Our unconscious mind is where our ego lives. Think about it, how often do you simply react to people and situations? Probably more than you’re willing to admit. It’s the same for all of us. Our ego subconsciously dominates our thoughts and influences our behaviors. Unfortunately, until we become aware of it, our ego is in control.
Enlightenment is the end of suffering.
— Buddha
In his best-selling book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle describes the nature of human unconsciousness and dysfunction as what is false in us. “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly,” Tolle explains, “Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion.”
In this sense, the mind and ego share a symbiotic relationship, with the mind as the instrument and the ego its voice. The ego is the instigator of the noise that streams unconsciously through our minds. The noise provokes our reactions, choices, and behaviors. Unfortunately, many of those choices result in pain and suffering.
We come to believe we are our minds and thus identify wholly with the stories they tell us. As Tolle explains, “Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious.”
Unconsciousness leads to suffering.
As long as we continue to live unconsciously, we will continue to suffer.
When I first came across these words years ago, they failed to register. I was suffering from alcoholism and anorexia, so my ego was the dominant voice in my life. Every choice I made, every action was dictated by it. My ego served itself, and I served it. I wasn’t open to change because, without the identity my ego provided, I truly believed I was nothing. Fear of nothing is a powerful motivator for staying right where you are. Even if right, where you are is destructive.
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only the past and future are considered important.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
The ego cannot withstand the power of presence.
My past defines me, and my future holds the happiness I seek are the two most insidious lies the ego feeds us. I fell for those lies over and over again.
Without my story, who am I? I relied on my story so much that I often added the stories of others to rationalize and justify my choices. At the same time, I blamed others, circumstances, and life itself for my destructive behaviors. I was in a constant state of searching for happiness. Surely, that next thing, whatever that thing was, would make me happy. When it didn’t, I numbed my disappointment with alcohol, punished myself through starvation, and tried to outrun it by overexercising. The cycle was constant and in my mind unbreakable. Until it was broken.
The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present as long as you are your mind.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Awakening from the mind.
According to Tolle and spiritual guides like Buddha, the path to freedom from the mind and to peace lies in awakening from it. Buddha says, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Tolle reminds us, “The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.”
Most importantly, Jesus tells us, “When you know the truth, the truth will set you free,” John 8:32. An awakened, enlightened mind, then, is one rooted in presence and centered in truth.
Presence is the key; truth is the pathway.
In my experience, truth did not hit me over the head in a blinding moment of clarity. Disidentifying with my mind did not occur rapidly. It happened slowly. One painful step at a time.
It was in those first small windows of presence that stillness and silence, blessed silence, occurred. That silence, as short-lived as it often was, was my first taste of freedom from my mind. Freedom from my ego. As I journeyed further into recovery, those moments of consciousness and presence grew. That consciousness was my awakening.
Awakening from what? From my mind. I began to see the destructive nature of my ego and of the lies it fed me. More importantly, I recognized my culpability in the power it held over me. Consciously or unconsciously, I’d surrendered that power, and my bad choices were the result. That was a hard, but necessary admission. Because with that admission came the truth that would free me.
Knowing the truth goes far beyond simple acknowledgement of it.
Truth exists whether we want it to or not. It withstands every attempt to block and manipulate it. It remains constant whether we ever acknowledge or accept it.
To know the truth, you have to experience it in the depths of your soul. Its effect on you is so strong that you not only hear it, but you see, taste, and smell it too. Its impact on you is so powerful that your belief in it is unshakeable. It becomes your anchor.
Once I knew the truth, the cage was unlocked. I began to disidentify with my mind and to focus on my Spirit instead. I started my recovery journey in earnest. A journey I willingly and wholeheartedly committed to because I never wanted to return to that cage. Not when I finally knew the truth and it had indeed set me free.
Awakening
We all build prisons, unconsciously.
We bleed unconsciously,
live and love unconsciously.
Unaware, all we do is search.
For what? That doesn’t matter.
Suffering lies in the searching.
In clinging to the pain of yesterday,
while anticipating happiness tomorrow.
In resisting what IS.
Once we become aware of that,
even for just a breath, we awaken.
Because being is NOW, in this moment.
In accepting what IS,
without judgment or labels.
Without resistance or fear.
Being is freedom.
And it happens now,
right where you are.
JN Fenwick (© 2021-2025) | mothjournal14
Author’s Note: I’ve been there. In that cage. For so long, I lived in it, and the darkness nearly destroyed me. For every soul out there hurting, lost, afraid, unsure how to break the chains, I’m praying for you, as so many prayed for me. May His grace cover you. May you find courage in His strength, forgiveness in His mercy, and the trust to turn to Him. I promise you, He’s there. I know, He pulled me from the darkness and set me free.
JN Fenwick/mothjoural14, © 2025 | All rights reserved.
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