Step 1: How to transcend your ego without becoming a smug twit

Shut down your ego before it shuts you down

One of my friends is a ridiculously talented magician—the kind who can make a playing card vanish and then reappear in your shirt pocket…which is particularly unsettling because he never even walked near you. Or, if he’s feeling extra cheeky, you’ll find the card you picked folded into an origami swan sealed inside a unopened can of beans you were saving for later.

While I’m busy listening to some bizarre story about his childhood ferret or watching him casually swallow a razor blade—only to cough it back up neatly tied to a string—there’s another trick happening just beyond my perception. Something I won’t even notice until later in the show. And yet, as he performs these wildly dangerous feats, the real magic isn’t just the illusion itself—it’s the sheer, baffling fact that he hasn’t accidentally died yet.

The plot twist

What you’re witnessing defies logic, and in that gap between knowing and not knowing, your imagination kicks into overdrive, spinning hypotheses, filling in the blanks, desperately trying to make sense of the impossible.

All the best stories work this way. You think you’ve pinned down the antagonist, only to have the narrative unravel, revealing the true mastermind—the one you least suspected, the supervillain hiding in plain sight. No one enjoys a predictable ending. We crave surprise, suspense, that exhilarating edge-of-your-seat moment when everything we thought we knew shifts in an instant.

This kind of entertainment—this delicate balance between deception and revelation—is what we live for. It forces us into the present moment, completely engaged, yet safe in the knowledge that the outcome will be deeply satisfying. And this, in essence, is what it feels like to be truly in tune with your spirit. When you understand this sensation—when you recognize that the only thing that truly matters is this energetic connection, this raw, electric presence—you gain the ability to distinguish between what is real (this feeling of alignment) and what is unreal (the unease of something deeply off).

The truly bonkers part is that moment when your brain starts questioning its own reality like, Wait, did that just happen? Am I losing my mind? Is this how it starts? You don’t have enough information to make a solid judgment, so your brain does what it does best—it makes stuff up. LIke when I ask my 4 year old niece how the sky became blue (giant markers, obviously). Wild, confident guesses that feel very correct in the moment—until, of course, new information comes along and absolutely wrecks your theory.

The thrill of uncertainty

And that’s the fun of it! The thrill! The human brain just loves filling in gaps with total nonsense—it’s how we get ghost stories, conspiracy theories, and the entire plot of Scooby-Doo. When you feel safe and secure, this uncertainty is the best thing ever. It’s play! It’s imagination! It’s what makes life feel like a delightful, unpredictable magic trick.

“I don’t trust banks. I don’t trust liars. And I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t wear a tie.”
—Dwight Schrute, The Office

When uncertainty turns ugly

But when you don’t feel safe, when you’re insecure, uncertainty turns into a waking nightmare. Your ego hijacks the controls, and suddenly, instead of playing with possibilities, your mind goes into survival mode fighting for its sanity. That creative, playful part of your brain is hiding under the bed and the not-so-nice paranoid little gremlin part of your brain is running around screaming, NOTHING IS REAL!!! Instead of embracing the unknown like you’re a kid in a candy store for the first time, you start thinking all the gummy bears will attack you en masse, which—fun fact—is the exact opposite of fun.

That sense of unreality—that weird, uneasy something’s off feeling—is just your ego pulling the ultimate sleight of hand. A big, flashy distraction while it swaps out the possibility of wonder for the certainty of fear. And from the outside, it’s so obvious how absurd it all is. Like, no, the gummy bears are not plotting your demise. The only real danger here is how many you can cram into your mouth before you start questioning your life choices.

Cracking the code

When you learn to recognize the satisfaction of wonder and curiosity—the way it just feels like you’re edging closer to the truth—versus the gnawing unease of falsehood where you fall further from reality, you start to see the game for what it is. And that, my friends, is the beginning of radical self-awareness. Once you crack that code, you stop falling for your own mental magic tricks.

tl;dr:

If you feel certain of your fear, sadness, anger, or abandonment, congrats—you’ve just been duped by your own brain. It’s the mental equivalent of a rigged carnival game. False. Every time.

But if you feel the possibility of curiosity, wonder, joy, or imagination? That’s the real stuff. The good stuff. Truth. Every time.

This is ones and zeros, my friends. Ones and zeros. The universe is just a giant coding language, and the trick is knowing which signals to trust—and which is a virus installing malware in your software. So, as you go about your day, just remember some of those “pop-up ads” in your mind? Definitely don’t click them. Trust me, it’s a scam.