When asked if I have an ego myself, I’m reminded of the scene from Fight Club, where Edward Norton shoots himself in the head, trying to kill his alter ego, Brad Pitt. The fact of the matter is, we all have a thinking mind. And it’s important for surviving in this world. That thinking mind is where problem-solving, working through complex situations, finding solutions, and creativity come from — and all of these are essential for functioning in this world.

The question isn’t whether you have an ego or not. The real question is: do you identify with the ego? Is the ego in control, or are you, your higher wisdom and higher intentions in control?

When you resist and try to kill your ego, you’re actually giving it a lot of power. Sometimes, you may feel like you’ve succeeded. You may even feel proud of yourself. But that pride is simply a second ego taking form. There can be many subtle egos. And if you fully believe your ego, you end up giving all your energy to it again, allowing it to take complete control over you.

It’s like someone saying something mean to you on the street. You can choose to fight that person — which only makes them get 10 times louder — or you can keep walking. And that’s how we deal with the ego. We don’t give it energy. We don’t engage with it. We simply watch it. We use it as the tool that it is, but we don’t cave into its temper tantrums, and we don’t try to fight it either.

Instead, we watch it — like a child throwing a tantrum. When you just watch a child, they often calm down and start behaving better. That’s exactly what I try to do: maintain a state of awareness. Maintain a watchfulness over my thoughts and emotions. And in doing so, when we keep steady awareness of our inner world, it gets calmer. It becomes more positive, more useful, less chaotic — and sometimes, it even gets quiet. And that’s a beautiful experience.