Chapter1: The I in you is the ego.
Try the seemingly impossible. Try forgetting your I self. And you won’t be able to. Who won’t be able to? It’s asking the I to switch itself off. And it can’t. The I in you cannot easily disappear. The somebody we are is because of I.
This is our ego self. It is your formless form. There is nothing tangible about it, but it exists, and drives you an illusion that spreads far and wide.
The measure of I in you is what all affects you as happening to yourself, and what doesn’t. The expression on I is not limited to your body self, but extends to all people, things, intangible stuff that you have in your life.
I starts with your self-image built over time growing up. You developed certain likes, dislikes, pattern of doing things, saying things. All anchored around I. “I like to do it this way. I’d like it to be extra hot please. I have no time for this. I suck at this.”
I and my are same. My incorporates people, things around you in your I, as if they are special or not special because of you. “my family is the best, my parents so easy going, my kids are the naughtiest, my friends are the best ever, my dog is so loving, my car is so ancient and so on.
There is an implicit emotion in all “my associations”. The I and the my create all the interesting relationships in the world.
So the I creates your world! Without an I you are nobody. That’s why it is nearly impossible and scary to drop the I. Imagine you have forgotten the I magically. Not that you’d become a stranger to everyone, but you’d find it hard to connect with everyone who is operating at level of I. You’d discover how funny and gone wrong this is! Beneath the I, hidden you find, a universal self. You exist like all other nature’s creations that don’t have an I - birds, animals. You just are with whatever is. Your mind is open as a blue sky.
Chapter2: There was a time, where there was no I in you. You were empty.
The I in us is given to us. Your name is xyz. You are a boy or a girl. You oughta be like this, or that. And so on. We took it without asking any questions. Others defined it, told us who we are, how we should do things, act, say, and be. We took it, and built up on it. Kind of snowballed from a little something.
But who took the I form in us? One must fathom.
There was a time when we had no name identification, no understanding of separate differentiated existence. And we can remember that time if we try hard. We were nobody, just existing.
This nobody took the I form of us today. This nobody is vast relative to the I form. It encompasses all the nobodies across all life forms.
The beginning of I in us also is the beginning of separation. And all things separation brings e.g. feeling insecure, jealous, greedy, fearful. Now that there is an illusory I center, it attracts all the other illusions to build upon it. Notice if there is no I, there is no other also. If there is no other, all becoming, all comparison, all fears from the other drops. You are not subject to suffering that is inherent in I. Rather you are in a state of one with all and in wonder.
The I in us divides. But if you really look into it, and start asking who am I, there is no I to be found. Noone has found it. It’s all make-belief. In Fact when you start finding it, you fall back to nobody that you were and still are.
Chapter3: Examine your I. See what it is made of. See how it works.
To examine you I, you must attempt to separate from it. As if there is a person within you but you are not it. You do not change it but simply observe it. Then slowly you discover the workings of ego.
Ego is a complex web or ball of stuff, selected by you, or attracted by you. There is no center in this ball if you try to see to whom all this stuff matters.
Whatever is in the radar of I, you will find you are sensitive to it, affected by it. Beyond this radar a lot exists, a lot of which you are indifferent to, and some of it you are also in conflict with.
Ego or I is always right in its own light. By default there is no self-critique (which requires going beyond). And with this, everyone owning an ego is right in their own mental space. And not everyone is willing to change their right-ness to someone else’s right-ness. Thus conflicts exist. And it’s possible no one is right!
The country you belong to, the state, the city is part of your ego. The accent you have, the style you exhibit, the attitude with which you do things is all a part of initialization of ego. So if someone comments on your country, state, city or your expression you notice it more than anything else. If the comment is negative you feel hurt. If positive you feel elated and proud. The identification is working at subtle levels. While you might have no original contribution to any of these things you are initialized with.
Any object or even abstract belief can be part of your ego. And due to the limited nature of the mind ego cannot tolerate differences easily. All emotions that contract us, like anger, hate, humiliation, narrow minded-ness are because of ego not accepting something that is either right, or just different. When ego is operating inside of you, you get defensive, protective of what you know when challenged with fresh new perspectives, possibilities. Like someone is attacking you.
