The Ego. The beginner’s guide to true nature series.

This is the 3rd in a series of blog posts.  A beginner’s guide, if you will!  We’ve looked at who we are, the idea of us being identified with a separate body, and how this then gives birth to the ego.  Today we’re going to delve into the ego a bit more.  If you missed the first two, the link to the first is here: Beginners guide to true self

First of all, it’s important to note that the ego is not a bad guy and something that needs to be got rid of.  If you are on a quest to get rid of your ego, good luck to you, let me know how you get on!  Here’s why I think that is unlikely.  To me, it looks as though there is an idea of a separate me, a separate mind if you will, that allows ‘me’ to experience as Vicky.  Without this illusion of separation, it would be difficult to relate to objects, people, events and so on.  The individual mind is like the prism through which the light is shone, and our experience is the separate colours.  So it is very much meant to look like there is distinction in experience.  Yet all of experience is the same thing.  Consciousness, shining the light of thought through an apparently individual mind.  In no other way is experience possible.  Don’t believe that statement?  Check it for yourself.  Can you experience anything without consciousness?

Take away the ego/localised mind and you take away the prism.  We dissolve back into consciousness and cannot continue to experience life in the glorious technicolour that we currently know it.  So that’s not the objective here.  What we are simply looking to do is see beyond the limited ideas of the ego.  The ego is like a scanner or a trouble-shooter.  Constantly seeking out problems and making comparisons.  Looking at how this apparently separate ‘me’ fairs compared to these apparently separate others.  If I don’t fair well, then I’m not good enough.  If I fair well, then I’m in danger of losing what I have.  This is an extremely limited perspective and has us living in fear and struggle.  When we see the perspective that who we are is not limited to that (as explored in the previous 2 posts in this series – we are not limited to our bodies) we are also not limited to our individual minds – we can feel the peace and ease that comes with knowing that there is nothing that we need to do to be okay, at the level that is the truth of who we really are.

Go back to the exercise we did in the first post, but this time imagine that it is your personality that you are taking away.  So close your eyes and imagine that any thoughts you have about ‘how things ought to be’ go away, does the sense of you still remain?  When ideas of what’s happened to you in the past go, are you still there?  When thoughts of your name, your place in the world, whether you are shy, outgoing, fun to be around, a grumpy git drop away, are you still there?  The answer is an undeniable yes.  So who we are is not our body, and it’s also not our ideas of us as a separate personality.

We’ll delve into this more in future posts!