I echo Tanausu's observations.
Ego is not pride vs. humility. Ego is the identification with anything that is not your higher awareness. That includes mind, body and circumstance, as well as beliefs and conditioned behaviors.
Ego is very subtle and crafty; it has no shame, only an overpowering drive for self-preservation. It is the selfsame source of your fear that your ego would grow strong if you were to succeed. Ego builds a house of cards of attachments, beliefs, and conditioning with the single purpose of preserving the identity, because the end of identity is the end of ego. That is death for ego, just like physical death is death for ego, and it fears both as one. And it will resist any change to those structures to the bitter end.
That is the source of all fear, and of all incongruence. And the one tactic that ego has no response to is complete acceptance of all things as they are in the present moment. Fear is relative to past and future; time is the exclusive domain of ego. The present moment is the domain of the self that knows no fear.
So take a deep breath, feel your fear and accept it for what it is, then let it pass and go out and succeed in the present moment at everything you do! |