What is this ego? It is essentially a feeling of superiority over others in an attempt to feel good about ourselves. In part it can be based on pride. We are proud of our achievements, we are proud of our god-given characteristics like intelligence, looks, natural skills, which distinguish us from the herd. We are even proud of our birth ("I come from a 'good' family, country, community....") which like our physical characteristics is not an achievement at all. Pride in characteristics we have not created is silly, and is pure ego. Pride in achievements is justified. If you do good work, there is no harm in feeling proud of that work, of achievement. Pride is fine as long as it is just a good feeling about real achievement, and as a positive payoff that encourages you to achieve more, but not as arrogance, as self aggrandisement, as feeling superior to others.
Pride in achievement does lead to 'ego inflation', that is a pretty universal human frailty, the question is how much and for how long. That is a measure of character - the greater the inflation and the longer it lasts (a lifetime?), the less the character; the less the inflation and the shorter it lasts, the more the character. Ego is an ugly outgrowth of pride, like a wart on a face. Those with character have their eyes open to this, can see the wart and get rid of it, those who dont have character are blind to their faults, and display their warts blindly, with arrogance, for all to see.
Which brings us right to the heart of ego, arrogance. Arrogance is never justified, based as it is on qualities we arrogate to ourselves, superiorities that don't really hold up to light. Everyone claims to be a good boss, and to have a lousy boss, but if we are all good bosses who are the bad ones? Same thing on parenting. Everyone had damaging parents, yet nobody admits to being one. Arrogance can feed off the same achievements as pride. Being good at something or having stellar achievements in some areas doesn't really make you a superior person, yet we nurture that fallacy. Arrogance is an essential ingredient of ego, inseparable from it, a way of aggrandising ourselves. The more ego we have, the more we aggrandise ourselves, the more we find cause to aggrandise ourselves the more ego we develop. Ego can feed on itself.
There is another critical factor that builds ego, and that is a sense of inadequacy, inferiority. The more we suffer from the deflation that comes from a feeling of inferiority or inadequacy, the more we want to inflate those parts of the personality that yield to ego. Ego is often just a means of papering over the cracks in our own personalities. A sense of inadequacy makes it difficult to deal with the world, ego kicks in as a means of bolstering our resolve, a coping mechanism. Actually a feeling of inadequacy is nothing but an expression of ego, which does not want to accept limitations and sees them as shameful flaws. Humility accepts limitations with equanimity, accepts that we have flaws, that we are not perfect. Being so quick to judge others is pretty much the same thing; we use the perceived weaknesses of others to make a flattering comparison with our own flawed selves. Ego has at least as much to do with our inadequacies and insecurities as with our triumphs and strengths.
Ego in this sense is the opposite of humility. Both exist in the same individual, in all of us. In some ways we are humble, in other ways we display ego. Each of us will see our humilities rather more easily than our egos, the other way around for others. People who are highly egoistic can be surprisingly humble in some ways, and people who are quite humble can have a roaring ego in other ways.
In effect then, ego causes us to see a distorted picture of ourselves and others, driven by our own self aggrandisement and self abnegation relative to others. This distorts our behaviour, our interaction with others and can take us all the way to delusional behaviour. We can see the distortions as phony behaviour in others rather more clearly than in ourselves. But we can be sure that the more intolerant we are of others, the greater the vulnerabilities of our own ego. Its our way of getting even, cutting others down to our size - or smaller. Seen in this light, a lot of anger is also just a display of ego - though maybe not all, what about anger at evil?
A lot of these distortions in perception and behaviour are enabled by the pressures of living. We have to deal with people with power over us, people have to deal with us in situations where we have power over them. These situations cut across different domains, social, family, career, governmental. The dynamics can lead to intrinsically symbiotic situations which are prone to distortions in behaviour on both sides. Maintaining equanimity requires the ability to remain detached, not be deferential and sycophantic, and perhaps even quietly speak truth to power, and conversely to wear power lightly, and accept having truth spoken to us without getting upset. Integrity gets seriously challenged in these situations, and over time can get distorted.
At a very fundamental level all of this has to do with seeing ourselves as distinct and different to others. That is what makes us self conscious in the truest sense of the term. What is true in the temporal world also holds true in the spiritual. Ego separates us from true reality. That is what 'maya' means....seeing ourselves as distinct, different and independent of everything else including our creator, seeing 'I and not I' as the universe. Even physically, we see ourselves as very different from others, and from the heavens, animals, plants, the earth. If we had scanning electron microscopes instead of eyes, we would not see the facades we see, in fact we would not see the facades at all, like in an x-ray (would you be able to make out the difference between a film star and you in an MRI or X-ray? You might even look better!). We would look down to the molecular and atomic levels, where the differences narrow. And if you get down to subatomic levels, differences narrow even more, things look very similar. Gold is not as different to lead, to sewage, to water, to flesh. Just a lot of subatomic particles buzzing around. And at a deeper level, using techniques not yet known, perhaps subatomic particles are just different representations of the energy that created the big bang, little shards of the cosmic energy released when time began, which keep coming together kaleidoscopically to give us everything that exists in this unfurling of reality, this time series evolution of the big bang which we call the universe.
