Ego is a shield that keeps love away. It keeps people at a distance, for egos are hard to get past. They are a strong shield. They keep everything away from you.

Rather than allowing you to be interested in other people for themselves, ego keeps you interested in advantages to your image more than anything else. Ego trains you to come from a place where your first and last questions are: "What is in this for me?" Well, what did you think egocentric meant?

I would train you otherwise. I would ask you to think what you can do for Me. When you do with Me in mind, you will do for others and you will do for the world and you will also do for yourself. It is automatic.

Ego would separate, but you cannot make yourself separate from what you do for others and the world. That is where ego tricks you. It would have you believe that what you do for others is not an advantage to yourself. Furthermore, it would have you believe in scarcity. It would have you believe that when you give, you are taking something away from yourself. Ego gets you to believe anything.

Ego bites the hand that feeds it. It turns on you. It steals Truth away from you. It flatters you, and then sneaks away and leaves you holding nothing.

What a fallacy ego is! Sure, it is a great promoter. It knows how to sell itself and make you buy it. It is ego, not life, that pulls the rug out from under you. Actually, you find there never was a rug. It was all ego's sleight of hand. False advertising. False promises. False inducements. Ego is no more than a charlatan. But a persuasive one.

The world pretends that ego is important. But the sense of importance that ego inflates serves itself, not you.

This may be hard to take, but embarrassment, shame, humiliation, guilt, hiding, keeping secrets, waiting for approval — all of those things and more — are indications of the hold ego has on you. Certainly, you don't think you come closer to Me through any of those, do you?

Love doesn't make you blush or blanch.

Illness and pain and mistakes you look at aghast rub ego away.

Do not be dismayed at whatever emery boards of life file off your ego. The good purpose ego serves is to be something you can dismiss. That is its service. In that sense, you can be grateful to ego, misinformed as it is, because it points you to Truth. Its absence is Truth.

The world is rampant with ego, but no longer will you be, because now you see it for the scoundrel it is. It is a joker, and the joke was on you.

Ego has been your driver. It has driven you places where you did not want to go. Egoless, you will find there is no striving. There is serving. There is listening and attaining all on their own. Egoless, your vision grows. Egoless, you are simple. You make simple statements. Egoless, you are pure simplicity. Nothing fancy. When ego is gone, you are left with everything that is not ego-driven.

You are left with Me. You and I exist, and all the fol de rol does not.

How smooth and clear becomes your path! How scintillating your journey on the wheels of truth! How fast your love spills itself everywhere, and then you know, you know conclusively, that love is your path and that there is no other.