The Ego, Your Clumsy Ally

We are all develop an Ego within us from an early age, maybe even from birth. This ego is like a strong bully, who hurts others to protect himself. He is clumsy and will foul up your sentences and thoughts with his brutish ways. Once we set on the road to enlightenment, we realize we must do everything we can to destroy this bully inside us. Eventually, after much struggle, you may find yourself victorious over this ego. The death of the ego.

The purpose of this thread is not to teach you how to defeat this ego, only wisdom and understanding can do this, and these things take time and research. This is for those who have defeated their ego, and reborn a new ego. The ego of love and oneness. This new oneness ego will still be haunted by the old dominator ego, and you may find yourself thinking things that you know would be hurtful to say or act upon. So instead of trying to exorcise this ghost of the past, you may try to join forces with it. If you have no troubles with your ego then congratulations, you have done what few people have done. For me, I have had to try this second method. Use your new oneness ego to drive your actions, this way your actions are centered around selflessness, service to others, and healing.

When you heal someone, you will get that egotistical feeling of pride. Let the ego have this, let him sing praises to himself as a reward for trying your best to genuinely help others. Let the head grow huge with thoughts of saving the world and spreading love and joy. This will lead to motivation to do more even more good works. If you do this, you have made yourself a powerful ally. The strong man of the ego can fight for you if you show him how, just remember he is clumsy and foolish, quick to react and slow to think. Use him as a tool, a member of your team. This is why he won't go away, even after you realize his folly. He knows he can help, you just have to teach him how.

Think you for your time

Once we realize that we cannot know with certainty just who we really are, then we can no longer take ourselves as who we think we are, or thought we were very seriously. The real person, the authentic one who knows who and what he's not, gets to enjoy the humor that ego provides as comedic material. It then dissolves and is reintegrated. The very idea of killing the ego as a bully, is also very funny, thanks for the laugh!

I still have ego issues. If anyone can't tell...lol

I am not ashamed of it, I accept my ego as something that keeps my personal identity intact.
my ego is a defensive mechanism.
It inflates and deflates under times of pressure and stress.

I always had such a hard time understanding the shedding of the ego.Perhaps it is the term?
OP, would you please explain to me what the EGO is in your opinion?

I battle my ego everyday.

And then my daughter wakes up, smiles the smile of a thousand angels and suddenly I feel purpose again.

reply to post by Darkblade71


The Ego to me is a construct of nature to drive forward the ancient evolutionary paradigm of survival of the fittest. It is a defense mechanism, and an offense mechanism. It is a vital part of our past, and is partly responsible for where we are today, but now we are the ones who are responsible for who we will be tomorrow, so we must take control of our nature and actually be the ones to guide the ego into the new evolutionary paradigm of oneness.

Ego is not a dirty word.
Dont you believe what you've seen or you've heard.

Originally posted by MemeticHarvest
Let the ego have this, let him sing praises to himself as a reward for trying your best to genuinely help others. Let the head grow huge with thoughts of saving the world and spreading love and joy.

I respect your point of view, however I disagree with this point.

Pride is always bad, and if you let yourself have one vice suddenly you will have a plethora of vices on your hands. Pride is bad because it cuts you off from unity, even the pride of being a healer, or the pride of being enlightened. This is because Pride is an attachment, and attachments work towards engrossing us in the physical, emotional or mental planes and not letting the Light of our Higher Self shine forth. Hence, attachment rebuilds the wall we have worked so hard to remove in the first place.

It would be the same folly to say that after defeating Lust and practicing continence, therefore destroying that aspect of the Ego, we should immediately go get a girlfriend and "really love her" because we are now free from Lust. All we would do is create an attachment that in appearance seemed different, but in practice was not.

Or it would be like if we cultivated patience and tolerance to the point of destroying that part of our Ego, then decided it was OK to be intolerant towards things that were really inimical to those who are trying to follow the Path, that we could hate something as long as it was evil enough.

This is actually a trick the ego uses in order to maintain its power. It does not particularly care what form our attachments take, good or evil, it can turn our best intentions against us. So why is it bad to think about saving the world and spreading love and joy if you've really achieved Enlightenment?

Because the Enlightened one doesn't need to think these thoughts, or attach their ego to these things. Rather, they live them by example. They ARE saving the world by merely being alive, and they spread love and joy because of what they are, merely as a result of the proximity of others to them, or as a result of them directing their energies towards others. To be without Ego is to be Enlightened, because the Ego represents all that is Selfish and puts up barriers, creating attachments. While Enlightenment represents all that is Unselfish and breaks down those barriers, remaining non attached.

It is impossible to kill the ego but once one has seen that thoughts appear from nowhere and that it is not 'me' putting them there they become amusing.
The silent witness, the seer and knower of all 'things' including thoughts, watches all appearances with wonder and humour.

reply to post by MemeticHarvest


Thank you for your answer

So for you, the shedding of the ego that we have created around us to protect us is also what holds us back from "oneness"?

