How Can I Balance Ego and Altruism? | Q&A Eckhart Tolle

How can I balance altruism and follow my inner needs or longings, brackets? If they would hurt someone, can you say something on how it works? Ego versus altruism, following your inner through needs. Altruism, meaning selfless action doing something for others. And then there are inner needs or longings that might hurt someone. If they actively hurt someone, they are not true needs. They would be egoic needs. Egoic needs sometimes actively hurt another. For example, unconscious behavior, such as diminishing somebody else verbally in order to feel one's own ego growing. People do it all the time. It's unconscious. So if somebody has a success or has something that you don't have, the ego in its absurd sense of self feels diminished. If somebody else has something that you don't have. And then the ego sometimes makes a remark that is designed either to hurt or to the ego of that person, or to diminish the value of what that person has achieved or possesses. So even children sometimes do it. The ego already, of course, develops in the children at school. When you listen to children talking to each other, you can already often detect very clearly the ego there, the sense of identity that is based on identification with things other than yourself that you take on board to enhance your sense of self. And not that you can stop them. It just is part the naturals for human beings to develop an ego as they are adolescents in childhood and adolescence, then when they reach adulthood, begin to go beyond ego. So that ego becomes a symptom or manifestation of growing up, of immaturity. That would be. We may be going in that direction. But of course, the way it is now is not the case. The ego continues to grow and seek to grow sometimes until you reach your deathbed and then you remember the gravestone where it says, I got here first, so I won. That's the last triumph of the ego. And so, listening overhearing children, you can say, my dad just bought a BMW. What car does your dad have? Oh, he has a vw, but I know someone. He carries on. He says, but I know someone who has a friend whose uncle has a Bentley. It's far superior to a BMW. Got him. The ego says, I got him. Ah, but it's owned by vm, by vw, isn't it? That's a long story. Altruism, inner needs. So inner needs that hurts. I just gave just one small example of hurting others. Other egoic manifestations of hurting others would be to actually to sabotage somebody else's success or what they want to achieve to. To take something away from somebody to spread rumors about some bad things about another human being in order to create suffering or stop them from doing or achieving what they want to achieve. So many ways in which the ego would hurt someone in order to strengthen itself, the illusion of itself. So those are not your true inner needs. They are egoic needs. You need to recognize those things in yourself. Then there is an indirect way of hurting someone that may not be egoic. For example, let's say you are a young man or woman, 20 years old, 19 years old, and your parents or your mother or your father want what's best for you. They clearly have designs on your future. And your dad was a lawyer and he has a flourishing law practice. And obviously you are supposed to follow in his footsteps. There's no question about it. And if you didn't, you would make your parents really suffer. Of course, that is indirectly inflicting suffering you're not in. If you are true to yourself and your longings, which are not egoic, you may feel inclined towards something else. Not I'm not. There's nothing wrong with law, but it's not for everybody. You may feel inclined to follow a totally different path. And would you and some, some people do that in order to spare their parents from suffering? They do what makes them happy. It might not be your parents do what makes somebody else happy. And so you are doing something that does not corresponding, that does not correspond to your true inclinations, desires, where you want to go, but you want to spare someone else from suffering. Now that is not the most conscious course of action because you are condemning yourself to unhappiness and frustration. You are denying those deeper things. They are not egoic. They arise from a deeper level of your being. And you are not making these people suffer. They make themselves suffer. So they have to learn their lesson of letting go of expectations. And if their lesson involves suffering, that's just how it is. Another matter would be if your parents are old or there's only one parent left. Your inclination may be to move somewhere and do something, but then there's nobody else to look after your father or mother who needs somebody that is a there. That is a moral thing that you need to become very present with to see whether there is an alternative solution or whether you will give up one thing in order for the love of another human being. And if you do so, you would have to be total in your doing so that you are not unhappy looking after your aging parent, continuously regretting that you were not able to do what you really wanted to do. Whatever course of action you choose, you need to surrender to and do it totally. These are all a lot of presence is required. Altruism. Helping others is wonderful, but it needs to come from a deep not from some mental to help somebody because in order to improve the mental image you have of yourself, but to help somebody because it feels right and it feels good and you've seen the other as yourself. And to give something to another feels better more often than to give something to yourself. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. SA.