EGO - Understanding the most important concept about ourself.
Ego is the most important topic when it comes to understanding your self. I purposely choose the word 'self' here and you will shortly know why.
What we think about when we hear the word "ego"
"Oh, this guy has a huge ego!", "Oh, he cant let go, it's his ego"
When we hear about the word 'ego', its most frequently used as a word that describes certain behavioral patterns like stubbornness, lack of selflessness and similar behavior.
What if I told you that this word actually describes much more than that. Ego is not just that stubborn part of your personality or that thing that pushes you to not give up.
Ego is the term that describes your actual self
Now, what is a 'self'? A self is everything that is and always has been you. The self is what you think you are, the image that you have of yourself, your values and thoughts. Whatever your name is, think about your name for a second. This very person, this very person that you think you are and everything you associate with it, that is your ego - your self.
"All of that, what you think you are - that is your very self."
Okay, so there is this thing called ego. This thing that I identify with. But why is that so important to understand? What is the big deal about it?
"Because EGO is the cause for all your suffering, pain and anxiety in life."
Once we understood that pain, suffering, hatred, anxiety and anger can only truely exist for as long as our ego exists, we can finally start to adress them.
But why does our Ego do that? Why does it make us suffer? What is the actual problem? Why do we even 'have it'?
Our natural state - before the ego
First of all, I want you to imagine the following. Imagine a world where there is nothing that you would describe as bad. Nothing that you would describe as good. Things just 'are'. This very state is the a state of flow, a state where we dont judge and categorize everything but just accept what is and go with it.
And that is exactly the state that we are naturally born into. There is no such thing as bad or good, no such thing as values, anxiety or anything alike. This is what scientists usually refer to when they talk about lasting happiness. The 'good' happiness. We will talk about the different types of happiness another time in the future
"In our natural state, there is no suffering"
Have you ever heard about meditation? Have you ever heard about Buddhism and a state called enlightenment? On a very abstract level, that's what its all about. Getting back to that very state - our natural state. Total contentment. Becoming one with the world.
Why do I suffer? How did I get here?
Now that we know more about our natural state, we probably ask ourselves 'How does this all happen?' 'How do we get so far off from our natural state and become so judgemental? Why do we feel miserable?
Since we were born, we learn to label everything. We are told what is bad and what is good. We are told what to do and what not to do. We are told what directions we should go in life and learn about
'who we are'. We get a name and become someone we identify with. Someone that develops certain values. Bit by bit, we create our self-image.
'who we are'. We get a name and become someone we identify with. Someone that develops certain values. Bit by bit, we create our self-image.
"we are at a state where the world is no more part of us."
Suddenly, there is an internal and external world. There is everything we are - the image we have of ourself - and then there is everything around us. Things are happening around us. Things are happening 'to us', often shaping our self-image even further.
We start to relate to some things as 'good' and some things as 'bad'. Why? Because we start protecting our self-image. We protect our 'values', our goals.
Have you ever thought about what you were doing when you got angry losing? When you felt like you failed?
You became protective. Your ego was threatened. Your self-image was threatened to crumble. And then? You respond. A natural survival instinct. However, you have such a clear image over who you are that you were not protecting your physical existence, you protected the existence of your self-image.
And that is, where all our problems became problems. Once we developed our strong believe-system, we can get hurt. We start to doubt ourselves, become depressed as we can not live up to our self-image. We get angry as we become overprotective of our own values. We isolate our self so much from the 'outside' world that now, everything that threatens our ego becomes our enemy, our problems and fears. And everything that supports our self-image,everything that supports our values and goals - becomes what we would so describe as 'the good' in life.
So how do I get rid of the anxiety, stress, pain and suffering ?
You get rid of your ego. Obviously, that is easier said than done and only very few people have reached such a state in life. But from personal experience, I can tell you that working on shrinking your ego step by step will change your life completely.
Even just the sheer fact that you now (hopefully) have a pretty good understanding of what ego and self-image is and how it makes us suffer means that you can have a more clear and objective approach on life. That is not to underestimate as the knowledge of this can be a huge factor in itself.
What are further steps that I can take to slowly get rid of my suffering, anxieties, stress?
1. Meditation
To get more control over your thoughts (and thus your ego) and start shrinking it extremely, I recommend you to start meditating. I will write another article on that but for now you can read about it somewhere else. There is millions of guides out there.
Basically, what meditation will do is you will get a lot more conciousness about your thoughts. It will make you literally hear what your mind is currently going on about and thus you have a way better chance of catching thoughts and molding 'better' thoughts.
2. Truely understanding what is going on in your mind
Make sure you actually understood this article. Read it twice if you feel you did not quite catch up on everything and make sure to come back and re-read it once in a while. Understand that the emotions and the suffering we feel are a sideproduct of the image we created ourselves.
3. As always, repetition. Remind yourself over and over again
Remind yourself of where all these bad thoughts and all of your suffering comes from. The next time you suffer, remind yourself of this article. Remind yourself of what is actually happening. Remind yourself of what you learned about ego.
Me personally, I find myself that it is of the greatest of importance that I remind myself over and over again. Sometimes, I get off the path, my ego takes upper-hand and I lose control. But whenever I get back to this very topic, I get reminded that all that is happening is that my ego is taking control and suddenly, things look very different.
closing words
As said before, I am not a Zen-Master. But from my personal experience I can tell you that understanding what ego is and getting it under control bit by bit will do groundbreaking work for getting your anxieties, anger, emotions, frustrations and every other bit that keeps making your life miserable under control. You will learn to be more self-less, respectful, peacefull and a lot more.
Oh, and for those StarCraft 2 and competitive gaming fans out there! The next time you experience this:
Remember, the reason you get frustrated is that your self-image gets hurt and your ego tries to protect itself! Try to just go with what is happening. Dont judge whether good or bad, accept that this is part of the flow of life. Downswings happen, upswings do too! :)
Thank you for reading!
I put a lot of work into these articles, so if you like them feel free to show your support by following/subscribing/sharing and commenting! I'm always open for suggestions, new topics, critic and everything else.
If you have any further questions, you can always ask me over on http://twitter.com/shocksc2.
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