You’re Not At War with your Ego, You’re At War with your Conditioning

The ego is the most misunderstood concept in modern psychology & spirituality

When I was in grammar school, there was a kid in my class who constantly got in trouble.

He would talk back to the teacher or pass a note (remember those days?!) and would invariably end up sitting in the corner, facing the wall, wearing this enormous, ridiculous hat.

This punishment didn’t seem to work too well because he was back at it the next day, causing trouble and generally being a nuisance.

Whenever I read anything about the ego, I get a visceral image of my classmate sitting in the corner. I relive this image because this is what we do to the ego: we place it in the corner when it’s been ‘bad’ and assume that this will solve the problem. We ignore it, chastise it, and try to hide it away so we don’t have to look at it, deal with it, or ask it what’s wrong.

New Age culture has made us believe that the ego is this awful, arrogant part of ourselves — the part we need to lock away in hopes it starts behaving itself. New Age dogma loves to talk about ‘wholeness’ but always leaves out the ego, maintaining that we need to ‘fix’ it or punish it before it is acceptable enough to integrate.

We are not helping ourselves. Not one bit.

As a healer and empath, I believe the ego to be the most misunderstood concept in modern spirituality. A close second is the soul, but that is a separate article.

First, let’s establish a few things so we are all on the same page.

The soul creates the ego to have a physical experience. The soul and the ego were designed to work as a partnership, not in opposition to one another. The ego is our gateway to experience the physical reality — we literally cannot survive here without it.

In a nutshell: The ego is expressing one of two things in any given moment: your soul’s intention of its expression (the stuff that feels ‘right’ to you deep in your belly) or your conditioning (the stuff that was taught to you by your parents, caretakers, society, and culture). How you access one or the other depends on your mindset, connection to your body, and where you are placing your attention.

The ego is not against you and it is not trying to make you have a bad day. There is no such thing as a naturally malicious ego — this will become more clear as we delve deeper.

We cannot experience an ‘ego death’ and remain alive. People believe (and have been told) that if they can kill their ego, they will feel better and finally be able to have the love affair with their soul they’ve been seeking. But the soul and ego work as a partnership — the ego is the way we experience the reality and our physical bodies.

• The ego gives us the experience of being an individual in this reality.
• The ego is not a person and it is not your ‘personality.’
• The ego is not a creative force. Everything that is created in your life is sourced from the soul.

Finally, the soul is always in charge. Always. No matter how screwed up your life feels, the soul will always have its way and fulfill its ‘destiny’ (which can take lifetimes, so just chill out!).

Confusions around the ego.

The word ‘ego’ has been used in a variety of ways to describe human consciousness. Freud saw it as the conscious part of ourselves that is the mediator between the id (our instinctual self) and the superego (moral conscience).

Spiritual leaders have deemed it our ‘shadow self’ and warn us to stop listening to it (positive vibes only!). Some folks think of it as our rational mind, our common sense, and the seat of our reasoning.

Scientists have discovered the “seat” of the ego lives in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and the Fronto-insular Cortex (FIC) part of the brain. Where the heck is that? It’s in the frontal lobe, which is responsible for higher cognitive functions such as memory, emotions, impulse control, problem-solving, social interaction, and motor function.

We use the word to describe someone’s behavior as well (“They are so egotistical!”).

No wonder we are confused and have no clue how to form a better relationship with this part of ourselves.

I hope the following information can alleviate any worries or fears you have and allows you to re-establish love, peace, joy, and bliss with your ego.

This article focuses on the ego as a concept. While scientists have given the ego a specific home in the brain, I think of the ego as occupying our entire brain and mind. Why is that? Because there is nothing that we will feel, see, taste, touch, smell, think, understand, comprehend, learn, or imagine without the help of our ego.

Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Why do we need our ego?

The ego has two main functions:

First and foremost, the ego is designed to keep us alive. We cannot survive in or relate to the physical reality without it.

I like to think of it as our fight/flight/freeze buddy.

When we encounter a physical threat (Lion! RUN! Or in today’s world, a distressing email from your boss. Again, RUN!), it’s our ego that signals the systems in our body to assume an ‘all hands on deck!’ position.

