The Ego's Need to Be Right

You ego, in a nutshell, is simply your “I” or “me” thought. This means that everyone has an ego, so the idea of “ego annihilation,” still persistent in some spiritual circles, is an illusion. The shift in perception that is realization is to see that you have an ego, but you are not your ego. So long as you still believe you are this “I” or “me” you’ve taken yourself to be since you were very young, you will always feel separate and apart from other human beings, other “selves,” and from the flow of life itself. Ego or “self” identification is to live in duality, in conflict and suffering. There is the “me” and what it wants or likes (health, money, sex, possessions, etc.), and then there is the flip side, the “me” and what it doesn’t want, or doesn’t like. One of the main characteristics of ego-identification is that it always needs to be right, because it needs to affirm its own existence, the existences of this “self,” the “person” that it takes itself to be. For example, if it is preoccupied with thoughts of low self-esteem, low self-worth, or an existential meaninglessness, it may be drawn to the idea of suicide, “self” extinction. So, even in doing away with itself, it continues to get to be right. The shadow side of the ego’s need to be right is that, in order to maintain its belief in itself as a separate entity, it needs to make other egos, other “selves” wrong. This dynamic is behind most of the conflict and suffering in the world.