A propos of nothing, Ego is not *a rose by any other name.*

Psychology has its own definition/understanding of the ego – something in our personality that needs to be killed, stamped out or shrunk, at the very least, by any means possible.

Religion also has its specific understanding of the ego – one that equally maligns it.

In reality, Ego and Karma are the only tools we have, the only tools we can use towards a cleansing of the channel that leads to Soul.

Though Ego is neutral by nature, knee-jerks, automated reactions to any stimulus do feed the *low* end of Ego, the one that craves sensory gratification and the best of what the material world can tempt us with. Every time we react in a way that spells out Not now, Too tired, Can’t be bothered, Go away, You’re stupid, What’s WRONG with you!  – regardless of with whom we are engaging – we feed into that *low* end.

Reality is that Soul constantly beams at us messages of Best Practice, but either we are unable to *get* them or we fail to understand them because Ego doesn’t reflect them back clearly for Mind to snatch in mid air and decode for us – or we DO understand them well enough but we ACTIVELY choose to sidestep Best Practice. We are unwilling to sacrifice time/space/money/principled opinion and/or pride.

We are unable to soften and open up.

We are unable to *give* and we choose to hold on to cold, old ideas, resentment and insecurities. We let our bad mood push us along.

We create all the thoughts and images we need to shore up our stand until Mind ends up totally convinced that the decision made is the correct one.

Soul sighs in resignation and curls up in her corner, knowing that the wait is going to be a long one before we action any positive change to our M.O.

In not resisting our own thinking, we, bodies, allow Mind to indulge our base nature by feeding the *low* end of Ego instead of the *high* end of Ego – the soulful end.

What we end up with is this great beam of pure energy reflected fuzzily though tantalizingly by a pitted mirror – the *low* end* of our ego and so … what’s a good person to do, huh?