Drop the Ego, Drop the Conflict What is an ego anyway? The ego is nothing but tensions you have created around yourself. Live in harmony and you will be in joy and delight, live in disharmony and you will be in misery and unhappiness. There was a story of a monk who was making a calligraphy. There was as disciple working with him. The ink just didn’t want to flow right. Finally the monk asked the disciple to go outside and prepare more ink. While he was gone the monk completed his masterpiece. When the disciple came back in he said, “Master, it is perfect.” The monk laughed and said, “ I realized once you had gone outside that there was no one to appreciate, or condemn it, to say yes or say no disturbed my tranquility.” “ Now I will never be disturbed again because I know I was trying to make it perfect and that was the only reason it was imperfect.” Many new age book we are reading are all telling us to drop our egos. They give us all kinds of practices and exercises to make us more loving, kind, and less reactive. The harder we try to perfect ourselves the more aware we become of our imperfections. We clean up one area only to be disappointed to find another one. Our imperfections seem to be endless. Than we meet so and so and they seem to be perfect when in reality they are more in their ego than we are. When you are performing and acting to be a certain way you are fueling your ego and when you naturally let go and let things happen they are perfect. We all want to be better people and to evolve to the highest possible state that we can, but trying to emulate someone else isn’t the way. Observing ourselves and being gentle with ourselves is the best practice for self improvement. We may never understand why we behave the way we do sometimes, but we can decide from our observation of it if it is something we want to continue. Self improvement gone about in this way goes to a much deeper level than simply trying to modify behavior. It becomes much more of a conscious choice rather than trying to be like someone else that you think is more spiritual than you are. Our ego is nothing more than our own coverup of who we are. The best way to deal with it is to be more conscious of yourself when you are alone. Remind yourself how good it feels to be in your natural state. When you feel yourself slipping out of that state just observe it because when you observe it you are you again. Then make the appropriate choice of living in your truth. Tell yourself that the behavior you are witnessing isn’t the real you and drop the conflict.