The ego is so subtle, that it even works against its past form. If you sang a song yesterday to an audience, and also repeated the performance today. And if someone says yesterday you were better, you’d feel slightly upset. You want your current self to be in a better light than your yester self.
Observe if some natural disaster happens at someplace, each country wants to check first how many of their countrymen got affected, and what they can do to get them out. This is a subtle ego working at the level of a country. You are not able to relate beyond your ego-associations. The same exists at a personal level. You can feel the pain for someone you know more than for someone you don’t know. Similarly you can feel more pain for something you own, vs for something someone else owns.
Imagine your house catches fire, but earlier in the day you sold the house to someone else. You won’t feel as bad. But if someone tells you in the next minute the deal didn’t go through, you will start screaming, running, crying. This is the ego association that works through you to see the same thing, situation differently. There is no difference happening in the burning house.
Another aspect of ego is that it can get bigger and bigger with your achievements. And this could be harmful, because life is constantly changing. Your achievements or capabilities do not last forever, but ego doesn’t become smaller once expanded. And then you stay locked in with an ego you cannot operate with.
If you are able to observe the workings of your ego, you can see how myopic it is. And causes all kinds of drama in life.
Once you start examining, observing ego, you rise above it. The drama doesn’t disappear, but you don’t suffer from any of it if you have risen above and beyond.
Chapter4: Realize it’s all self-made-belief. You have reinforced an identity of you in your mind.
There is no absolute-ness in ego, no center, nothing that it stands on. It’s much like a castle made in the sky, but believed to exist strongly, even protected, fortified and worth fighting for.
Remember the ego was not there to begin with. If you were to go to another part of the world suddenly with everything different, new, unknown, where you can’t even speak the language or make sense of things, you’d become a nobody. You’d see your past ego as a dream. You’d still carry impressions of it, but soon you’d realize you cannot operate with it anymore. With this conceptual relativity you can see there is deeper you. The ego was just a strong mental construct.
A deeper understanding of the setup of ego, allows you to see it for what it is. It’s not you. You are vast, ego is tiny. And you should not let this tiny thing define you, or limit you in what you can do or cannot do.
ChapterX: The dark side of ego
Ego causes a lot of breakage! You lose people, things because either you or them hold ego based beliefs to be more dear than the other.
Everyone changes due to the cosmic rhythms of life including yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is free to evolve to a version you don’t like. But ego is very selective, fragile and doesn’t adapt to change very well. And when that happens, relations break, go cold, or become irreparable forever.
When relations break, it is a sign of a dark side ego operating within you. There are some invisible, implicit preconditions, expectations that exist as a filter in you. And it labels things, people. Accepts, rejects them on whims, sometimes being irrational, arbitrary. Vs accepting them as is.
A thing or a person which is a source of love and joy in your life can disappear. It could be your ego, their ego or a combination. So be aware!
You must get familiar with your dark side and see how it affects you, and other people. The more you know it, the less it’d affect you.
Chapter5: There is a practical purpose of I.
On the good side, ego in you helps you rise in the external world. Makes a vibrant world happen!
If someone says to you, you are no good at something, it can hit the ego. A hurt ego is like a wild card. Your internal mechanism always finds a way to resolve it. It can push you to improve, or it can cause you to lose interest and do something else. It’s unpredictable what you chose to do. And this unpredictability drives the world. Someone's ego gets hurt, and they are onto something because of it.
Ego is individual personalization of the universe around themselves. And no one personalization is right or wrong. Collectively all perspectives are needed.
Ego steers you to have strong opinions, views, beliefs. Shapes you up to be unique. And this is needed for the functioning of the world. Diversity of opinions is needed when dealing with complex huge undertakings in companies, governments and so on.
Ego is thus a double edged sword. It's good and bad, and depends on if you manage it or it manages you. More often than not it overpowers you.
