What is with our ranking of each other?

Feel stuck between those who are doing and getting what you desire and those who frankly seem way behind you? Are you watching those who are boldly, wildly, putting themselves out there in a manner you think brash or egotistical yet gaining crazy success? Are you measuring yourself against them?

Isn’t it amazing how we continue to find our ‘place’ in the hierarchy of accomplishments, fulfillments, or whatever we call reaching our penultimate version of ourselves! We jockey every day for where we fall in a continuum we imagine everyone falls on somewhere. We instinctively place ourselves higher or lower than everyone we meet! Our behaviors are affected with each differing person’s status, making us more confident or less, even intimidated.

Is this real? It feels real. Yet our heart may give a thump that it really isn’t so. Our heart tells us we are all equal.  Our spirit tells us we are equally priceless. Yet our head keeps generating those thoughts of better than or less than, those comparisons, ad infinitum.

This is the ego, never satisfied, always judging, worrying we aren’t enough or all puffed up that we are ‘better than’. That isn’t who we really are. When we were born, we had no ego. What personality we had was a pure expression of Spirit. Gradually, our ego (I like to compare it to our operating software) seasoned itself through our experiences of life, honing tactics that would enable its greatest chance of survival.

The ego senses its demise if we ignore it, so it loudly chimes in when it senses things could go wrong, someone may not like us, there is too much danger in making a decision; or our biggest dreams are just too big and it fuels crippling doubt.

We can use our ego intellectually to get things done. It isn’t always a negative. It is a useful navigational tool to understand the material world. It needn’t overrule us. We take its power over us away when we become aware of it; when we realize that which is of the ego and that which is of our Authentic Self.

When you are feeling from your heart, observing from your soul, you are filled with clarity. In these moments, know what you observe is far more real than the judging, blaming, complaining small self.

Sages and Saints have written for thousands of years how to quiet the ego and allow more clarity and love to flow into our life.  They are all telling us the same thing: time spent in solitude, studying, rendezvousing with our inner being in meditation, and aligning our life with good habits to reduce stress and enhance health will help us reach that point where we may observe the ego for what it is instead of blindly following its fears. To be trapped in a worrier mind is taking the ego’s fears to heart, without question.

Once we experience this state of witnessing the ego, standing back from it with our brilliant inner wisdom, we break its hold on us. The more we practice doing this, the more peace and joy flows into our lives.