Eckhart Tolle explains how the ego builds identity through concepts and enemies, and why transcending these patterns opens access to a deeper consciousness. He argues the ego needs boundaries and opposition to survive, but spiritual awakening means moving beyond that constructed self.
And so as the adult builds up identifications that form the identity, and unfortunately it's never quite enough. There's always something missing. And quite often it is painful to compare yourself to others. The more do I have more or less than the others. So the ego is to do with what I can do, how I look, what I have, my possessions, abilities, playing an instrument, sports, good at this, good at that, whatever it may be. For a long time I struggled with an identity because I had an unhappy sense of identity. I couldn't identify with possessions because my parents didn't have any possessions, just basic ones and I didn't have any. I couldn't identify with a great, strong, good looking body. I didn't have that. So I was struggling. I felt diminished, let's say, compared to others, I felt diminished. This pain is very painful. And so after many years I suddenly realized, ah, I got it. I know what I can do. I can be more knowledgeable than others. I can read books and then I can talk about these books intelligently and I can show others that I know more than they do. It worked, but it didn't make me happy. I was still very insecure and basically unhappy trying to show off what to do. Great intellectual. I was dropping names of famous authors, I just dropped Kafka. But that was for another reason. That was not for egoic reasons, I can assure you. And so you live in a precarious way feeling. My identity is not complete yet. I need something. There's something missing. That is a very fundamental feeling for humans who are trapped in their own ego. There is something missing, there's something not right. And so they are seeking, seeking, seeking and seeking to add something to who I am or who I think I am. It's always conceptual. And so the ego also needs boundaries. The ego needs a boundary. It needs to say, this is I, me and this is the other. Without the boundary, it cannot sustain its sense of identity. So it needs to feel better than or superior to somebody else. The boundary around the ego needs some kind of enemy the other people have. I forgot to mention. An important part of conceptual identity for many people is also collective identity. It's not just personal. You also take things from the collective, the country where you live, or your religion, whatever it may be, or your political persuasion, and that becomes part of your identity, your conceptual identity of it. Collective identity. It could also be race. If you are a racist, then you identify with your race as superior than another race, another conceptual identity. Religion can be an important part of your conceptual identity too. And what it usually means, my religion is the only one that is true and all the others are false. When you hear that, it's a clear sign that it is the ego speaking. The ego has adopted, identified with religion and it needs to pronounce all the others as inferior. Only ours or mine or our religion is the only true one. All the others are going to hell. We are the only ones who are going to heaven. Well, that's very satisfying to the ego. Wow. I am one of the few chosen ones. Look at me. Wonderful. But then you need others that disagree with you, because without the others, you cannot sustain your. Your conceptual identity. If the others don't disagree, then your identity becomes fluid and dissolves. So you need the others who have opposite interpretations of your same religion or some other religion, and they are your enemy because they are probably controlled by the devil. There, that's them. Politically, you can do it too. You have a political system that pronounces the other as not just inferior, as actually evil. That all kinds, collective identities, any kind of prejudice that people have is to do with conceptual identity. Race is one that many people have. If you don't have much else in your life, you could identify with your race and see, okay, our race is the greatest and all the others are inferior. And then that gives you your sense of identity. Now you can see how you need the other. In an imaginary scenario, let's say a person who is a racist, one morning he or she wakes up not having become a beetle, as in Kafka. No. One morning he or she wakes up, suddenly finds himself on another planet, and then begins to realize that everybody on this planet is exactly the same race as me. There is no other race. In fact, on this planet, where this person suddenly finds himself, the word race does not even exist. Because if everybody is the same race and same skin color, you will not even have a word for race. So the entire identity that was built up on race would collapse immediately without the other. It cannot be sustained. You could also say, you could take any example. Let's say you have a noisy Italian sports car, because Italian sports car are meant to be noisy to attract attention. So you have a Lamborghini and it's painted red to attract even more attention. And it gives your ego a boost. Look at me. Everybody looking because it's so noisy. And then in another imaginary scenario, the next day you wake up in another dimension. And in this dimension, every human being has the same red Lamborghini, or whatever it is. Immediately your ego cannot use it anymore. It becomes totally Meaningless. So then your conceptual identity will then collapse without the other. The egoic identity desperately needs the other who is not different. Me, the enemy. It loves its enemies. That's actually how many wars even start like that. You demonize an entire group of people, make them into an enemy, and then you feel a much stronger sense of identity. Another identity is for people to identify even with their gender, male or female. I'm not sure gender has become a problematic thing. I'll put that aside for a moment. Lets just say there's male and female. And in older cultures, or still in some cultures now, an important part for a person's identity is actually their gender. If they are male, for example, they are male. That becomes a very important part of their conceptual sense of self. Because what is it is implied that male is automatically superior to female. So you already have 50%. You're already. You can be a very stupid man, but you have superiority over 50% of the population that is female. No matter how stupid you are, you're a man. In some countries that still operates more or less so I men, and in some countries also females are conditioned to identify with and act out a particular way of behaving. And speaking female, they don't know. It's totally conditioned. It's part of their identity. So I've been talking about the ego, the human ego one could talk about for hours. But I won't go on and on. You're all familiar with the ego because at some point before you went through a spiritual awakening, you also had an ego. So it all comes back to conceptual identity. Is that who I am? Is that all there is to me? Or is there maybe a dimension to who I am that I have never known, I'm not aware of at all? Is there more? Or am I just this ego entity, the I? And that's why we are here. We need to part of awakening to this dimension that exists in every human being. The possibility of realizing that there is in you the potential of a deeper dimension of consciousness in every human. And the discovery of this deeper dimension of consciousness in every human is the most important part of your life journey here on this planet.
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