A balanced use of ego would be to apply it where it makes a positive impact. Your unique opinion could make all the difference to make decisions. While it is good to lower your ego in any arguments that could lead to disastrous outcomes.
Ego is the one that drives healthy competitive spirit among people, companies, nations. Drives one to do better than the other “If others can do it, why cannot I do it”. Overall driving things to excellence.
Chapter6: I generates all suffering there is. No I, no suffering possible. Suffering always happens to an I.
What is suffering in the first place?
Feeling inferiority, jealousy, humiliation, anger, depression and such emotions.
Expectations, desire is not met.
Being stuck. Can’t get out of a situation or can’t move on from someone.
Discontented with stuff of the world. Endless complaints about all things.
Look again who is experiencing all of the above.
Who is the one feeling jealous, or who is the one dictating expectations, or who is stuck, or discontented.
In all of the above, without someone, some entity claiming to feel so, think so, suffering is not possible.
Suffering exists so long an I exists. Another word for suffering is imagined separation.
You are obviously the center of your world, materialized by your I or ego. But it is a false center. Or a false home. Much like a balloon filled with space can fathom its separate existence, defining a space inside it, owning it and concluding the space outside is alien. And generating all kinds of suffering based on this separation. But the fact is there is no separation of space because of the balloon.
Chapter7: Search for real I. Ask to whom all this is happening. Observe. Who am I? Go on asking.
Most of us exit life with all beliefs and identifications of ego. We never start a true committed inquiry into who we really are. What is our beginning state before all identifications? How did this all get started?
The I self we have identified with serves purpose for worldly existence, but does bring us a lot of suffering. To get away from recurrent suffering the only way is to go within.
One must ask to whom all this is happening to? There must be some entity that is there all along. It cannot be anything of this physical world. As we are clearly not something that we can see.
It cannot come out of imagination, for then who must be imagining it?
Some contemplation reveals that it cannot be anything other than a deep sense of subjectivity or i-am-ness. The search cannot stop with this. What is this subjectivity? Go on asking!
It is not something, someone that exists in the realm of mind.
The mind can be absolutely silent, all senses shutdown voluntarily, then who remains? Someone must remain to observe the state of silence.
There is nothing in this ultimate subjective self that can be defined. It is unknown. All we can know is that it is not anything we know. It’s negation of all that can be seen, felt, experienced. It is the ultimate seer.
Still go on asking. The asking-ness allows you to see the stuff of the world as distinctly separate from your i-am-ness. Like going through a finer and finer sieve, as if you were distilling yourself to your essence.
Until you can no longer do the asking-ness. Like you have screamed at the top of your voice and your throat chokes. Then drop it all.
At some point, when your sincerity is unquestionable, when you are distilled enough, the embedded infinite in you will take notice. It may dawn upon you suddenly you’d know your true self.
Chapter8: Your true identity is here and now awareness, i-am-ness. Reject all other conceptions of you.
It is here and now only. The i-am-ness cannot be elsewhere. Everything else is just imagination or projection from the past. If there is an ultimate self it must exist in the here and now.
The more you become aware of your being you are in the present moment, and the more it helps to steer away from an ego which is based on all past stuff.
The ego needs support from all its associations to exist, all fears, apprehensions. Come to reject it all in the present moment.
I do not exist as this or that identity.
I am not afraid of what may unfold.
I do not have any labels or worth the world may have given me.
And so on until you arrive feeling like a nobody. And then doors to freedom start opening!
Try observing or spending time with people who do not have much ego self built into them. Who are open to whatever is happening and not getting affected by it, and are in here and now celebrating.
If you can spend time with kids, little children, you’d know how light it feels to not have an ego and how vibrant life can be without it.
On the other hand, observe hard when you feel hurt, feel anger, or jealousy or fear. There is the footprint of ego. The best chance to rise above it when you see it active. When you do not react and just observe, you see ego functioning and it’d start to slowly disable it. You’d laugh at yourself for being so totally captured by a mental construct. Then you are on to freedom from it. Then instead of all such negative emotions you’d feel positivity in any situation, any place, no matter what.
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