Yes, there is an instinctual, bodily reaction that originates in the amygdala, which triggers the physiological changes in the body to deal with the threat: blood rushes to the muscles, senses improve, and adrenaline and cortisol are released.

But, remember, everything we sense must filter through the ego as well. The ego is the part of our mind that says, “Hold up! What’s that? Let’s get outta here! SURVIVAL IS THE GOAL!”

The ego is the mechanism that allows us to experience our feelings, nudges, intuition, and physical sensations. If it helps, think of it as the soul’s ‘interface.’

The ego is your friend, not your enemy.

Secondly, the ego gives us the experience of being an individual in this reality. It shows us limits, like finite amounts of time or the distance between here and the coffee shop on the corner. It allows us to perceive others as individuals as well.

The ego’s job is to work in contrast. This is so we can differentiate between things: we know that a cat is different from a bar of soap, which is different from a ship.

It may seem like the ego is judging when it’s really choosing and showing preference. It’s using discernment, “I would like an apple and not an orange.”

Then there is another layer.

The energy of judgment comes from conditioning and is connected to society’s constraints and beliefs about what is right, wrong, acceptable, and unacceptable. We learn this, depending on where we are born and who we are around. Conditioning teaches the ego what to believe and what to reflect back to us as truth.

Discernment says, “I would like an apple and not an orange.”

Judgment says, “I would like an apple because oranges are bad.”

So, it’s two-fold: the ego works in contrast so it can choose and then, through conditioning, it learns that some things are ‘good’ and some things are ‘bad.’ The way certain folks express their ego when making a preference feels judgmental because of the conditioning around the choice, not because the ego chooses to judge.

It’s easy to see how we get this a bit mixed up in our minds, especially with go-to phrases like:

“Omg! They are so egotistical!”

“He/she has such a huge ego.”

“Make sure you’re not in your ego — it will steer you wrong.”

“I have to stop my ego-based thinking.”

News flash: you don’t have to stop your ‘ego-based’ thinking because that is how this all works! The ego is your friend, not your enemy. Like I said above, think of your ego as your soul’s interface. It’s HOW we experience everything — including guidance from our soul. It’s the translator.

What we want to do is change the conditioning the ego received and learn how to tune the ego to divine guidance. ‘Ego-based’ thinking is merely the filter — the information is the conditioning. We have to think from our ego — that’s why it’s there!

So, we could change these phrases to the following:

“Omg! They are so conditioned!

“He/she has such huge conditioning to overcome.”

“Make sure you’re not in your conditioning — it may steer you wrong.”

“I have to stop my conditioning-based thinking.”

See the difference? Stop punishing the ego and start looking at its conditioning instead.

When folks say, “They are coming from their ego” or “there is a lot of ego in this company” they are referring to conditioning. Of course they are coming from their ego, they have no choice in that — it’s how the ego is presenting itself that is the difference.

Now that we understand what the ego is and its purpose, let’s talk about how to understand it better.

Side note here: please keep in mind that some conditioning we received is still valuable and can serve us (like keeping your clothes on in public or talking softly in a library). We don’t need to create more stress by trying to change every single thing we learned. We want to change the conditioning that doesn’t feel good or doesn’t resonate with the current version of ourselves.

What the heck is the ego and how can we work with and understand the it better?

We can think of the ego in 3 ways:

• As a filter.
• As a radio receiver.
• As a software program on a computer.

Let’s break these down.

The ego is a filter

It’s been trained (by conditioning) as to what to look out for and what is relevant to our experience. Ever heard of the reticular activating system or RAS? That’s the part of the ego that says, “This info is relevant to me and this info isn’t.” The relevance is based on the belief system that the ego has been programmed with (or conditioning).

Let’s remember that a belief is simply a thought we think over and over. This is why beliefs (especially the ego’s) can be changed. This is why people repeat affirmations and mantras — to train the ego away from thoughts that don’t feel good to thoughts that feel better.

The ego is a radio receiver

It has two stations: inward and outward. It picks up information depending on how we tune it.

When we tune our ego outward (or ‘up and out’ like traditional prayer has taught us) we can connect to every other human ego on the planet. Yikes. This is why people talk about ‘being in their head’ and feeling overwhelmed.