Ok, I agree with that.
That is how I view the ego as well, perhaps I am just one who prefers his own personal identity. I have felt oneness before, it is an awesome thing to experience, but I wouldn't want to stay in oneness, I'd never get anything done. I guess a lot of it depends on where you are in life and how your ego was built up in the first place. I personally believe for myself that shedding my ego would be self destructive.
But then, that could just be fear talking.
My ego was built through struggle and emotional trauma.
It not only keeps people out, but it keeps me in. Over the years I have realized that my ego, although a cage, has its place within my world, I don't think I will ever be able to get rid of it, only turn it to glass so I can see through it, if you understand my meaning. Some might disagree, but thats ok, I have to stick with what works for me personally. I do agree, ego is a pain sometimes, but it a part of who we are.

Originally posted by Darkblade71
I still have ego issues. If anyone can't tell...lol

I am not ashamed of it, I accept my ego as something that keeps my personal identity intact.
my ego is a defensive mechanism.
It inflates and deflates under times of pressure and stress.

I always had such a hard time understanding the shedding of the ego.Perhaps it is the term?
OP, would you please explain to me what the EGO is in your opinion?

The ego is a defensive mechanism, and you are totally correct in its function. If you were to walk up to someone and just destroy their ego, exposing them to egolessness, their whole sense of reality would collapse. It would be like not merely taking the floor out from under them, but gravity itself, and the psychological consequences could be devastating, especially when the ego reasserts itself. Thats why the path is often gradual, and usually done under the instruction of one who understands whats going on.

The Ego is also multi-dimensional. Its your sense of "I-ness". Its your sense of being separate from creation. The experience of Egolessness is not just an intellectual recognition that "we are all one" but a literal experience that there is no difference between you or those things around you. In such a state you can literally understand whats in the mind of an ant, or what the song of a bird means, or what the experience of a tree is like. Of course your connection with fellow humans is also at this level, and you can really understand your fellow man.

In Buddhism there are four stages of Enlightenment. Each stage represents the removal of a set of "Fetters" which are attachments that bind us to Samsara (the wheel of rebirth) and therefore bind us to suffering. These fetters represent the different levels of ego entrenchment, of attachment and separation. Even an Enlightened person may therefore have an ego until they have achieved ultimate Enlightenment and basically become a Buddha themselves. Thats why there are numerous warnings given to students on the path to never abandon your precepts and ethics and such, because even when you remove some of the fetters the ego still exists, and will look for ways to cause you to fall. And falls can and do happen.

So the shedding of the ego is the shedding of attachment which creates the illusion of separation from the rest of the universe.

Even before I started what I call the hobby of looking into spirituality, psychology taught me that the ego had to go, as it is the cause of many problems everyone experiences. Despite this awareness, I have never been able to even dent my ego, which I don't think is all that horrible, but it definitely makes things more difficult.

I have not really started a rigorous training regime or anything, and basically just read about similar topics a few times per week. I like this thread and think that it addresses an extremely important topic to all of humanity. Keep it up.

it's so hard to not be egoic about ego death

death of the self...that sought after moment that we all spend our entire lives searching for. you're lucky if you get it once. blessed to see it more than that. those brief little glimpses into the heavens are what remind us of the evils of the ego.

one thing i've found to help me see past my ego is to stop asking who am i...stop being concerned with my identity. now...i ask "why am i?", which relates to my purpose, which i have a fairly good guess at now but it's still my main drive. the ego is about separation...division...definition...labels. sooo easy to get caught up in this world.

so for me, i find that the easiest way to step outside of my ego is to look for my purpose in this moment in life more so than look for my future or place in this world. how can i help? how can i add to this person's life? what can i do to add some positive vibes to this situation.

it's no cure for the ego but when i'm serving my purpose...i'm no longer serving myself...

This is very good food for thought. Just actually yesterday I made a thread how I have lost the unloving hurting ego, and it was/ still is hard. Its a struggle, but I know once I reach the end ill be a much more positive person.

As I get older, my ego is slowly replaced by humor. I mean don't get me wrong, I still have my ego when it comes to certain things.

Let me tell you though, when a guy at a bar tries to start a fight, and you fart on him and run away, you don't need ego to figure out the hilarity of it all. Shuts down all egos pretty fast.

The ego is like the 'extra' person inside, it is the one that wants.
It wants to do the right thing, it wants to win, it wants a purpose. The wanting is the ego, it desires and fears. It wants more and it wants less.
The ego is seeking because it does not know that it is complete already.

When there is a realization that you are just one, the seeker (ego) evaporates.
Peace is what lies beyond the ego.