Our Inner Doggie

​It’s good not to take the ego personally even though it seems so personal: it talks like us, thinks like us, remembers our childhood and likes us best – but the ego/mind really isn’t who we are.

The ego/mind is actually an aspect of form and it has a very useful job. Its job is to stay “alive” which ensures that the body it comes with stays intact, so life can still flow through it.

The ego’s sole purpose is survival and survival will do anything to win. It will claw its way to the top, take the last piece, deceive, manipulate and even kill to get its way.

Isn’t that bad?

Fortunately, the ego/mind is not what we are – but that can be hard to remember, especially because who is responsible for its behavior? We are. And who pays the consequences of everything it thinks and does? We do.

The Inner Dog

If your dog digs up the neighbor’s garden, chews up the welcome mat and terrorizes the cat, you have something to fix up with your neighbor, but you know you’re not the dog. Right?

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 It is super helpful to think of the ego/mind in exactly the same way – as our inner dog – and then we can come into an appropriate relationship with it.

The Unsolvable Conundrum

See, if we think we are the ego/mind, it is impossible to reconcile its meanest, most selfish instincts with who we are.

If we pretend the ego is not related to us, put it under the rug or bury it in the subconscious, it just shows up outside of us in the people we meet and the world we experience.

If we are seduced by the ego/mind, justify its actions or glorify its bloody warfare, we become it. Then where are we? Shouting and tearing things down, all the time thinking we’re in the right.

But if we can think of the ego as our inner dog, then we can do something about it. And clearly, this dog needs some good training.

Sizzling and Dripping into a Pan, a Roast Sits on the Kitchen Counter

The dog is in the kitchen all alone. This can go one of two ways, right?

Does the dog want to pull the roast off the counter and devour it? Yes.
Does he do it? No.

He doesn’t take the roast because we have trained him. We can train him because we see him for what he is: an animal. And we love him for it. We just don’t let that animal nature be in charge.

The ego/mind is like an animal too and we can recognize its animal nature and still love it in just the same way. We can know it wants to eat the whole thing, be mean and horrible, and lie, cheat and steal. But we don’t have to let it do that.

Master or Dog?

Ideally, with our real dog the roles are clear: we are the master and he is the dog. As you may know if you have ever trained a dog, clarifying these roles can take a lot of time and attention!

But every time we tell the ego/mind, “No, you may not jump at the car windows and bark at the traffic,” we become stronger and more aligned with our true Selves, the master within. And we increase the likelihood that we will make the same choice again.

Most of us have things in our lives we wish we hadn’t done and that we have needed to make up for. But really, the only mistake we can ever make is forgetting who we are and thinking instead that we are the dog.