The Brutal Truth About How Your Ego Is Ruining Your Spiritual Growth and Keeping You Burning in Hell
What to do when your ego is still alive and doing press-ups in the corner.

I was a hard drinker and an addict for most of my adulthood.
And I write about it.
Because of that, yesterday, I received a comment from Harry, a reader. And he asked me the following question,
That hell has made you who you are today, helped many people, and is still helping. Your articles have definitely resonated with me! We lived parallel lives. Unfortunately, my ego is still alive and doing press-ups in the corner! Trying to get me back to hell! I struggle with gratitude. Do you have any words of wisdom?
I asked Harry for permission to make this article to answer his question, and he permitted me to do so.
Here, I am going to bare my soul totally because I think it is essential to the subject of the ego and how to face it when we are coming out of the hell of a life full of addictions, bad decisions, and pain.
Let’s go.
1. Ego is NOT the enemy
The function of the ego is to ensure your survival, Harry.
The problem is that a specific version of yourself refuses to mature.
In that case, your ego crystallizes in a mental age that does not belong to your chronological age. — I lived with a 16-year-old mind until I was past 30.
When that happens, the ego becomes a part of you that refuses to die, even if it destroys you. Because it prefers to continue to exist rather than evolve and become an updated version of yourself with a different ego.
Remember: cells that resist to die, mutate, and become a cancer. The same thing happens metaphorically when an ego resists to die so that another new you with another new ego will blossom.
2. You do not let go of your ego because it benefits you.
As I told you in the previous point, dear Harry, the ego is a defense mechanism that wants to ensure its survival. And to do so, it protects you from the harsh reality.
What reality?
What nobody tells you when you start your spiritual awakening and start to get out of the hell of alcohol, drugs, or any other addiction is that it is going to hurt, and you are going to feel a lot of shame.
Changing yourself changes your ego, but it also makes you someone different from who you were.
In my case, I was ashamed and disgusted to look from my 40-year-old self-perspective the person I was at 33.
Looking back at your past when you are rehabilitated is like watching the tide go out after an afternoon of rough seas and discovering the whole beach of your life is full of dirt and remains of oil and plastic.
Remember: your ego is doing push-ups to get more robust because it is defending itself from seeing the mistakes of the past and feeling ashamed.
3. The Raw Truth
Once you mature, update, change your ego for a different one, and accept the cognitive dissonance between the person you were and the person you are, you are left with the worst test to pass.
In my case, after more than a decade and a half of smoking, drinking, drugging, and being an absolute monster, I was able to get out of hell, but some demons traveled with me as occupants inside my mind.
And you spend time playing hide and seek with those demons that live in your head and want you to relapse into the vices and sins of always.
That demon, according to my personal experience, is a mutant and residual ego from the past that tries to bring you back to the hole from which you came out.
And above all, it tries to prevent you from seeing the starkest of truths.
Remember: the harsh truth is that not only were you NOT the victim, nor was life unfair only to you, and the whole world was not against you, but you were your executioner.
4. When you discover that your old ego was the bad guy in your movie.
In my case, there came a time when I had to accept the bitter truth.
- I was the one smoking three packs of Luckie Strike a day.
- I was the one who drank half a bottle of whiskey every night.
- I was the one who was f*cking up everything I touched.
- I was the one who was killing myself a little more every day.
But realizing this made me understand that I had to free myself from that poisonous and toxic former ego to survive.
I found the antidote in kindness, kindness, service to others, and active listening to the needs of the people around me.
At a certain point, I was already clean of alcohol, tobacco, etc., but I still felt terrible inside because of all the previous points.
And for me, being humble was no longer something merely spiritual; it was a necessity.
5. Sell the Hole, Not the Drill
This is a marketing concept that says that when someone wants to make a sale, what he has to do is not show the product but the result he will get with that product.
So that’s what I’m going to do with you. Let you see the result (the hole) of upgrading your ego to a better one (the drill).
- Hole: before, I wanted to self-destruct and end it all literally. Now, I want to live more than I ever wanted to live.
- Drill: Humility, learning to lose, and putting myself at the service of others are the ways to achieve a happy life, as counter-intuitive as they may seem.
Remember: “Servire est regnare” (to serve is to rule), and if you want to be the king of your life, you must learn to be the servant of others.
Keep the result you will get (the hole) in your mind every time your old ego wants to get strong in you, and you will change because keeping in mind the result, why you make an effort to change, will make you intellectualize that it is worth the change.
A virtual hug
AG
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