The Power of Consciousness: 24 Keys to Transcend the Ego

The Ego is the central figure of our personal history, based upon the past and looking into the future. It is a dissatisfied, possessive small ego that often makes our life a misery. It is for certain that this small ego–or, more precisely, what we believe is our Self, our Ego–coiled up tightly in the back of our mind, is responsible for a tremendous amount of senseless and unnecessary suffering and destruction in the history of mankind.

On our spiritual Journey arises the question, how we transcend the Ego?

Here are 24 Keys to transcend the Ego

Key 1. The Ego is not bad, it is simply unconscious.

Key 2. The Ego is responsible for the integrity of the personality, for our inner well-being.

Key 3. The Ego only pursues its own dreams and ambitions, and so it very often embitters our life.

Key 3. The components of the Ego are thoughts, emotions, memories (with which the person identifies as "my story”), fixed unconscious roles and collective identifications (nationality, religion, etc.). Most people completely identify with these components of the Ego, and for them no self "outside” of this exists.

Key 4. The identification of the Ego with things (object, the person’s own body, way of thinking) creates the link of the individual to various things. The Ego experiences his/her existence through the possession of various objects.

Key 5. The satisfaction provided by the sense of possession is, short, so the Ego usually carries on the pursuit for new objects. There is a powerful motivation behind this activity of the Ego, a psychological demand to obtain more, the unconscious sense of "not yet enough,” and this feeling surfaces in a want for more.

Key 6. The content of the Ego will then be the thing with which the individual identified him/herself (my house, my car, my child, my intelligence, my opinion, etc.). The contents of the Ego (with which the individual identifies) are shaped by the environment and upbringing of the person, that is, the culture in which the person becomes an adult.

Key 7. The thoughts such as "it’s mine,” "I want it,” "I need it,” "it is not enough,” belong to the structure of the Ego. The content of the Ego changes with time; it is replaced with new contents. No content is, however, able to lastingly satisfy the Ego as long as the structure of the Ego remains in its place.

Key 8. The Ego keeps looking for something different, something that promises a greater satisfaction, making the sense of self of the individual more complete.

Key 9. The Ego wants to possess more and more, wants to become more and more powerful. More knowledge, more faith, more material wealth. The Ego wants to devour more and wants to do it more anxiously. That is how the Ego becomes a tyrant and dominates our life to an increasing extent.

Key 10. The Ego is shaped by the past, determining its structure and contents. The structure of the Ego is an unconscious factor, which forces the individual to reinforce his/her identity by joining an external object.

Key 11. The Ego is but a mental production, a system of beliefs.

Key 12. The Ego strives to protect, sustain and expand itself. The Ego functions in survival mode. The statement that the Ego functions in a survival mode means that it continually struggles to remain "psychologically alive,” so it regards other Egos as rivals or even enemies.

Key 13. One of the most important strategies of the Ego to sustain and reinforce itself is the experience of "I am right.” This is the identification of an idea, position, evaluation. Nothing gives the Ego more power than experiencing that "I am right.” It is the desire of the Ego to be right, and thus overcome the other, ensuring its own superiority.

Key 14. One of the favorite self-reinforcing strategies of the Ego is complaining. Complaining implies the sense that "I am right.” When another Ego refuses to accept that "I am right,” it is an offense to the complaining Ego, which. in turn, further reinforces its self-awareness.

Key 15. The Ego intends to elevate the forms (including its own form) to eternity, which is impossible. This intention of the Ego will be the source of all sufferings, because its world of forms and shapes shall collapse like a sandcastle after a while, until death snatches away the last of the forms: its body from it.

Key 16. Our entire culture and civilization rest upon the selfish and possessive Ego and, as the Ego created the institutions of society, these institutions are also the expressions of the Ego.

Key 17. In most people identifies with that socially conditioned Ego. At a number of people this identification is so powerful that they are unaware that their life is governed by a socially conditioned Mind.

Key 18. The Ego must fall, as it is against the evolutionary development of the Consciousness.

Key 19. If an individual is able to notice and observe the functions of the Ego, he or she will be able to transcend it.

Key 20. We must reach beyond our Ego-dominated mind programs, because if we fail to do that, we will eventually destroy ourselves and a large part of the world.

Key 21. One of the ways of transcending the Ego is not reacting wholeheartedly to the ever-changing caleidoscope of thoughts and emotions, but concentrating on the alert Consciousness in the background instead.

Key 22. The Ego calls itself real and the only existing ”Self,” though it is nothing more than a conceptual product, the continually changing content of the space of Consciousness

Key 23. In the space of Consciousness, in the state of pure consciousness the person recognizes and clearly experiences that Ego is a fraud.

Key 24. The Truth is that we are the embodiment of Life, we are born into this world as a result of a miracle, and later we are lost amidst the multitude of teachings and dogmas.

From the new book by Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D. 270 Powerful Keys to Spiritual Awakening