We need fear. Fear is a crucial evolutionary, survival instinct. The dissonance is when our fear does not distinguish between the non-life threatening and life-threatening. When fear becomes prevalent in a non-life threatening situation, mostly in situations of possible rejection, judgment, separation, it gives rise to the Ego. Ego is the defense mechanism.
The Ego can do either or all of these things, build a wall, get defensive, retreat or go on the attack.
The Ego creates a system of thought, decisions, words and actions all in an attempt to protect the fear. Hides the fear from being exposed, getting out, being vulnerable. Protects the fear by bunkering, getting defensive or attacking. Because “weakness” is allowing someone else to know what your fear is, because it can be taken advantage of, manipulated, create instability, hinder decision-making.
But then the Ego can become an entity of its own, because it begins to realize its existence comes from and kept by fear. So now the Ego’s defense mechanism goes into “red-alert”, almost arising its own consciousness to maintain its own survival.
But the even more insidious evolution of the Ego is when the it realizes it needs to hide from ourselves to continue its survival. It knows when we realize we’ve been being driven by fear and try to move into fearlessness – the Ego will die. So it attempts to gain more power, control and dominance to be able to become invisible even to ourselves.
It is able to do this because it is our mirror, it knows what we’re going to do before we do it. It knows our blindspots, it knows our strengths, it uses reason, logic, emotion, dependencies to create a system of thoughts, decisions and actions to not just survive but become even stronger, more dominant in our psyche. With the ultimate ambition of becoming inseparable from our Ego and identity.
The Ego is a part of us, it is us. It is us in all our fears. The part of us that uses fear as its source, fuel, drive, survival of energy and existence.
Ego is useful for a season. It can inform us. It can help us. It can protect us in our most vulnerable moments. But if the Ego stays too long it can become a pattern of allowing fear to take root. Fear as the life force. Arrogance to hide fears of being an “imposter”. Competition to hide fears of failure. Jealousy to hide fears of being without. Over-ambition to hide fears of inadequacy. Greed to hide fears of losing something. Validation to hide fears of rejection.
Ego is who we are with our fears. But there is a version of us with our dreams, ambitions, visions, direction, decision without the fear.
That is who we can be. That is who we are.