Of course we feel overwhelmed — we are picking up the beliefs, thoughts, pain, frustrations, and conditioning of every other human being on the planet. That is a lot of energy and most of it won’t feel good to us. Why? Because most of that information is not relevant to our personal experience. When we stay connected to it, we get farther and farther away from our inner wisdom.

When we tune the radio receiver inward (and connect our energy down into the earth), we connect to infinity. We connect to our deepest authenticity and deepest truth. We experience our ego as a confidant who communicates what we need to know because now, it is sourcing information from our soul, not other conditioned egos.

Think of being in an extremely loud restaurant and someone is trying to tell you a story. You would be struggling to hear because of all the other feedback. That feedback is why our heads feel ‘noisy.’

The ego is like a software program on a computer

A software program is neutral until someone starts telling it what to do and how to do it.

Conditioning is like writing the software. Conditioning (most prevalent from ages 0–7 years old because of brain waves) tells the ego, “Believe this and disregard that. Love this and hate that. Get angry when this happens, become lovable when this happens. Choose blue, not red. This is good, this is bad.”

We need to focus on the conditioning, not how ‘bad’ the ego is. The ego is merely doing the job it was assigned (by the soul) to do. It’s gathering info and communicating it to us.

Think of your computer. The hardware itself is your body, the vessel that holds the nuts and bolts and chips. The operating system is your soul. It’s the mothership — it’s steering this whole thing and it always has control. Nothing in the computer can work without the operating system. The software (or the different programs) on the computer is the ego. The software is written by someone outside of you. For this example, the computer programmer and in the big picture, your family and society.

How and what the software is programmed with will affect what you see on the screen and how you will perceive it.

Being mad at your ego is like being mad at your computer software for having the ability to show you pornographic or violent material. You can choose not to visit or click. The information is out there and your ego can tune to it, but it didn’t create the information.

Most of us don’t like the info our ego has been programmed with. And most of us don’t know how to source different info. That’s what we’ll talk about next.

Why is my ego programmed with this stuff and how do I change it?

If someone was born on an island and had no outside influence (culture, society, authority), had adoring and loving parents with no personal issues of their own, and had no reason to believe anything awful, unlimited, or unworthy about him or herself, that person’s ego would be a goldmine of love, acceptance, and possibility because that’s how it would have been programmed.

But most of us did not grow up this way.

We grew up with people who came from other people who came from other people who were born into a society with a set of beliefs, boundaries, a flow chart of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and a myriad of other limitations that are invariably placed on us.

Parents and caretakers will be the first influencers on how our ego is programmed. Everything these people say, do, feel, express, hold back, release, example, show, mimic, and tell us will be the building blocks of our entire lives.

Studies have shown that the unconscious mind is ruling our actions, decisions, and choices 95% of the time. The conscious mind (beta brainwaves) likes to think it’s calling the shots, but it’s only doing so 5% of the time.

Whoa. Just take that in. Most of what we do daily is on autopilot and rarely questioned. That, my friends, is conditioning. Because at its core, conditioning creates our habits, the things we do so automatically, we rarely notice.

How do we reprogram?

This is where affirmations and mantras come in handy.

In your ego right now, you have beliefs you may not even be aware of. Some people experience this as that constant “mind chatter” that is like a low-volume radio playing in the background of their minds. It’s a loop of what was learned in childhood and it’s on constant repeat.

When we introduce new thoughts, ideas, and perspectives, we begin to rewrite all the stuff we don’t like or that doesn’t feel good. And where is this rewrite happening? In the ego!

We want to create those new neural pathways in the brain — which illustrates how long those old thoughts have been hanging around. You’ve thought them so much, they’ve embedded themselves into the grey matter of your mind and they keep firing.

When we say affirmations and mantras that create a different feeling, like, “I trust my inner wisdom to lead me to my highest joy today,” we start to retrain the ego on HOW TO TALK TO US AND WHAT TO SAY.

Your soul is always good. It does not need healing.

Your ego does.

And what healing means is remembering who truly you are, which is Divine Consciousness. Divine Consciousness is an endless energetic field of potential.

