The Many Faces of Ego | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

Most people derive their sense of identity, their sense of who they are, from the movement of thought in their head. Thought identifies with certain things as you begin to grow up. It identifies with the first possessions that you have, the toys. It identifies with the name that you are given. That's me. Your parents tell you that's you. Then the beginning of identification is the name that becomes the receptacle for all other identifications. Possessions, toy. And you can see how painful it is once you have identified with something when it's taken away from you. This child will scream if a toy is taken away because the identification has already happened with something. And five minutes later the child might lose interest in the toy completely. But when somebody takes it away, it is extremely painful because already at that stage the child experiences the beginning of ego identity. And how painful it is when the ego identity is injured or something is removed from hurts on a psychological level, as if you had sometimes even more than a physical injury, the pain you would experience with a physical injury. And then come the child goes up. More and more identifications come. People that you know, relationships. You identify with your knowledge. You identify with your physical strengths, your ability. Look what I can do. You can't do that. But I can do that. Look what I know know. I know that. But you don't know that. Let me tell you. This is how it is. Opinions. You accumulate opinions about this and that and nothing wrong. Everybody has opinions. But the opinions become part of your sense of self. You identify with these thoughts that constitute those opinions. So the opinions, which are thought forms, are imbued with a sense of self. There is a self in them, a me. And you can notice that when somebody starts to question your opinion, you get defensive or upset or aggressive or fearful. You might even. Well, not you. But a very unconscious person may even become violent physical aggression. Why? Because somebody questioned my opinions. There are even the entire religions that would. In the past it's been like that. In the Middle Ages, Christianity was like, they will kill you if you disagree with the conventional beliefs. What you don't believe what I believe or we believe. Okay, let's kill you. Ego. Egoic identity with a personal or collective ego. They are the two aspects of ego. But ego is always identification with something. And identification means it gives you your sense of self. This is why for people it is so precious. And they hang on to it and they defend it with a life. That's all they know. That's me. And it's a totally normal. It's been like that for thousands of years. Ego in the past, ego. And in certain societies, even nowadays, the predominant ego is collective still, whereas in the west, in Western societies, ego tends to be more individualized. It started, of course, thousands of years ago with tribal egos. Every you had tribes and you identified with this particular tribe, and you were nice to the people in your tribe, but not very nice to the people outside of your tribe because they were less than you. All these were primitive, rudimentary manifestations of ego. But whatever it is, ego means you have a bundle of thoughts, predominant thoughts, as I said, opinions, likes, dislikes, the story of who I am, what people did to me, what I did, what I've achieved, what I know, what I can do, what I possess. And these are all really thought forms, and they give you your sense of self. It's very normal. And you cannot stop a child from developing that kind of identity. It's a normal progression. You can't tell a child, do not. There's no such thing as possession. Don't identify with that toy. It's not yours. Stop. Stop. Don't. But one can. As you begin to awaken, you begin to see in yourself that you carry an ego. You might see, for example, that you become defensive or when somebody disagrees with your opinions. You can even have an ego around the city you live in, the team, sports team that you identify with. These are rudimentary ego forms. If you have little else, you can. A huge part of their identity can be your football team, and then the others are your enemies who identify with another football team. And then you fight it out on Sunday afternoons. So you have different manifestations of ego, but it's ego. It's a sense of self. You can have a spiritual ego. Some of you might remember that before you went beyond that, you had a spiritual ego. And spiritual ego means you have a sense of self that begins to form in your head. A self image of yourself as a more spiritual person than most others. Very subtle ego. You can have an ego of yourself as egoless, a self image that says, I am one of the most egoless humans on the planet. And it's hidden. It doesn't necessarily explicitly say, I am the most egoless person on the planet. Well, it might do, but usually it's more hidden. It's implied. You look down on others who still have their egos, whereas I'm free of it. And these are more subtle forms. It's this ego. It's a more subtle form of ego than the person who gets into a fight against the opposing fans of the other Football team, soccer team, whatever it is, but it's the same, the same mechanism is behind it. And ego also, you always recognize it when that it compares itself with others. The moment you meet somebody, or even just you see somebody in the street, the ego goes into comparison mode. And usually the result of comparison mode of the ego is it comes to the conclusion that you are either inferior or superior to the other. Of course it wants to be superior if it can, but some it just doesn't work sometimes. So and the ego tends to select the thing that is most, that is your strong point. That's where then we'll then focus on, in my case, for example, the ego. That I could not develop an ego around a strong physical physique, a person who is good at sports and. Or whatever. So because I was a little guy who got bullied at school. So the ego said, what can I do? What can I identify with? And wasn't particularly good looking. So it couldn't say I'm, but I'm better looking than you. Okay, that doesn't work either. Eventually it sought refuge in trying to be more knowledgeable and educated than others. So I started reading books. And then in discussions I could suddenly show off my knowledge and show that you don't know that. Let me tell you about that. Okay, that worked for a while. Physical appearance is a very common thing for comparison. Do I look better than the other woman? Man, whatever it is. And then you look in the mirror. And this is greatly enhanced these days by the technology that's available to us through Facebook and selfies. The original in Greek mythology, the original story that shows the development beginning of ego was in the midst of Narcissus, who was a young man. Of course, at that time there were no mirrors. But he happened to look into a pool of water one day, this young man, and he saw that he was so beautiful and he fell in love with himself. That's where the word narcissism comes from. So he fell in love with himself. There was an image of himself that he saw there. He fell in love with the image, which to me means he identified with the image. This is a pictorial representation of an inner process, the image formation that gives you your sense of self, which is ego. So that was the beginning of Narcissus. Now you don't need a pool of water anymore. You have not only mirrors, more importantly, you have your smartphone and you can go. And then you send it out into the world. You're not confined anymore to one person looking at you or two people. You send it out into the world and hundreds of people suddenly see you. And then you're waiting for your egoic feedback, which usually comes in the form of little comments like, cool, I like it. And if it's not you, you take a picture of the rest. You're in a restaurant and you're eating this lovely meal. I, I am eating this meal. Me. Look how great this meal is. And I am eating. Oh. And of course, many people who look at other people's posts feel diminished a little bit because their life is so interesting. And then what you do, you have to also pretend that your life is interesting and select all those things that make your life look interesting. In other words, and this, especially young people, you begin to your life merges with a fiction, a fictional image which is available to the public and you don't know it. This is an extension of egoic identity that has become possible through technology. Very seductive, but also extremely limiting. It's a huge trap. The ego, of course, is never satisfied, not for long. It always is in a seeking mode because it doesn't feel fulfilled. It doesn't feel I am enough. It doesn't. It feels I'm lacking in something which may be either money or knowledge or looks or relationship, significant relationship, all kinds of things I'm lacking in, not enough. So it's in seeking mode. But as it's pointed out in this book called the Cause in Miracles, it says the dictum of the ego is seek but do not find. So it's always seek. And because it's always seeking, it's always seeking for the next thing, which implies the future is extremely important for the ego. It looks to the next, the next thing. There's a continuous reaching out, an inability to be present here and now. That's all part of the unconsciousness that I call unconsciousness is, in this terminology, complete identification with the mind. And this is where the ego resides. It resides in your mind. It is a mental formation. It is a kind of fiction that every human being creates for themselves. And of course you get a lot of feedback. So the particular fiction that you create for yourself depends to a large extent on the culture that you grew up in, the people you grew up with. They will tell you who you are as a child, and then you become conditioned by your surroundings, the surrounding culture and your family and so on. 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.