When we take everything personally

One way that ego shows up in our lives is when we take everything personally. Something happens to us that impacts us and we take it as an offence, as though in some way we have been targeted by the universe. Thinking that the universe is personally targeting us, however, is putting ourselves front and centre in the picture whereas, needless to say, the universe is so vast that the idea that we are personally being picked out for individual and exceptional treatment in some way is really a demonstration of our own ego in action. Implicit in this way of thinking is the idea that the universe revolves around us. In so doing we inflate our importance. Of course we are important - to ourselves and our loved ones - but the universe is impersonal. Even if someone does deliberately do something to us, their actions tend to say more about them than they do about us. Yet we tend not to recognise this and by making everything about us we feed our own narrative, our own story about ourselves, which is exactly where our ego resides - and so we feed our ego.

Caroline Myss, the well-known spiritual teacher and author, has a few words for this sort of thing. She says 'Humble Up! You're a grain of sand with a huge ocean out there and the ocean is not looking at you'. I like this. It makes me smile because I think we all forget sometimes that we are grains of sand and so need to be reminded. I certainly do.