The Reindeer pull Santa's Sleigh. What pulls the Ego’s Sleigh?

Just as Santa has eight reindeer. The Ego-mind has eight tricks. Don’t get fooled by the ego’s tricks this holiday season. Here are the top eight trick of the ego-mind ready to hijack Christmas. Do not let them down the chimney!

1. Knowing: The ego-mind is convinced it knows. It loves it opinions, positions, and confidence. Of course to others we know this as obnoxiousness, arrogance, and pompousness. But the ego-mind is undeterred. It flaunts its knowledge and surety. When you think you “know,” it means that knowing is pulling the ego’s sleigh.

2. The promise of future fulfillment: Good things are just around the corner, so says the ego-mind. And as a result, we are never fully present since ego is on the lookout for the next big thing. There is something wrong with now. It would never occur to the ego-mind that the fulfillment we seek is right in front of us. Of course the criterion the ego uses to measure fulfillment is, “Do I have what I want.” Getting it our way and having what we want is the ego’s goal in life. Since the story ends with death, looking to the future seems like a fool’s errand, but the ego is undeterred.

3. Living in the remembered past: Just as the ego-mind lives in the future, it also lives in the remembered past. Never mind that the remembered past is merely psychological. The ego loves to regurgitate the last conversation, refight the last battle, or recapitulate losses. It is a massive effort to change our internal state, to deny feelings we have, and to justify our behavior. The remembered past and the imagined future are the territory of the ego-mind.

4. Retaliation: This force wants to pull the sleigh into battle! Every perceived wrong must be righted. The ego-mind will never put down its arms. We are right, we will get even; the ego will show them. The ego will stoop to whatever level to throw whatever mud is nearby. It knows neither mercy nor compassion. Never mind that the truth is that the other person is suffering from searing pain. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, the ego-mind wants a dead duck!

5. Blame: I must be your fault! For the ego, my life would be better if you would change. My reactions, my bad behavior, and my insensitivity lay clearly at your doorstep. I wouldn’t be this way if you weren’t they way you were. My ego-mind is going to teach my children to not accept responsibility and to blame someone else if things go wrong.

6. Drama: The ego mind loves drama, it loves the story. He said, she said – let me tell you what happened, and then and then . . . This is the way the ego elevates itself. After all, the story teller gets lots of attention. Paul called this the world of the flesh. In Greek, the word flesh means superficial. The ego-mind is all about the superficial. It is shallow, fascinated and loves to retell your story to someone else.

7. Being Special: This means that to the ego, we are special as an individual. Life must be fair to us. Since we are special we are not ONE with others, we are separate. Some are more special than others. This means the ego-mind must constantly seek control and gain so it can be elevated. The emphasis here is on what makes us unique. The ego thinks that “everything happens for a reason.” And the reason must be from its point of view. Being special means one is at the center of the universe.

8. Masquerades as the real you: This makes sense since the ego-mind has an internal voice that sounds like you and feels like you. It must be you? The result of this deception is that we no longer rely on looking at the world with innocent perception. We allow the ego to intercept our experience and interpret it for us. The ego-mind actually interposes itself between reality and our true self. The resulting deception is a disaster for all human kind.

The holidays are a great time to learn the trick of the ego-mind. Since we are with “family,” the ego is at its best (worst?) and we can focus on its tricks and expose them to the light of our own awareness. A dysfunctional family Christmas is all about the ego-minds of each participant hijacking the holidays. Don’t let this happen to you. Be fully present with your experience.