The desire to be right is one of the ego’s strongest desires because being right is felt to be closely tied to survival. Being right puts us on top, and that’s where the ego wants to be because the ego thinks that being on top will keep it safe. Again and again, the ego will choose being right over love and connection with others. This tendency to make being right more important than love is what makes relationships so difficult. When people in a relationship are ego identified, both want to be right, and that’s especially impossible when no one is actually right!
The reason that no one is actually right is because disagreements are based on conditioning, and conditioning is simply different beliefs. Everyone thinks their beliefs are right; however, there is no absolute truth when it comes to beliefs, only relative truth. Conditioning is conditioning, and all conditioning bears the stamp of the ego. Conditioning is made up of generalizations, beliefs that have been passed on, truisms, cultural and religious training, and other acquired ideas. When we are attached to our conditioning and to being right, we argue about things like the right way to make the bed or wash the dishes. Getting the other person to do things our way becomes more important than loving that person and accepting that we are all different.
Our true self, Essence, loves our differences, or we wouldn’t be the way we are. Life wouldn’t be what it is if we weren’t different from each other. What an amazing thing it is that each of us is so unique! However, the ego feels threatened by these differences, and so it is uncomfortable with them. We are designed to both love others and disagree with them. It’s part of our evolution to learn to lovingly disagree, which requires that we hold our differences more lightly than the ego is used to doing.
Wanting to be right is not a worthwhile desire, and that has to be seen. This desire is the ego doing what egos do. Choosing love over being right is the choice that brings happiness because choosing love over our conditioning shifts us out of the ego’s world and into Essence’s. Essence chooses love because Essence is moving all of life toward love. Whenever we choose love over being right, or any other value of the ego, we drop into Essence and immediately experience the love, peace, joy, and contentment of Essence.
By using our will to choose love instead of following our programming, we evoke love. As soon as we give our attention to love, we land in love. And what could be better than that? When you make this choice often enough, you discover that being loving and accepting feels much better than being right. The ego gets some smug pleasure from being right, but that bit of pleasure can’t compare with the good feeling that comes from loving.
Noticing that you have a choice is key to making the right choice. When we are involved with others, we often go unconscious and respond automatically from the ego. Being in relationship is challenging even to those who are very conscious and aware because the ego is easily triggered in relationship. As soon as we open our mouths, we tend to give voice to the ego and its thoughts, without evaluating those thoughts first.
What we often voice are our opinions and judgments, all of which are likely better left unsaid. The ego’s opinions and judgments don’t serve our relationships any more than they serve us. Opinions and judgments are generally a way we try to prove to others that we are right. When we pay close attention to our interactions with others, we discover that much of what we say is an attempt to know something or to be right, which is how the ego tries to be superior.
Another desire can replace the desire to be right and to be superior, and that is the desire for love and unity. You can choose to not speak the ego’s divisive judgments, opinions, and beliefs. The loving choice is often to not speak. You choose to not give your attention to the ego’s judgments, opinions, and beliefs because giving your attention to them doesn’t support love. When you make the choice to ignore and not give voice to such thoughts, you are choosing Essence’s desire for love over the ego’s desire to be right.
From Anatomy of Desire