Keeping aware of my ego is a daily practice for me. I cultivate faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration and insight to help keep me aware of my ego, and I don’t always succeed. I practice failing too.

My ego wants me to win at all costs – regardless of the damage I may inflict to the more vulnerable. My ego insists I feel either superior or inferior to others. My ego wants to be the star – to tell someone else “You’re fired.” My ego insists on perfection. My ego thrives on being right all the time. My ego has no concern for others.

If I don’t keep aware of my ego it can cause enormous suffering, both for me and for others.

When I keep aware of my ego, I recognize that collaboration may serve all involved, more than competition. At the university I went to in Newcastle, Australia, the medical program taught the doctors-to-be that they would need to collaborate with each other, not compete, to save a person’s life.

When I keep aware of my ego I recognize we’re all human beings, none of us superior nor inferior. We may come from a different culture, a different race, a different religion, be a different sexual orientation, a different age group – but in essence we’re all human beings, all looking to live, love and thrive on this planet we call home.

When I keep aware of my ego I recognize we all want to shine. As the indigenous cultural teaching goes, “We’re all born with an original medicine, and if we don’t express it in the world, it will be lost and gone forever.” And as the Desiderata says, “Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.”

When I keep aware of my ego I recognize I have a choice between authenticity and perfection. Knowing the suffering that the endless pursuit of perfection can bring versus the joy, light, love and laughter that I experience in authenticity, I choose authenticity on a daily basis.

When I keep aware of my ego I recognize I am only right for myself. We each have our own perspective. All I can do is share the truth of my own experience, and your experience may be completely different to mine.

When I keep aware of my ego I can empathize. I can be with you and listen to you and feel what you’re feeling. And yet my ego can also be enormously helpful.

My ego can provide me with the confidence and chutzpah I may need to embark upon a new adventure. My ego can provide me with a boundary of separateness I need to survive and thrive as a spiritual being having a human experience in this world.

The author Anita Morjani writes about her near-death experience, when she clinically died from having cancer, then chose to come back and live. She writes in her book, “Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing,” how when she was in “the other realm” everything is oneness. We don’t need an ego in that realm. She says to imagine that when we’re born, we have two remote controls both turned up to maximum. One for ego and one for awareness. As we grow into adults, our conditioning turns our awareness way down, and the more inner work we do, it turns our awareness back up.

My own spiritual teacher, interfaith minister Rev. Stephanie Rutt, reminded me recently that whatever inner work each of us does, we also do for the collective. Think of throwing a stone into a still pond and witnessing the ripple effect.

In these turbulent times, I’m practicing keeping my awareness at full blast. I feel enormous gratitude for the leadership in the White House for the past eight years – a family with fine characters and a great capacity of awareness. The new occupant may not have such awareness of his own ego. This now may be an opportunity where each soul in this country will need to cultivate their own awareness more. We get an opportunity to “Be the change you wish to see.”

Rev. Camilla Sanderson lives in Temple and is presently practicing the art of creative nonfiction writing in a low-residency MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.