A client of mine took on a substantial amount of extra work. He had asked for the opportunity, did it well, but when his review came around, there was no increase in pay and little explanation.
He was furious. He stopped putting himself out, did only what was required and started looking elsewhere. His reaction was understandable. He had been treated poorly. But the event itself wasn’t creating everything he felt. A thought had arrived with it.
They don’t value me. And behind that thought was something deeper. Perhaps I’m not worth very much. That is the ego thought system at work. Something happens, we filter it through what we already believe about ourselves and the world and give it meaning. That meaning creates the emotional reaction. It happens so quickly that we don’t experience it as a thought. We experience it as the truth.
Pause before You Act
You will probably recognise this in your own life. An email lands badly, somebody says something that stings, or you feel criticised, dismissed or taken for granted. Within seconds, you have decided what it means and what you want to do about it.
When that happens, do one thing: don’t act yet. Don’t send the email. Don’t make the decision. Don’t say the thing you may wish you hadn’t. Give yourself some space.
Not because your first reaction is necessarily wrong, but because while the ego is the only voice you can hear, you don’t yet know what else might be available to you.
The Ego Is a Thought System, not a Character Flaw
When I use the word ego, I don’t mean arrogance or an inflated opinion of ourselves. I mean a way of thinking built around fear, separation and the need to protect ourselves. From there, comparison, competition, judgement and defence make perfect sense. Someone else’s success can threaten ours, rejection can feel like a verdict on our worth, and criticism can become an attack.
The difficulty is that the ego never announces itself as fear. It sounds like us, and it sounds perfectly reasonable. If I believe my worth depends on what others think of me, rejection really does feel threatening. If I believe I need to protect myself, criticism requires a defence. If life is a competition, somebody else’s gain can feel like my loss.
The thoughts make sense because of the beliefs underneath them. That is why replacing them with nicer thoughts rarely works for long. Most of us have lived through this thought system for so long that we don’t even recognise it as a system. We simply call it thinking.
You Are Not Your Thoughts
We tend to identify closely with our thoughts. I think this; therefore, it must be true. This is how I feel. This is who I am. But our thoughts are not who we are. They arise constantly, often from beliefs we formed long ago. One thought triggers another and, before we know it, we are angry, frightened, defensive or hurt without questioning the thought that started it.
The emotion then seems to prove the thought. I feel threatened, so something must be threatening me. I feel rejected, so I must have been rejected. I feel angry, so somebody must have done something to me. The whole loop can happen in seconds, with the feeling becoming evidence that our thinking is true.
Recognising this matters because if we are our thoughts, there is nothing to choose. Living differently becomes possible when we can notice a thought without automatically believing it.
What Happened, and What We Made It Mean
This was what eventually changed for my client. His employer had given him considerably more responsibility without increasing his salary. That was the fact. They don’t value me, and this proves what I’m worth was the meaning he had attached to it. They were not the same thing.
Eventually he could see why it had landed so painfully. It had found something already there. We tend to accept other people’s judgements when they touch something we already half believe about ourselves. A judgement with nothing to attach to has far less power.
That didn’t make his employer’s behaviour acceptable. It simply separated his worth from their decision. He still raised the issue and eventually left, but the burn had gone. He could deal with what had happened without needing them to change their decision before he could feel differently about himself.
The Ego Thought System in Action
Once we recognise the ego as a thought system rather than simply our own thinking, some of its patterns become easier to spot.
It Makes Everything Personal
Another client was considering asking her adult son to leave home. He complained constantly about the house, about her and about how things were done, and she felt permanently criticised.
Notice what happened. Her son complained, and her ego supplied the meaning: He is ungrateful. He is criticising me. This says something about me as his mother. Every new complaint then reinforced it.
Eventually she saw that his unhappiness did not have to be about her. His complaining could be a call for love from somebody struggling with his own life. She didn’t have to approve of his behaviour or tolerate it. She simply stopped making it evidence about herself. Her response changed first, and the dynamic between them changed afterwards.
It Creates Its Own Evidence
Once the ego decides what something means, it looks for evidence that it is right. They don’t respect me, and suddenly we remember every time they didn’t listen. She doesn’t care, and every unanswered message becomes proof. He’s undermining me, and every disagreement confirms it.
The thought creates an emotional reaction, which affects what we notice, remember and do next. Our behaviour can then change the other person’s behaviour, giving us even more evidence for the belief we started with. The ego can become very good at proving itself right.
It Keeps Talking
I had this wrong for years. I thought that if I paused after my first reaction, a wiser answer would eventually appear. Often it doesn’t. The ego simply produces another thought supporting the first, then another. By the fifth thought it can sound measured and completely rational while still coming from exactly the same fear.
