From The Power of Now: The manipulative ruler

“All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous."

“Nonforgiveness is the very nature of the mind, just as the mind-made false self, the ego, cannot survive without strife and conflict. Remember that the ego needs problems, conflict, and "enemies" to strengthen the sense of separateness on which its identity depends.”

"The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things,
people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that
continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be
gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.
They are concealed in the still gap between the perception and the
interpretation."

"Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts. Furthermore,
it cannot tell the differences between an event and its reaction to that event.
Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation.
Only through awareness – not through thinking – can you differentiate
between fact and opinion. Only through awareness are you able to see: There is the situation and here is the anger I feel about it, and then realize there are other ways of approaching the situation, other ways of seeing it and dealing.
The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation
of and reaction to that situation. You might say, “What a dreadful day,”
without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition
you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your
reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by That
resistance." Ekhart Tolle.


Our egoic minds are always ON, did you find the OFF bottom?...
So if it is on the ON state all the time, that includes the moments our level of attention is diverted and it can “PLAY the old records” freely.
It is ON the moment we go to sleep, it is ON the moment we wake up.
It is ON while we are taking shower, walking on the street, watching TV or listening to music. It is ON when we meet other people, it is ON when we are alone. It is scanning the environment and everything it includes in order to create a sense of separateness, a perfect place where to feel individualized. It is scanning every thing we do, think and feel in order to find a trigger that matches an old pattern of reactive emotions and get rooted once and again.
It will create conflict, as a matter of self-indulgence and oppose every idea that threatens our identification with it.
Is there any new insight about a situation happening in our lives that we are trying to test in opposition to the strong determination of our ego?. Than almost immediately we will feel conflict inside. A world that is perceived through our 5 senses is all that it needs and all that it wants to know.
So a different reality, more over, a reality where sense perceptions are secondary is ruled out from the ego. The existence of the ego depends on our complete identification with the world of forms.So the line of division is very thin, the ego very tricky and adaptable when convenient. The way to spot the ego?, even though very simple: are we deriving our identity from something external (including the roles we perform, material belongings or accomplisments, happenings, our past story), or are we deriving it from the consciousness within?. Better said, is our life about "Doing" or about "Being"?