tolle states that while they do often silence your mind and ego, you don’t rise above them but fall below - dropping to the vegetable state. (Am I the only one who finds that description freaking funny?)

In these situations, all you can do is to keep the light on as much as possible.

Let’s take violent movies as an example. If you realise that you have blurred out or have gotten sucked in to the movie, snap out of it. Keep the light of your awareness on. I’ve referred you to How to be a Rock in previous posts. I use the methods in there, such as observing my breath or feeling every sensation in my body, and I always maintain a feel for myself – I am always aware, always watching, I am never sucked in but I always know that I’m sitting in a cinema.

Now is a good time for a sneak preview from my bad habits post. In particular: the power of using a mantra. What you are essentially doing is drilling a good saying into your mind – “Think well to live well”, for example. Repeat it as much as you can throughout the day. Make it into a part of you. The next time your bad habit takes over (in this case, dropping into ego) this mantra has a good chance of popping into your head, in the middle of all the egoic thoughts, and remind you to snap out of it. Simplistic? Yes. Takes practice? Yes. But supremely effective.

Wanting the sorrow!

Which brings us to the last obstacle I want to discuss: Sometimes we want the unhappiness. In Part 2, I described my personal weakness – constantly replaying old insults and injuries in my head. I always recognise it as the ego nowadays – and yet, sometimes I let myself do it.

In this case, it’s not merely a bad habit. It’s become a guilty pleasure – made even more exciting because it’s something you’re not supposed to do. And even worse, a sick twisted part of me that wants to be unhappy.

What is that part? You know already - a dysfunctional blotch of my ego that believes I have to continue defending myself even after the fight is over. A blotch that wants to be right no matter what the cost. A blotch that thinks reliving this constantly is good for me. And yet another part that enjoys being unhappy – pain is pleasure to it.

This is insanity. A good parallel would be smokers. Most smokers know what a cigarette does to their bodies, and yet they continue. Cigarettes warp our DNA, harm our offspring, causes cancer and pretty much destroys every part of our body. But we don’t see it, it’s under our skin, it’s in the (non-egoic) future. And so the ego continues doing it for the miniscule pleasure it gives. It’s an addiction we don’t want to break.

What can we do? Again, simple awareness. Everything is a variation of this basic principle. Choose to act from your true self and know when the false self is trying to take over. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to wrestle with the ego – instead, simply bypass it with peace.

But here’s another step. We can expand the mantra I mentioned above to remind you of what negativity is doing to you. Anger, sadness, and other negative emotions are deemed negative for a good reason – they kill us slowly, and not in the Lauren Hill way. Many forms of cancer and disease are linked to these emotions. If we could see what these emotions are doing to our insides, we won’t do it again. Again, it’s just like cigarettes – we know it’s killing us, but we pretend it doesn’t happen. Out of sight, out of mind.

Awareness is awakening

The more your eyes open, the closer you get to being fully awake. But what does that mean? Why should you even bother? (You mean besides being peaceful and blissful 24 hours a day? Hmm…)

The answer can be found in this story that I would really like to share with you. I don’t remember the exact words, but here goes. Someone asked the Buddha once: “What are you? Are you a god; are you enlightened; are you superhuman?” The Buddha simply said “I am not any of those; I am not someone you should worship, nor do I have any super powers. I am merely someone who is fully awakened.”

What’s next?

I think this is one of the rare times I finished a series without getting distracted by other things, haha! But this is probably because it is so important – I suffered throughout the initial stages and I don’t want you to go through it.

Since I’ve already broken from the egoless series, hope you don’t mind if I explore a few other topics before returning to it – I don’t want to alienate people by focusing too much on the ego!