When you answer a question in any way but what occurs to you in the moment, it is the ego answering. If you use any stock phrase, gesture, or blandishment that you have used or thought of before, if you plan out what you’re going to say in advance, it is the ego strategizing. As you are loved, you are a purer, stronger being when once you let go forever of these little ego tricks.
All ego must be forgiven. All ego is standing in the way. There is not one bit of it worth salvaging. That being that you think you are is not going to save you. You may have spent enormous focus and energy on polishing that being. What do you habitually think of, when you think of yourself? What adjectives do you use to describe you?
You will have some. Are you clever? Good-looking? Well travelled? Good personality?
Loyal? Honest? Fun?
Do not be seduced by any adjective, by the way.
If you feel pleased or satisfied by any adjective you have taken to yourself, that little ego pleasure you feel in thinking of it tells you that this is part of your false self. It is the same if you have chosen adjectives that create negative feeling spaces. Clumsy. Shy. Worthless. Ugly. The emotional pull you experience in thinking of them tells you that these also come from your false self. Your true Self doesn’t know them.
The ego must be forgiven
Thus, the ego must always be forgiven, laid by, deactivated, as if it never happened.
Then are we ready to move on