Many of the concerns you have concern ego. Ego is such a bother. It is an annoying gnat that bites you or a fly that buzzes around you. Unlike gnats and flies, ego is continually in the background, winter or summer, counseling you while all the while its attention is on its feeble self and not on you at all. No, not on your well-being. Ego distracts you from your well-being. If ego were not feeble, it would not need you to bolster it. Ego is selfish. It is bloated with its selfishness. It's not really thinking of you at all. It doesn't care about you. It cares about itself. Yet ego has no life of its own. It can only exist by your sufferance.
When you feel stung by someone's remark, it is ego that has stung you. Ego holds on to you for dear life. It lets you know it's there. Ego would have you think that you are so unimportant that a passing remark has the power to sting you, make you feel bad, hurt, offended, diminished, ravaged. But it is ego that ravages you. It pretends to build you, but it swells your head with hot air, and then to its delight, pops the balloon.
Ego is false to you. It distracts you from love. It keeps telling you that you are unimportant so that you will seek to be important. Beloveds, you must know by now how all-important you are to Me. You need not the plaudits of the world. The world is known to be fickle. It matters not a whit what the world thinks of you. It matters what you think of yourself.
You do not have to prove yourself. There is nothing for you to prove. Yet there is much for to accept, that you unquestionably, for instance, have My love, My constant love. That you have My attention. That you have My goodwill, and that your will is Mine. That your life is filled with blessing. That nothing can dent your untarnished soul. That you cannot be more lighted than you are. That you are filled with the light of God. When you know, you will see that the ego is a sputtering match burning out, and then it will make a hasty retreat, dissolving into the nothingness it always was.
Now you feel a need to protect ego, and you give an eulogy to it, defending its honor, as if it had been useful to you once, had served you. No, beloveds, ego served itself. You are worth far more than your worthless ego ever led you to believe. Perhaps you defend ego by saying it was the alarm that persistently went off to let you know it was time to awake, but you didn't need ego to tell you that. You've known that all along.
Truthfully, beloveds, ego is a con artist. It certainly has conned you.
It has complicated your life. Life without ego is simple. Without ego, your heart and soul lead you. Instead of ego's sidestepping what's valuable, now your heart takes its rightful place. Your soul was always strong, undismayed by ego while your heart went up and down according to ego's supervision. Now your heart is strong. Now you step out of ego. It vanishes. You can't even conceive now what it was or how it held you in its thrall.
Let's not spend more time on ego. It has consumed enough of your time. Now let's fill you with well-being, not just sense of well-being, but well-being itself. Well-being is what you have when ego vanishes. Now say good-bye to ego, not as an old friend, but like a wart.