The Illusion of the Self and The Overactive Ego

I. I is a letter we use to refer to ourselves. What do we mean when we say it though? When people use this word, they are referring to their ego, not what they are. What is the ego? The ego is everything that makes “you”, you. We are all born without an ego. Over time, our ego is built up from our environment and experiences. We form beliefs, patterns of thought, and develop traits that we use to define ourselves. It can be as simple as “I like broccoli”, or as deep as “I am someone who believes that God is real and after death is reincarnation”. We begin to define ourselves in terms of what we do, what we think, and what we feel. This is the build up of the ego. It is the thinker of the thoughts and its contents, the thing that feels emotions and sensations. It judges itself and the outside world, it determines true or false and good or bad.

But it is not you. When someone says they are self-aware, really what they mean is that they are ego-aware. They might say “Yes I’m self-aware, I know my qualities, what I like and don’t like, etc”. The ego is the illusion of separate-ness from the world around you, the delusion that you are some sort of static, distinct entity. You’re not. I can tell you what you are not. You’re not your likes or dislikes. You are not your beliefs, thoughts, or emotions. You’re not your memories and experiences, or your decisions and actions. You are not the stories you tell yourself about you. You are not some being in a body with some or many decades of time to be alive…so what are you?

You are the universe experiencing itself as a human for a short while. You are the universe. “That’s ridiculous! Clearly I’m me, the universe is outside of me”, your ego tells you. But are you not part of it? Did you not “come out” of the universe? Are you not made up of atoms and molecules, the very same atoms and molecules that make up the universe? You’re just a tiny fragment of yourself experiencing, you. You and everything else are all extensions of the whole. You are the Sun and the Earth, the land and the sky. You are the leaves blowing in the wind, and the air that moves them. You. Are. Everything. If you don’t believe it, it’s because your ego doesn’t want you to believe it. The ego wants you to believe that you are it, because as long as you do, it has complete control over you. But you’re not your ego. You’re the silent, ever-present awareness of being. Once you realize this, once you truly know it, then you are free. You never die because the universe never dies. You are not limited or bound because the universe is limitless. But most importantly, everything you see around you is also you.

Unfortunately, since the start of history, humans have let their egos run wild, because they can’t see the truth. People kill other people — really, they kill themselves. People think that they are more or less than others, when we’re all really the same. Hatred, malice, and inhumanity are all the result of the overactive ego. The ego is the root cause of all the pain and suffering people inflict on each other. To be clear though, the ego is not evil, nor is the goal to suppress or destroy it. Without the ego, it would be impossible to navigate life, or even meet basic survival needs. But it needs to be kept in check. You are above your ego, it serves you to help guide you through this temporary life. At least, that’s what should happen.

Alas, the world today is run by the ego. Almost nobody recognizes that they are not separate from the world around them and that all is one. And they never will. We lost control of the wheel long ago. It all began with tribalism and hierarchies, both useful concepts that have been taken way, way too far. Nobody on this planet has control over anything, the ego reigns supreme. So we will keep believing in superiority and inferiority, we will keep focusing on what makes us separate and not what brings us together. Because I want to be I, and I want to be me, not you. And if I don’t like the way your ego has formed from your environment, I might just have to hate your whole being and put you down. Ah, if only they could see that the ego is not the person, it’s a product of their life experiences and environment, of which they had little control over. Sadly, because they think the ego is what they are, they also think the ego is what other people are. And thus the world is plagued by the manifestation of the bad parts of the ego, and it will always stay that way. The only thing you can do is sit and watch as you destroy yourself, over and over again relentlessly. The agony of the whole, always in the back of your head, a constant reminder of the endless cycle of self-inflicted harm.

And it will never change.