Wendy K. Laidlaw

And that's when the ego forms.

And the ego forms around the little idea that I'm okay or I'm interesting or I might be good without much detail or substance.

And so it forms as a defense against annihilation.

But because it forms from the self of the child, it's also slightly connected in a way.

You could say the deep self creates the ego.

And then the deep self has to grow, and it can only grow by the ego letting go.

They call it the death of the ego, but it's really letting go.

So the trick is, how do we get the ego to let go?

And then I'm a little bit avoiding the essence of the question, but I do see it as two-sided.

The part of the ego that says, I'm already great, everybody has to admire me the way I am, that has to die.

But also the part of the ego that's attached to inferiority and the idea that I'm really not worth anything.

The kind of self-loathing that everybody has, by the way, that has to die too.

Because we're neither nothing nor are we everything.

We're a unique blend of things that no one has ever seen before.

And therefore, it's not a pretension of being great.

It's a potential for doing or being involved with great things.

But it also has to have a humbleness that realizes that this genius thing is not me.

It's coming through me.

And so so so you wind up in a position of going, OK, you know, I have these gifts or talents or whatever, and they work pretty well or whatever goes on.

But it's not actually me, you know, a real poet, a real musician, a real person.