WHAT DO WE DO WITH OUR EGO?

What do with do with our demanding egos? The goal of most seems to be, “We satisfy our egos!” However, our ego-nature is insatiable. It never stops demanding more. Besides, this solution leads to both arrogance and depression.

Others have opted for the opposite solution. They want to either starve or disable the ego. This is the solution of those who opt for meditation:

·       Have you ever thought how your life would turn out without the ego? The current problems you have would be a non-issue. So you’d neither be arrogant nor depressed. You would just exist as you are. This is a non-issue for you. You wouldn’t even think about these stuff. You would not let other people’s opinion’s effect you at all. Neither positive nor negative. You would not even have a self-image. Because without the ego, you can’t have these imaginary social constructs. All of these “personality traits” creeps up on your life and starts ruining your relationships and happiness.

·       Life with no ego has no resistance. Everything is as is. If someone makes fun of you and calls you “an unworthy little twat”, guess what your reaction would be if you had no ego? Nothing. Because other people’s opinions are a non-issue for you. You don’t have to defend your sense of self because it doesn’t exist. You don’t have to prepare counter-arguments because that only makes the problem worse. You don’t have to plot revenge scenarios because you are not even offended. All of these “problems” are generated by your ego and if you want to be unconditionally happy in your life, there is no other way but to transcend it. https://stoic-leaders.com/dangers-of-ego/?fbclid=IwAR0k_M97ZW6Eiq3FrEu9OMcDa9DM2p2LCzg8ael2sQACI9SFvvyD2wxLuNk

Sounds good so far! What is their answer? Dissociation from this deceptive organ:

·       Ego is just too sneaky and subtle. You can only waste your life away forcing and debating with it. Theories, debates, reading, listening, talking, arguing and knowledge will only get you so far. If in doubt, remember the priceless wisdom. “Meditate on the breath (mindfulness meditation to build concentration and awareness skills) and then self-enquire (the teachings of Ramana Maharshi) until you are free of all psychological sufferings and ego. (aka enlightenment) Do this every day and trust in the process that eventually your mind will be healed.

From what must we dissociate? From the ego, from those things that make us human. This raises the question, “What then is the ego?” The ego is what motivates us to take our first steps and to gain mastery. It builds hospitals, universities, and makes technological advances.

The ego tells us what is right and wrong and chastens us when we do wrong. It makes many critical self-evaluations. It provides us with a self-image, a self-definition. This definition defines what we can and cannot do. It tells us that we aren’t a bird that flies or a fish that swims. It tells us what we can do well, whether paint portraits or quarterback a pro-team. Ego makes us into social beings concerned about conforming to the standards of our parents and also those of society, and tells us how we can be valuable, loved, and significant.

Some seek to feed the ego in socially approved ways, others in non-approved ways, but the ego demands satisfaction. In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver identifies this drive to establish our self-importance and to be a “somebody”:

• Individual humans are not concerned so much about the survival of the species as they are about their personal survival or significance. In order to push ourselves beyond our confining space-time limits, we as individuals try to set ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. It is unsettling to admit that one is average or ordinary – a routine person. (7)

We are so desperate to be a “somebody” that it might even lead us to murder. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, first obtained his idol’s autograph before gunning him down. He later explained:

• “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (47)

Meditation would have us dissociate ourselves from our ego-driven drives. However, the effects of dissociation upon individuals and their society might not be beneficial. Indian economist Vishal Mangalwadi observed that Hindu philosophy was directly related to the impoverishment of India:

• Our monks did not develop technical aids to improve their eyesight. They took pride in closing even perfectly good eyes in meditation. (The Book that Made your World, 108)

According to Mangalwadi, meditation and the disdain for hard work kept India backward for centuries. However, it was technology and the Christian theology that had inspired it that had rescued the West:

• The peasants’ humble wheeled plow generated the economic strength that helped save Europe from colonization by Islam. During the Middle Ages, Islamic forces were able to invade Europe almost at will. Muslims conquered southern Spain and Portugal and invaded France in the eighth century. In the ninth century, they conquered Sicily and invaded Italy, sacking Ostia and Rome in 846. By 1237, they had begun to conquer Russia. Constantinople was captured in 1453, and the battles of 1526 in Hungary and 1529 in Vienna suggested that it was merely a matter of time before the mullahs, caliphs, and sheikhs would rule cities like Rome, Vienna, and Florence. Equipped with a coulter, a horizontal share, and a moldboard, Europe’s new plow increased productivity by tilling rich, heavy, and badly drained river-bottom soil…The net result was the gradual elimination of starvation, the improved health of the people, and a strengthening of the economic foundations of the West relative to Islam. (101-102)

As is the case with any of our traits, the ego produces both good and bad fruit. Is there any way that the ego can be managed so that the good will prevail? Somehow, our need for self-exaltation and the social-approval has to be satisfied in another way. Can we die to our ego in a productive way? Jesus promised that there was another way:

·       “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)

This was never intended as a self-help prescription. Instead, it is a promise of God, as Jesus had explained:

·       “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

Our ego is too big to battle too connected to even segregate. Our ego is us. Our help must come from Above.