For a long time, I thought spiritual growth meant silencing the ego.
Transcend it.
Outgrow it.
Dissolve it into something quieter, purer, more enlightened.
What I didn’t realize then was that this impulse—to get rid of the ego—is itself an ego strategy. A subtler one. More socially acceptable. But just as controlling.
Real change didn’t begin when I tried to defeat the ego.
It began when I sat down beside it.
The ego isn’t loud. It’s repetitive.
Contrary to how it’s often described, the ego doesn’t always shout.
Most of the time, it loops.
It repeats old conclusions:
- “This is how love ends.”
- “This is who I become when I’m abandoned.”
- “This is the part of me that’s too much.”
These aren’t thoughts you argue with.
They’re thoughts you’ve lived inside for so long they feel like facts.
Trying to kill the ego only makes these loops more entrenched. They go underground. They reappear as spiritual language, productivity, restraint, or emotional distance.
Observation is what interrupts the loop.
Observation doesn’t mean detachment
This part is important.
Observing the ego isn’t floating above your experience, dissociated and calm.
It’s not spiritual bypassing.
It’s not neutrality as performance.
For me, observation happened most viscerally while resolving childhood trauma and doing shadow work.
It felt like:
- letting an old voice speak without correcting it
- allowing a reaction to rise without justifying it
- noticing the body tighten without rushing to relax it
There was nothing elevated about it.
It was intimate. Awkward. Human.
When you stop making meaning, something loosens
The biggest shift came when I stopped asking,
“What does this say about me?”
And instead asked,
“Can I let this be here without turning it into an identity?”
The ego thrives on meaning-making.
It wants a narrative.
A role.
A moral.
When you observe without extracting a conclusion, the ego loses its grip—not because you overpowered it, but because you stopped feeding it.
The thought arises.
The sensation passes.
Nothing needs to be decided.
That’s it.
Triggers become teachers, not threats
Here’s the real litmus test.
If you’re truly observing the ego—not pretending to—you’ll notice it most clearly when you’re triggered.
Not when you’re calm.
Not when you’re alone.
But when something hits an old wound and your system reacts before your mind can catch up.
In those moments, observation looks like:
- noticing defensiveness without acting it out
- feeling shame without collapsing into it
- sensing the urge to withdraw without obeying it
You don’t win.
You don’t fix.
You stay.
That staying is what rewires the pattern.
Why this matters in love
In deep connections, the ego doesn’t show up as arrogance.
It shows up as protection.
It tries to keep you safe by predicting pain.
By controlling proximity.
By managing outcomes.
When you observe it without trying to kill it, love changes.
You stop relating from reflex.
You stop confusing intensity with truth.
You stop asking another person to heal a part of you that needs witnessing first.
In Finding Noir, this is where the story quietly pivots—not through insight, but through presence. Through a character learning to let the ego speak without letting it drive.
The ego doesn’t disappear. It softens.
The goal was never to get rid of it.
The goal was to stop being ruled by it.
When you observe the ego long enough, kindly enough, it stops performing.
It stops narrating.
It rests.
And what’s left isn’t emptiness.
It’s clarity.
Leave a Reply