Where do you get naughtiness from? From ego, I expect.

Where do you get the idea that you need to set others straight? Or even put them down? Where do you get the idea that you have to be above all? What makes you think so? Ego, I expect.

Although love makes the world go around, ego has been known to overtake love, push love aside and insert itself. Ego sees need. Ego wants to triumph, and you lose. The world loses when ego struts its stuff. Ego makes a lot of noise.

Ego listens to its own drummer. It doesn’t listen to Me. Ego wants homage given to it. Ego makes you forget that you are to serve. Ego is very needy. It is a pickpocket. It is a marauder. Ego is short-sighted, and yet ego twirls its baton, and you follow it. Not thinking, you get caught up in ego. You march right behind it. There are the times, no matter what, when you surrender to ego.

True, you are sorry later. Beware of what ego tells you is necessary. Ego is necessary to itself. Ego is a strumpet who leads you astray. What do you think ego really gives you? It gives you betrayal.

You never did need ego. Do not adore ego’s false promises. All its promises are false. When ego wins, when you become on top of the world, what does it matter? You have a moment of glamour, and then you are left bereft because what ego gives you is nothing. Ego is such a culprit. Ego is the con-artist of the world. Ego does a good job at what ego does.

Ego is slick. Ego is glib. When ego beckons, you do not have to be under its spell. You do not have to follow. The next time ego taps you on your shoulder, promises you rewards, builds you up, tempts you, wants to pull you away from your path, smile and say: “Thanks but no thanks.”

The only thing ego has to give you is bluster and wrong turns. You can only in the end be embarrassed at your compliance with ego. You were taken in, and now you pay the piper. Ego waltzes off to find another sap to beguile. Ego purveys a false trail. Ego will trip you up every time.

To be egotistic is to be egotistic. All ego can give you is hot air. The bubble bursts. It has been said that pride goeth before a fall. Pride is the fall, beloveds. Pride is a fall from grace. In pride you sell yourself out. You accept dross for gold. A pox on ego. Stay away from it.

And yet here I do a bio of ego. I am making ego important by my very diatribe against it. I tell you to be beware of ego, and so I call your very attention to ego. I tell you to be egoless, and yet My topic is ego. I tell you to erase ego, and I make ego important -- important that you not have it.

And yet I will continue. Ego itself has no pride. It has no shame, no embarrassment. Ego is pretty sure you will come back to it. Ego is a drug dealer on the street corner. Ego gives you a little triumph, and then takes the false joy away and leaves you panting for more. Invariably, ego pulls the carpet out from under you. It wasn’t much of a carpet. Like ego, the carpet was flim-flam.

How many countless times will you be taken in before you wise up to ego? Say No to ego.