Are you on Ego mode or Being mode?
23rd March 2022
My ego always feels helpless and insecure. It needs to control things, it needs to work out ways to feel secure. My dad always used to tell me: ‘only the insecure look for security’ and at the time I really didn’t understand what he meant.
Now I understand that when I look for things from the point of view of my ego is always because I’m trying to fill an imaginary hole or heal an imaginary wound. It really feels as if, human experience could be lived in two modes…
There’s the ego mode, which looks for things in its environment in order to just feel OK, to not feel scared. It never looks to thrive but rather its motives lie on not feeling bad, like long term drug users describe their feeling towards their drug of choice after many years of use, it doesn’t make them feel good any more, but it stops them feeling bad.
The other mode of operating is much more open, patient and joyful. When we operate in this mode we’re not looking for anything to make us happy but rather, we process life as an adventure, something to discover with awe. We enjoy every bit of it, rather than trying to rush the hard bits to get to the good ones. In this mode we don’t need anything from the outside world. We’re in being mode.
Most cultures are totally focused on the first mode of operating, constantly seeking something outside ourselves that we feel will makes us happy, and so we’re indoctrinated in this mode of being. When we feel bad we try to alter our surroundings to make us feel good. It’s a game of cat and mouse that invariably leaves us tired and unfulfilled.
As we grow older we start noticing that the rewards we feel from this outer pursuits don’t have a long-lasting effect on our happiness. And so we start looking a bit deeper. That’s when meditation, mindfulness and any other spirituality training which helps us find a way into ‘being mode’ is helpful. Anything that will help us look inward will be useful. We need to learn about how to seek the true wellbeing that comes from focusing our search inside ourselves. That is the only way i’ve been able to find to feel happy, fulfilled and at peace in this crazy world of ours.