The ego pretends it’s who we are and uses fear to keep its game going. The more we chop into our fears by facing them, becoming them, the bigger we become. But the ego will still morph around this new bigness and claim it for itself. For this is what ego does: it is our internal integrator in the world of form. And we absolutely need the ego to do its job in order for us to play the game of life. As Ken Wilber aptly observed, “We’d be psychotic without one.” But to mistake the ego for who we are is to miss our boundless nature: the absolute stillness in which our movement arises, which is also us; the absolute emptiness in which our form manifests, which is also us. Once we sense our self in this boundlessness and this boundlessness in our self, we can help our ego face its fears — one at a time as they arise in the game of life — trusting that as we merge with each scary, mini-death-like fear, we create space for greater life. Like a snake shedding its skin to grow larger, we shed old fears that no longer serve, expanding our capacity as each one falls away.
— Dr. Ginny Whitelaw