To arrive at this awareness of
our true nature, it helps to look more closely at this ego, this “self” you’ve
taken yourself to be.
The first thing to know about the
ego is that it underpins your self-image,
your self-identity, your self-concept and, as such, is tied in with your
self-worth or self-esteem, how you think about and judge this “self” that you
imagine yourself to be. The ego accumulates knowledge, facts, ersatz “truths” and
all the memories of past hurts, traumas, as well as successes, to pack around
itself and convince itself that it is real.
In
order to survive as a separate identity/belief, it then needs to always feel in
control of its domain—of you, in
other words. Your ego needs to know it is right.
It needs to be right, to justify its actions, however misguided. And in order
to be right, it needs to make other egos wrong,
or at least judge them in some way—better than, less than, or superior or inferior
to—in order to maintain its comfortable status quo.
It does this, in the most extreme
cases, through comparing, criticizing, blaming, castigating, condemning,
denouncing, disparaging, reprimanding, and generally finding fault with
anything or anyone that does not measure up to its standards. On the other
hand, when it finds an ego that it is in agreement with, or wants to be like,
to emulate, it causes you to act in a way that seeks approval or—in more
extreme cases—become flattering, fawning, sweet-talking, and doing whatever it
takes to curry favor.
The ego projects its viewpoint out onto the world, in
other words, and measures everything by its projection, as in: “Is this person
acting or behaving the way I think they should be?”
So, whenever you find yourself
caught in one of these behaviors—comparing
yourself as better than or less than another human being in some way—you
are caught in your ego. Becoming aware
of being caught is the key to shifting your behavior, and moving into a place
of greater freedom and presence.
And you become aware by realizing that
your ego is essentially just a thought, the “I” or “me” thought, and its
importance in your life has been that you have built your whole identity around
it—your entire personality—since about age two. And this is why it takes time
to undo, to get free of, your ego.