The ego can drive people mad. Ego is nothing more than self, inflated or deflated.It can tear us apart quicker than an atomic bomb. It has the ability to delude our reality, cloud our judgment, and effect us emotionally any way it sees fit. It is like a disease, much like cancer. Most people are unaware of its manifestations and the effects it has on, not only oneself, but the universe as a whole. No matter how much we fight it is always there looming in close proximity, connected to every moment, testing us from every angle. It picks us up, it knocks us down, it falsifies worthiness and hopelessness, it praises us and degrades us, it can drop a grown man to his knees and even drive him to suicide. Oh, have I mentioned that it isn't real? It is a false perception of our true selves. It serves only one purpose - to teach us.

Ego is a tool we all possess which serves to teach us, if we allow it. It enables us to become closer to spirit. If we choose not to learn from it then we are bound to it like a ball & chain. Ego limits our ability to expand our sense of true self by making us believe that we are our ego. Because we listen to and believe everything our ego tells us we put a wall between spirit and our development as spiritual beings. We believe everything our ego tells us and because of this we hinder the process of awareness.

The first and most important step to overcoming ego is to become aware of it and to realize that it is the motivation behind every action and reaction that we initiate. It is the driving force to be better than, want bigger than, and have more than others. It whispers in our ear that we are less than, worse than and unworthy. Ego serves its purpose, but there comes a time in our spiritual growth where we realize that it is time to graduate from ego. It serves us well as a learning tool, but after a while we must let go of ego and implement all that it has taught us. This is where people get stuck. We hold onto it because we fear that once we let it go we are nothing. On the contrary; once we let go of ego we become everything we are meant to be.

In order to let go of ego we must replace it with compassion, tolerance and love. We have to realize that we are all in the process of spiritual growth and healing. We all learn at a different pace and it usually takes many lifetimes to complete the process. Once we understand that ego is there to serve us through this process and is only a tool then we begin to understand that at some point it has to go back into the tool shed. Once we put ego on the back shelf the possibilities are endless.