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Shift Your Ego
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Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -9:05
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Shift Your Ego

Hello there, hello from the ocean.

Let’s listen and take a long deep breath.

Come fully into presence.

Allowing your shoulders and your neck to relax.

Settle into your space.

Allow your arms to fall toward the ground.

Bring all your attention into this moment — the present moment.

Let’s intend to be ALL here for the next few minutes.

100% of our attention, right here.

Nice.

sea waves during golden hour
Photo by Sam Wermut on Unsplash

Here's a psychology tip related to ego.

Ego develops as a conditioning happens to each of us as we grow up.

We begin to increasingly associate our thoughts with our self.

Initially, your thoughts largely derived from the context that you grew up in — your culture, cultural conditions, and the thoughts and beliefs that those conditions provoked inside you.

So your history plays a huge role in creating your ego.

Soon enough, your ego becomes what you consider to be you yourself — what you consider to be you.

Over time, people increasingly tend to come to believe their thoughts are truth, objective truth, some objective reality and some piece of themselves — as opposed to just being our best tool for navigating life.

By the way, your ego doesn't need to be understood as a negative thing.

It can be perfectly positive.

It's just that to really understand it, it's helpful to know that it's built upon stories you were told, and then stories you tell.

And those stories are artifact of your history.

Let's take another long deep breath.

Settle further into the space you're sitting in, or lying in, or walking in.

Come back intentionally and fully into presence.

And let that psychology tip sink in a little bit.

What does it mean for you that your ego is conditioned by your past?

Each time you have a thought that you become aware of, and you recognize that thought was created unconsciously based on your history, based on your old conditioning, knowing that and seeing that helps you see behind the thoughts.

It helps you put your thoughts into perspective.

So let's do that now by connecting to the unchanging space, the silence, the stillness, out of which your thoughts arise into the landscape of your inner world.

Your thoughts often arise into your mind unconsciously.

You can see that as you observe them consciously.

Listening in silence gets you in touch with your thoughts from the perspective of the unchanging space of silence.

So you can observe and see the truth out of which, and into which, your ego arises.

This is a place that's far more sustaining and real than the ego stories.

This is the silence of your inner world out of which, and into which, every experience you have flows.

So with your eyes closed now if you like, just look a few feet out in front of you.

Look into that silent darkness in your inner world with soft closed eyes.

And notice the specks of light that you'll usually see against the darkness.

Notice the lights within stillness.

Stillness, the place where you can come to rest and rejuvenate and reconnect with your true self.

Settle into the vastness on the shores of stillness for a little while.

Just looking at the lights within stillness.

Being and looking.

Choose one light now, if you can — and follow it for a little while.

You may lose it.

If you do, just pick another light and keep following it as long as you can.

Good.

Now turn your attention to feeling stillness in your body

Keep stillness close.

Good.

Now that we’ve quieted down, let’s observe any thoughts that arise.

As a thought arises into the stillness of your inner world, just notice it.

Then, let it go.

Can you notice how your unconscious thoughts arise automatically, even without any intention from you?

Just notice each one, and then let it go.

Let’s sit still in silence — in stillness together for a while, listening.

You have the ability to observe what arises in your mind, and to let it go whenever you choose to.

You can be objective about the reality that your history of thoughts that rise in a re-arise in your mind come from long ago in your life oftentimes.

They may or may not be valid for you now.

It's only when you can see them, look at them, and observe them objectively that you can make that decision.

Let’s sit in silence listening to thoughts for a little longer.

Just watch and listen.

Good.

Life flows through you always, each moment.

Your option is to free yourself — free your concerns — by being one with life.

Or, resist life by wanting something else in this moment.

When you let go of resistance and just listen, you let go of stress.

Life immediately looks and feels so different.

And when you open your eyes again you can see and feel life teeming all around you.

So let’s open our eyes now, and feel life flowing through you.

Let’s invite life to flow through us for the rest of the day too.

Set the intention to be fully present to life for the rest of your day.

Can you feel that intention being set inside you?

Got it?

All right.

Have a great one.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Sean


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OnePerfect Shift is an audio letter from a psychologist that shifts you into a better state of mind anytime. Each post gives you a fresh look at your relationship to your mind and reminds you how much control you can have over your life experience.