Find affirmations, thoughts, and mantras that feel good. Train yourself to repeat those when older, unhelpful thoughts want to pop in. This is not about denial — it is about awareness. Acknowledge the old thought as something that used to serve you and keep you safe before you knew better; then, replace it with a new thought that is more resonate for you right now.

The ego wants to feel safe, good, and loved.

Contrary to probably everything you have read, the ego wants to feel:

• Safe.
• Good.
• Loved.

This is what we wanted as children, even before we consciously understood it. Being safe, good, and loved means your body and mind are experiencing the parasympathetic state (or rest & digest). You are calm, at peace, and there are no threats.

Remember way back at the beginning when I said there is no such thing as a naturally malicious ego? That’s because the ego is trained to act that way from conditioning because the most important role the ego has is to keep you alive.

If someone acts like an ass, that’s how their ego learned to keep them alive.

If someone betrays you, that’s how their ego learned to keep them alive.

If someone ghosts you, leaves you, dismisses you, or downright rejects you, that’s how their ego learned to keep them alive.

If someone is a know-it-all, defensive, or rude, that’s how their ego learned to keep them alive.

Remember the book, The Four Agreements? One of the agreements is to never take anything personally. This illustrates the point beautifully.

This doesn't mean people’s actions don’t hurt, piss off, or annoy you. Your ego will react — because that is how it has learned to keep you alive.

What we want to take away from this is understanding that anything anyone does is to get them from this minute to the next minute in one piece.

People’s behavior has nothing to do with you and it never will. It’s all about how their ego is pushing for their survival the way it learned how.

When you find yourself in a battle with your ego, treat it like a toddler who is having a tantrum. Soothe it, ask it what’s wrong and say comforting words. Watch how quickly the ego starts to mirror how you are speaking to it — because your ego is you. You are speaking to you in the way you’ve always wanted to be spoken to. Your ego wants the same because we cannot feel good in the reality if we do not feel good in our egos.

When the mood shifts and your ego has calmed down (whatever triggered it has passed or has been solved), notice that you are still experiencing that state from the ego as well. Your thoughts might sound something like, “This feels better. I feel more calm and content. My mind has stopped racing and my body is relaxed.” The ego now feels safe, good, and loved — and so do you.

Bringing it all together.

I hope this has helped you have a different and more comprehensive understanding of the ego and its function. Everything you go through, the ego goes with you. Start a relationship with it and notice how your self-talk starts to change.

Remember that the ego is not against you — it’s there for your survival! Use it, tend to it, and peel back the layers of all the conditioning it received. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel when you stop the resistance and tune into your ego as a helper, a navigator, and a confidant.

Some woo woo because everything is connected: your soul needs the ego to experience this physical reality, which is why it was created (our souls are so cool, right?).

While the soul and ego are not the same thing, they act as a unit. Retrain yourself (ego) to think of it that way and so many little problems will disappear. Most of us are at war with ourselves, which perpetuates our stress and anxiety. Put down the weapons and open your heart.

Your ego will never lead you off your soul’s path to the expression it seeks in this lifetime. It can’t. It can’t because the soul is always in change.

If it helps, think of the ego like a dog on a leash. The soul is the dog walker. The ego can sniff and explore (free will or the choice to agree or disagree with an experience) but once the ego starts veering off from where the soul wants to go, the soul will pull it back. Remember, the soul is always in charge and will always have its way — whether you recognize that or not.

You can relax because your soul is the best navigation system out there. And the journey is never done.

Some closing thoughts.

Make friends with your ego. When it starts sourcing info from the conditioning that doesn’t feel good, notice where you are pointing it (up and out or inward?). Then, speak to it with love and ask it what is being triggered. Use soft tones with yourself, like a loving parent or caretaker.

Keep in mind that the ego itself is not ‘bad’ — it’s doing its job by filtering information and then communicating it to you.

Become aware of your personal conditioning and social programming. What beliefs do you want to change? What beliefs do you want to strengthen? What beliefs do you want to completely discard? Remember, all this change happens in your ego.

Thank you for taking this journey with me.

I’ve loved putting this material together and hope it is healing, helpful, and allows you to honor yourself.

Please let me know what you learned or any breakthroughs you had in the comments!

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