Even though we are basically the same, the truth is we are also distinct from the rest of reality, we have a distinct body, a distinct soul. While part of the solution to ego lies in seeing how we are the same as everything else, both our physical and spiritual lives depend upon individuality, and that distinction between self and non-self can leave a gap, a fault line where ego creeps in. The dichotomy is that while seeking to see ourselves as an integral part of a bigger reality, we have to forge our path alone, even spiritually. The question is what price we put on this individuality, this difference from others. Ego comes in when we fail to see the essential same-ness and interconnected-ness, fail to look at the differences dispassionately, and start applying self serving value judgements. These self serving judgements distort our view of ourselves, and also of others.
True humility lies not in being meek and mild, not in being subservient or inferior, but rather in not seeking to judge either ourselves or others. People feel superior (and are treated so) because of looks, intelligence, charisma, all pretty much givens. Even wealth is determined partly by where we are born and partly by the skills and opportunities fate has dealt us. What if I had been born a poor, low caste starving landless labourer, dimwitted to boot? How far could I have got? People feel inferior (and are treated so) because they lack looks, or are dull in personality and brain, also pretty much givens. If we deal with someone far less bright than us, why should we feel superior or get irritated by the person's lack of comprehension? 'That guy is an idiot'? Well actually that guy is exactly what god made him. If he has an IQ of 50, think of what it means to go through life like that. If the person is dumpy and ugly, think of what it means to go through life like that. All through no fault of one's own. True humility lies in not judging, not in feeling inconsequential. Humility is being neutral between self aggrandisement and self abnegation; between superiority and inferiority.
We might justify the advantages we are born with by saying, arent they the fruit of my karma? Aren't the coordinates of my birth, my materially comfortable life, my intelligence, looks, talent the result of my own efforts in past lives? Well, when we consider the proposition of superior SQ (Spiritual Quotient or the spiritual bank balance we have accumulated over lives through our karma), how do we know what a high SQ looks like? In every sphere of temporal life, things get tougher the higher you climb, no matter what the domain may be. It takes colossal effort to achieve excellence in any field- the old saw about genius being 99% perspiration. Why would that not be true of SQ? Take a deep breath and consider: maybe people with high SQ are born poor, that is more of a test and a tougher proving ground than being rich. How many great souls, mahapurushes, including Christ, have been poor? Buddha, though rich, had to give it all up to attain samadhi. Similarly, couldn't poor looks, low intelligence, a dull personality all just be challenges for a higher stage of spiritual development, triggered by our karma, our SQ? Let us not make assumptions about what the fruits of good karma look like, it may not be what we imagine - and it may not be the same for all. Maybe each of us is dealt a hand unique and singularly appropriate for our development challenges in this life.
When you start to see things in that way, the spiritual and temporal approaches to the ego start to coalesce. The real challenge is humility. True humility, not what someone called the last refuge of scoundrels. Humility comes from being centered within yourself; from being truly self assured, not self conscious; from not seeing ourselves as the centre of the universe - not seeing 'I and not I' as the universe. When you have true humility, you are not concerned about what others think about you....what impression you make when interacting with others. Your behaviour will tend to be more uniform and consistent, based on your beliefs, regardless of the situation and its provocations, regardless of whether you are dealing with your boss or your sibling or your servant. Ego is pompous and self important, humility is modest. Ego may seek to impress or intimidate others, humility is self contained. Equally, on the the flip side ego will feel inferior, inadequate, diffident in certain situations, will cower before power; humility accepts limitations, feels no diffidence at all (think of Gandhi), stays on even keel. Ego displays emotion, humility displays equanimity. Humility reflects integrity of behaviour and soul.
I now know I have been largely unconscious about the workings of my ego, even though I thought I had it consciously covered. That is the base stage, the stage of unconscious incompetence. The second stage is to become conscious of our incompetence, to be aware how insidiously, stealthily and powerfully our ego controls our behaviour. The next stage is to look at every aspect of life, examine it dispassionately, suspend value judgement, look for ego and try to deactivate it. That is the third stage, which I am now engaging. And finally, if we can, get to a stage where we do not have to consciously struggle to fight ego, it just happens naturally. We have to go through the four defined stages of competence in dealing with the ego - from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, and, if we can make it, to unconscious competence.
If we really want to move forward both as humans and spiritually, our biggest challenge is to dismantle our ego and pursue humility unflinchingly, and as resolutely as possible to reject the illusory ego inflating and deflating traps the world lures us with. This is our toughest battle, a lifelong one, where we can expect no more than limited success - even the rishis had an ego. One step at a time.
