Wayne Dyer once so eloquently stated,
“The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.”
Over the course of our lives, we establish personas, identities and beliefs about who we are. These are generally based on what we experience, the feedback systems we rely on from others and the environment around us. If we are told we are “something” for long enough, whether it from our inner critic or from those around us, we eventually start to believe it and as self-fulfilling prophecies go, we then become it and live it. The more we live it, the more it is believed to be true and we continue to reinforce into our minds that, that is who we must be.
The ego-illusion is created and will seek to continue to provide evidence over the course of your life to make these beliefs true.
To provide some context before I go on. I wish to explain that our egos, are not good or bad, so please do not feel as you read, that having an ego is bad. In fact, our egos are so uniquely and beautifully designed to help us to become all we are here to be. To help us grow, experience and become our true selves. It is not a bad, evil or negative part of ourselves.
Most of 2018 for me was in one form or another a letting go of my perceived personas and identities that I had so masterfully created over my life. None of them bad or good, just exactly as they needed to be for me to do the work I was doing, navigate life and to survive the environment around me.
The process of letting go can take time, as our egos don’t want to die, they don’t want to dissolve into what it fears to be nothingness. For it believes that it is real, but alas, who we create ourselves to be is all but an illusion.
The Illusive search for Freedom
The most delightful feeling from releasing yourself from these identities is immense freedom, unlike which you probably have never experienced before.
It is not by coincidence that a majority of us want to feel a sense of freedom or to live more freely and yet it all begins with letting go of who we are. It is this focus on the inner work, that must be done to experience freedom. We cannot find true freedom from outside ourselves, no matter how hard we search.
When we are stuck in our identities, in the personas we create for ourselves in our lives, we limit our potential to be all we can be in this lifetime. We subject ourselves to an ordinary life, a life based on false perceptions, which we spend all our energy trying to maintain and uphold.
And for what exactly?
Prestige, to be loved, to feel we belong…
Letting go, to become
To become who we are here to become, to live extraordinary lives we must let go of our identities. The identities that are keeping us small, that shroud us in fear, that believe we are separate, that are limiting the fullness and richness of a life that we could be experiencing.
We must let go of ego, on which all our beliefs and identity are formed, and allow it to dissolve into a greater awareness of self, into shared oneness and being. It is not about ego vs self or human vs spirit. For we are both, human and spirit. It is about the integration of both ego and self, of human and spirit.
I found for me, that there were many levels and will continue to be many levels of letting go and integration of my ego with self. At times I raged, I fought, I cried, I suffered, and I went around in circles attempting to justify, all of which was my ego finding difficulty in letting go and integrating in to the whole. Until I truly embraced that there was nothing to fear, that I was not these personas I had created, that I accepted and remembered who I truly was, did the process then become one of simplicity and ease.
Once you begin to let go, you start to see with different eyes. You see clearly all the instances in your life where your personas have been limiting you from being all you can be. You begin to realise all the possibilities and opportunities available to you.
No longer are you a slave to your beliefs and perceptions of who you thought you were and needed to be. Nor do you expend your energy on trying to maintain these personas.
You are free to be you!
Are you ready to let go and stop limiting your potential?
As with all great journeys, the art of becoming you, takes time as you gain more awareness and embrace the learnings and teachings provided.
To perhaps assist in this process here are some questions to help bring more awareness to you around your personas. Journal these questions and any other thoughts or reflections that come through.
- What personas have I created in my life?
- What purpose do these personas serve in my life today?
- What is the highest possibility of my life, if I let go of these personas?
If you would like to have a chat around this area of your life, please do not hesitate to reach out via email or book a time to talk here. We are not here to journey alone, we are all in this together.
