This is Inner Work, a spiritual growth podcast, a place to explore spiritual concepts, tools, and practices to deepen your healing and awakening.

I'm your host, Josephine Hartman, a certified intuitive healer and a Kashik Records practitioner and teacher.

I'm honored that you're here and happy to serve as a guide and companion on your path for a little while.

To learn more about how to work with me or study with me please visit josephine hartman.com

Hello my friend and fellow seeker on the path. Welcome to inner work. I want to take a

minute to invite you to join my email community if if you are so called, to do that.

If you do, you will receive my free Akashic Records mini course and also my weekly column,

which is called the weekly seeker, that will help you stay present, grounded, and connected, and feeling more

peaceful within yourself, no matter what's going on around you, no matter what chaos is going on

in the world or in your life sometimes. So I'm really happy to offer these resources to you if they are helpful. And I would love

for you to be part of that community. You can join through the link in the show notes. So today's

episode is about shattering the lies and illusions of your ego. This is a big one. So let's start at the beginning.

As you already know, you have an ego self, as we all do. This ego self is a facade of yourself

that you have unconsciously created just as an inevitable consequence of

living in a human society, in a family, in a particular human culture. Your ego self is a

protective construct.

So it's this sort of acceptable facade that we create of ourselves, again unconsciously,

in order to blend in, to be accepted, to be liked, to be seen as worthy,

most of all to not stand out and not be kicked out of the tribe,

which is always that primal survival instinct that sort of our reptilian brains are operating from.

So your ego self is concerned above all with how you look and how you're coming across to other people.

What other people think of you, how you're coming off in relationships, whether you are achieving success in the way that success has been defined by your society or your family,

...