Anyone who has lain awake at three in the morning building an increasingly convincing case against somebody knows how this works. The pause matters because it stops us acting, not because silence automatically produces a different thought system. That requires another step, which I explore in the next article.
It Fills in The Blanks
The ego doesn’t like gaps. When we don’t understand why somebody has done something, we often supply the reason ourselves. They’re looking for attention. They’re deliberately ignoring me. I know why they’ve done that. Before long, an assumption has become part of what we think happened.
The problem is that we then react to the story as though it were true. We become angry, withdraw, confront someone or change how we behave towards them, sometimes creating a very real problem from something we never actually knew. One of the simplest ways to catch this is to ask: What do I actually know, and what have I filled in?
It Can Be Right About the Facts
None of this means talking ourselves out of reality. My client was treated unfairly. People do lie, betray, exploit and behave badly. Relationships sometimes need to end, jobs need to be left, and boundaries need to be drawn. The ego can be right about what happened.
The difficulty is what it makes those facts mean about us, other people and the world. From there come the blame, defence, resentment and fear we can carry long after the situation itself has passed. We can see clearly what happened without using it to condemn ourselves or somebody else. That is what allows us to respond rather than simply react.
Most of the World Teaches It
The ego thought system is difficult to recognise because it is everywhere. We see competition rewarded and blame, status, scarcity, retaliation and the need to win played out in families, workplaces, politics and nations. Most of us have been learning the same separate view of life from one another for a very long time.
I experienced something almost in reverse. As a child, I seemed to assume we were all connected and that love was somehow the nature of things. I had no language for it. Then I watched the world. Nobody had to persuade me otherwise; eventually the evidence seemed overwhelming, and I stopped trusting what I had instinctively felt.
This Is Not Something to Blame Yourself For
If you recognise yourself in this, don’t turn that recognition into another reason for self-criticism. Most of us absorbed this way of thinking before we could question it. Living from it wasn’t a character flaw; it was what we knew.
Forgiving ourselves for that matters. Otherwise, we simply use a new understanding to do the old thing and judge ourselves again. We cannot learn another way while attacking ourselves for the one we learned first.
What Makes Another Way Possible
Three things make another choice possible, and they underpin this whole series.
The first is self-awareness: being able to observe our thinking rather than simply live inside it.
The second is knowing we have access to a Higher Self. If the ego is the only thought system we know exists, there is nothing to choose between.
The third is unity consciousness, and this is fundamental. If we really are separate, much of the ego’s logic makes sense. We need to protect ourselves, compete for what we need and defend against threat. It is only when we begin to question separation itself that another way of thinking becomes possible.
That is why unity consciousness isn’t simply a pleasant idea alongside this work. It challenges the belief on which the ego thought system is built. While we see ourselves through a world of separation, much of the ego’s thinking will continue to feel perfectly reasonable.
You Get to Choose Which Thought System You Live Through
For much of my life, I thought my thoughts were simply my thoughts. I didn’t realise they were arising from beliefs about myself, other people and the world. If we don’t know another thought system is available, there is nothing to choose.
For me, that is where freedom begins. Not by controlling our thoughts, suppressing difficult emotions or pretending things haven’t happened, but by recognising I am having this thought. I am not the thought.
That gives us enough space to ask where the thought came from and what belief is feeding it. It is the difference between knowing about the two thought systems and consciously choosing between them.
Eventually, the question becomes: Is this the thought system I want to live my life through?
The ego will usually answer first, but it is not the only answer available.
Try This: Catch the Thought Before You Believe It
Think of something that has annoyed, hurt or unsettled you recently. Choose something where your emotional reaction felt particularly strong.
Start with what actually happened. Just the facts, without what you think the other person meant or why they did it. Then notice the thought that came with it. They don’t value me. She doesn’t care. He’s trying to make me look inadequate. I’m being taken for granted.
Now ask yourself what you would have to believe about yourself, other people or the world for that thought to feel true. Don’t try to replace it with a better thought. Don’t argue with it or tell yourself you shouldn’t feel as you do. Just notice the sequence. Something happened. A thought appeared. The thought created a feeling. And because I felt it, the thought seemed true.
Then add one final sentence.
I am having this thought. I am not the thought.
For now, that’s enough. You don’t have to change the thought. You are simply beginning to recognise the thought system it came from.
Articles in Two Thought Systems
Two Thought Systems – Choosing Between the Ego and Your Higher Self
- The Thought System That Has Been Running Your Life
- Characteristics of Higher Self Thinking