THE EGO’S DENSITY
If you have observed someone with a huge ego, or one that is beginning to swell, what you sense isn’t just ‘attitude’ — it’s density.
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If you have observed someone with a huge ego, or one that is beginning to swell, what you sense isn’t just ‘attitude’ — it’s density.
TEACHING awareness in yoga shifts the practice from a mechanical workout into an internal, mindful experience.
There is deep wisdom in being very intentional nowadays, especially with energy and frequencies. We are living in intense times, and if we listen closely, our bodies and spirits are constantly responding to the environment around us. I consciously choose to keep away from low-frequency states—particularly chronic stress, anxiety, fear and constant overwhelm—and from people with unchecked egos.
Part of this intentionality is awareness. Awareness brings me into reflections that often lean on the teachings of the spiritual masters I have studied. My yoga foundation brought me into the heart of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Having an Ashtanga yoga teacher training certification meant that what we studied had to be translated to students, all while trying to embody those teachings in our own lives.
Although I no longer teach yoga, the practice remains—especially when bringing its philosophies into my multi-faceted world, which mixes corporate work, advocacies, community alignments, and social relationships with people from many different walks of life. One thing I constantly observe is the ego, and I am highly aware of it because I, too, have been guilty of letting it lead at times. I fall back on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.6, which roughly translates to:
Asmita—the sense of “I-am-ness,” the ego—arises when the power of the Seer and the power of seeing become falsely identified as one and the same.
If you have observed someone with a huge ego, or one that is beginning to swell, what you sense isn’t just “attitude”—it’s density. A person operating from an unchecked ego is a mind clenched around itself, defending, comparing, performing, and needing to win the room. Energy, like everything else, moves in frequency. A clenched mind emits a heavier, more contracted signal than an open one, much the same way a fist holds more tension in a room than an open palm, even in silence.
Unlike in my youth, when I would engage with another person’s ego—getting angry, fighting, getting hurt, and retaliating—age has made me wiser. Knowing this sutra stops me from trying to fix the other person or fighting their gravity. It allows me to simply see the mechanism, recognizing that what is pulling on me isn’t personal; it is a kind of physics—dense energy seeking a mirror to bounce off of.
This is why stepping back isn’t coldness, nor is it defeat. It is discernment. We are not obligated to stand in someone else’s heaviness just to prove we can withstand it (that is simply our ego meeting theirs). The Seer in you—what I personally call our Higher Self, the quiet, undefended awareness—knows the difference between compassion and combat. It knows that sometimes the most loving, sovereign thing we can do is simply widen the distance so their heaviness has room to be theirs, while our own frequency stays clear enough to keep seeing straight. Others would simply call this act of moving away “creating a boundary.”
However, the harder mirror to face is the one turned on ourselves. It is one thing to sense the clench in someone else’s mind as we observe their ego; it is another to catch it happening in our own space—that same swelling, that same need to defend, compare, perform, and win the room. Except now, there is no comfortable distance to create, because it is happening inside us.
This is where the sutra stops being a lens for observing others and becomes a discipline of self-witnessing. The same density we feel radiating off someone else’s unchecked ego is a frequency we are each fully capable of emitting—when we are tired, when we feel unseen or excluded, or when old fears of not being enough rise up and disguise themselves as certainty, pride, or the need to be right.
Personally, knowing this sutra doesn’t let me off the hook the way it does when I’m simply steering clear of someone else’s gravity. Instead, it asks me to notice the exact moment my own mind clenches around “I”—my opinion, my hurt, my need to be acknowledged—and mistakes that clenching for the whole of who I am. My practice, then, isn’t stepping back from myself, but breathing and softening the fist into an open palm from the inside. It is returning, again and again, to the Higher Self, the Seer moving at a higher frequency. We can call this self-awareness, humility, or catching oneself. We can also call it coming home to the one part inside us that was never actually threatened.
There is really only one lesson wearing two faces, and I am only now, at this age, beginning to see it clearly. Whether the ego swelling before me belongs to someone across the table or to the stranger who sometimes wakes up inside my own ribs, the weight is the same: a mind curling in on itself in insecurities and fear, forgetting it was ever anything but light. And light, when it curls, goes heavy. The room thickens, and the air takes on a particular density that I have learned—over enough dinners and in enough boardrooms—to recognize before a single word is spoken.
With others, I have learned that raising my frequency simply means letting them keep their own heaviness. But with myself, this is the harder lesson, because the heaviness is mine. The outer work may be distancing, but the inner work is a return: a soft unclenching, again and again, back toward the quiet presence inside us (Patanjali’s Seer or our Higher Self) who was never actually afraid, and who was only ever watching. I have stopped believing that a high frequency is something you reach for or perform. It is closer to what remains when you finally stop gripping, grasping, wanting, demanding, and tightening, and instead find the stillness underneath the fist.
