Who is in the Driving Seat – My Ego or My True Self?

Am I being arrogant or am I hiding my light under a bushel? I’m confused.

I desperately want to give of myself, “come on Universe, surely there are people out there that would benefit from the perspective I can share with them?” I practically shout this in frustration in my mind as if my arms were flung wide open in surrender to the elements of the entire cosmos.

Then I worry, “Who am I to give anyone a perspective on anything, is this ego talking? Or am I underplaying myself here? Is this a self-worth issue?”

When I left the corporate realm, all I’d ever known was a ‘real’ job. And I felt pressure to
get another job, or at least another income, but something more authentic. I wrote because it gave me clarity, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to write for a living.

I write to focus into my inner wisdom, I do it to let out what is within, I didn’t want someone else – not even my own mind – dictating what I write. No one in my family had ever done anything creative and exposed it publicly, and I felt petrified about putting myself out there.

But I wrote and I wrote, trying to figure out who I am, and I shared it regardless. People read it, and it seemed to inspire them too, that gave me confidence. Article after article I started to work through layer after layer of insane thoughts and beliefs I’d gathered around me over the years.

As I wrote, occasionally readers would get in touch and ask me about things they were stuck with in their own life. That would often inspire further questions in me and so I would write some more.

All the while I was wondering where it was all leading, what was my life’s purpose and was it something I could do for a living?

Eventually there was a point where I needed to decouple the two things. I had a thought “what if I never have to earn money from my purpose?”, and then I had another thought “what if I never even have to earn money?” I sat with that, just to try it on. It felt good, a relief.

Money flows in lots of ways, it flows based on confidence and value. This is what sunk in after a month’s meditation on the subject. I realised that as a mother of two young kids, I was already wearing a lot of hats and I started to value my own contribution more, feeling much less inclined to fill the relatively scant hours of ‘me time’ I actually have with something that needed to make money.

Then my partner started his own business and, while I do work to help him, it’s largely his thing and it took the money pressure off the table.

Meanwhile I continued to write and write, and what wanted to flow came, gushing at times, because I could relax into it more. I would write in an authoritative way, not because I knew it all, but because that which is far wiser than me was using my writing to tell me which way to go; the lesson was for me, it always is.

Then messages started to come through for others too, not when I was writing, they’d pop into my head like a little tug of energy from within when people were talking to me. “Well if writing is weird, what the heck will my family and friends make of this?” I wondered. So I started exploring all the various guises of intuitive abilities in an ongoing bid for purpose.

People responded positively to that too, some asking me for help. While I often can’t see the woods for the proverbial trees in my own life, it’s so much easier to be objective with others. What I was learning, what I have learned, is that we all have our own inner truth, sometimes – often – we are too busy wrapped up in our self defeating thoughts to hear it.

But when you hear your truth, it strikes a chord somewhere within; you know it when you hear it. So I write to maintain perspective and seek clues from that inner truth on the next moves in my own life. And if people ask, I share whatever comes through for them, which always inspires something more in my own life too.

This is why I’m writing now. My poor confused mind has been getting in a tangle these last few days trying to solve the things it doesn’t even need to solve. All I knew was that those thoughts swimming in there were making me feel so utterly miserable that they needed to be let out.

Sometimes I have this big red flashing siren that goes off inside, “be humble”, and I think it just plain trips me up. “Who do you think you are?” I hear it say “What makes you think anyone wants to read your stuff?”

And it says a lot more besides. It makes up lots of little voices that speak on behalf of what I think others might think about me.

“Who does she think she is?”

Notice what I said there? What I think others think about me. On and on, these thoughts are created and perpetuated by guilt and fear. Guilt and fear created from years of self defeating thought patterns about the kind of person I should be, the kind of person who is ‘good’ and ‘serves the community.’

Community is a word used a lot at my kids’ school. It rattles my chain and evokes strong defensive reactions as it always seems linked to asking me to do stuff I don’t like. I don’t want to cook pot roast for someone when they have a baby because I barely manage to cook for my own family each day. I don’t want to go along and help my daughter learn to knit, I did that and forgot it 30 years ago; I barely get around to minor stitching repairs in the work basket at home.

This could go on. But suffice to say, I simply don’t get my energy from the practical stuff, it more often drains than fills my cup. I’m in my head – well, more accurately my heart. I’m always contemplating the meaning of life and the big stuff every chance I get.

I’m not the person to call when there’s cooking or crafting or socializing, I’m the one you go to when you want a perspective on something emotional.

While I’m perfectly capable of doing the practical things in my life, I know they can be a drain on my energy, so I’ve learned to look for the things I can do easily, and do those. But some part of me is still not satisfied with that, comparing me to the mums who thrive on the practical and the stereotypes of women in the patriarchal age.

Look at how much energy I’ve put in to defending myself in just this article alone. Imagine what goes on in my head.

Even though I do what I can, I feel different, and defensive, and guilty and fearful no one will like me. Then I remember I’m not supposed to care about that and feel bad that I’ve let my mind get carried away again. Then I remember to feel grateful that I’ve recognised it.

Conscious awareness is such a big step in our evolution. Being conscious of all this garbage in my head makes me feel some shade of schizophrenic most days. But I am truly appreciative of it.

Being aware of something is a huge step towards doing something about it. So I keep writing to ‘out’ all those feelings. Each time I do I get to a point of clarity and that is when I remember something important.

Confusion is a state of my ego, my mind-driven self. Clarity is a state I reach when I’m in tune with my inner self.

So with the light of conscious awareness and the clarity that’s arisen, the first thing I notice is that I’m even struggling to remember what I was confused about in the first place. That tells me that, in so far as my inner truth is concerned, I was frustrating and worrying myself over nothing.

My mind had taken over and was trying to do what it too often does best, holds me back.

Though I’ve worked hard to ‘out’ all those insane beliefs and thoughts I had rattling around in there, they are still there none the less. Becoming aware of them time and again helps release their grasp.

“Oh it’s those old chestnuts” I think, always some version of me being not worthy. It’s hard to imagine with all this introspection and paranoia that I could get arrogant about anything, but neither do I want to keep a hold of all my worries and fears and paranoia in the name of humility.

Thankfully now that I am back in tune with my inner self I can see they are all just different sides of the same coin, the currency of ego. Of course, I also know that tomorrow, or in half an hour, or even half a minute, I might be catapulted back into my head about something else and so the process will begin again.

For this moment though, the real me is in the driving seat, and the view looks good.

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