What is The Ego Battle?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the stages in the awakening process you may pass through is the ego battle. This is the battle of your thoughts/beliefs/ego mind against your true self.

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Before I go into detail about what the ego battle involves there is some good news: If you are at the peak of an ego battle you are likely on the edge of a significant energetic shift into what spiritual teachers sometimes refer to as non-duality or initial self realisation. This shift is often referred to as the ego death, although the ego doesn’t completely die. Rather, an energetic shift takes place where the default of our being becomes Awareness and that awareness can observe the ego and use it as a tool. For the average person, the ego is the one in control. For the self realised person, the awareness is in control.

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When we begin our meditation journey, for most people anyway, we are practicing the art of becoming aware of our thoughts/ego, as the only way to destroy your enemy, is to know it first. The idea is to form a habit of relaxing the mind and becoming aware that we are the awareness and not our thoughts.

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There comes a point when we get really good at this, and it is almost as though the ego itself (the thoughts and beliefs we have trained ourselves to observe and become aware of) becomes a conscious entity that decides to fight back as a last attempt to save itself. I’m not suggesting you have an evil goblin or monster in your head that decides to fight back… but… that is exactly what it can feel like. It’s almost as though the ego, itself, realises it’s about to ‘die’ or be defeated and so decides to attack. The battle commences…

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There are a few main experiences when it comes to an ego battle, but I will only list the ones I have experienced personally, rather than ones I have heard or read about, as the last thing you need, (as the reader, potentially going through an ego battle) is more concepts and conjecture.

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Despite having read about some of these ‘ego battle experiences’ before having had them, and despite thinking they were all silly and they wouldn’t happen to me, I still fell into the trap. I had progressed to a certain level of awareness then felt as though I was going backwards due to limiting beliefs. During my ego battle stage of awakening I experienced the following:

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*I believed that I did not want to become 'enlightened' after all and that it was too scary and I would rather give up after 5 years of meditation and spiritual seeking.

*I thought I was going to die and that Claudine would no longer exist, suddenly and intermittently becoming gripped by the fear of losing my ego.

*In contrast, I became desperate to get rid of my ego – not realising it was another part of my ego convincing me of this; in order to prevent myself from surrendering and letting go. (See, the ego is a clever creature )

* I believed that if I couldn’t fully believe that I would become enlightened then it wouldn’t happen so I started doubting whether my belief was strong enough for it to work. (False beliefs convincing me of other false beliefs, none of which came from a place of awareness).

* I started to doubt everything spiritual I had experienced up to that point and started to believe it had been my imagination and that all of this ‘awakening stuff’ was too good to be true.

* I kept getting caught in the trap of trying to understand the whole process with my mind instead of letting go and just being.

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As you can see, the common theme here is false beliefs. There are probably many more things I could mention but none that I have experienced myself.

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In conclusion, the Ego Goblin, or devil on your shoulder will convince you to turn back and give up. It will try to ensure that you forget your true nature and it will momentarily cripple you with fear when you get close to realising it. It will use your past traumatic experiences against you eg. if you nearly died once or experienced a traumatic event or bad trip (edibles/mushrooms etc), it will recreate that feeling every time you come close to either the ego shift or full self realisation.

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Knowing that the battle is happening is half the battle. Understanding and recognising the ego battle at play (again, know thy enemy) is the first step to conquering the goblin. Eventually, you will become so conscious of what’s happening to you, that you will be able to detach from the battle, surrender to the universe/God/consciousness, and the goblin will lose its strength and no longer be the one in control. Once this happens and you have crossed the threshold into non duality, it is irreversible. Initially, you will keep expecting the goblin to return but it never does

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