Your heart beats anyway. Despite being rubbed the wrong way, your heart keeps beating until its last beat. Your heart is hardy. It has withstood many storms. Love your heart. Love that you have one. Have a heart, and love that you have a heart with which to love, or, even to ache.

Separate your sensitive heart of love from over-sensitive ego. Ego is not to be nourished. Your heart is. There is a big difference between your heart and ego. One is straight-forward. One is devious. Your heart is not devious, beloveds! Ego is always a dissembler, a con artist, a trickster, a contriver. Ego is out for itself. Your heart, on the other hand, cares deeply for others while ego cries out: “Me, me, me.”

The heart is self-respecting while ego is self-enhancing. Ego is one-pointed. Ego pretends sensitivity, yet ego is red-faced. It is a thief of love. It is a pretender to the throne. It is a make-shift prop that calls attention to itself. Poor devious red-faced ego convinces you that it, ego, is necessary to you for self-preservation. The self the ego speaks for is a back-biter. It preserves itself and not you. It jeopardizes you. It keeps you from loving. Ego is one of those guys who pretends to be a nice guy while it is stabbing you in the back. It smiles lovingly while it causes you pain.

How does ego succeed so well? How is it that you are taken in time and time again? Ego has quite a track record. It has been known to supplant or supersede the heart. The villain triumphs, and the hero is left behind the eight ball.

To love thyself does not mean to egotize yourself. The hero, your heart, has to ego-proof itself. Rather, your mind has to ego-proof itself. The mind has to learn to say no to ego the way teen-agers need to say no to drugs.

Ego is an opiate, and it lets you down every time. Ego is very small. It blinds you and deafens you. It sets traps for you all the time. It is a mine field.

Strengthen your heart, and ego is automatically weakened. Down with ego. Up with heart.

Ego is skinny-livered. Heart is like a thrush’s throat and beats fulsomely. Hurray for heart. Boo for ego.

This must be coming clear to you. Ego will try to lure you to save its life and destroy yours. The enemy is ego. There is no other. Do you understand Me? Ego wants to capture you, and time and time again it does. Beware of ego. Ego is a menace. Do not think for one moment that ego is your friend.

Ego is a Mata Hari. How enticing and alluring is a spy. And how cut-throat.

No matter how many times you have been taken in by ego, you are seduced again. Ego is all illusion, you understand, and ego lures you with illusion. It has false premises and betrays you with false promises. Ego promises you the sun, moon, and stars of fame and reward, and it kicks you in the pants. Ego has no mercy. It is never sorry. It makes you sorry, while ego just cackles in the background.

Ego is no friend at all. Ego is a bald-faced liar. Ego leads you down the garden-path where the weeds are poisonous. Ego is the bewitched queen’s voice in the mirror that asks: “Who is the fairest of all?” And ego insists you are. Ego loves a good joke on you.

Look into the mirror of your heart and ask to be loving and not beguiled by the mind’s ego ever again.