Eckhart Tolle explains stages of ego development: an early life phase of self-assertion where the ego seeks to be special, powerful, or even specially miserable to gain attention, followed (ideally) by a transition in early/mid-20s toward self-transcendence where creativity and helpfulness arise independent of the ‘little me.’ He highlights common egoic patterns such as the need to be right (which turns disagreement into perceived enmity) and gives social examples (hecklers, online arguments) to illustrate how egoic self-assertion manifests.
Chapters
There's a stage in one's life when the ego wants to grow. And what the ego seeks, or what you seek, when you are the ego that wants to expand, It's a search for self assertion. You want to assert yourself on the world by being special in some way, by being powerful. Or if you cannot be powerful, you can be special by being specially miserable. That's also a kind of specialness and is a self assertion. You are so dreadfully miserable and people may give you attention. If you explain to them how miserable you are. You might get quite a bit of attention. And you may have to pay somebody to give you attention once or twice a week to listen to you. And so the self assertion could be on a large scale. You want to grow in importance in relation to other people. Again more special. You want to rise above. And this is in our culture even considered a desirable thing. You want to have more power, you want to have more possessions, or you want to have more knowledge than others. So it is usually to do with what you have or what you can do, abilities or what you know. So you pursue a bigger sense of self through that. And that is perhaps not a bad thing as a human being grows up childhood into adolescence into young adulthood. Because what is developing is form identity. Your form identity grows. Now, the unfortunate thing is that most humans never go beyond that stage in the new humanity. In an awakened humanity, or for an awakened human being, the growth of the ego and the desire for self assertion would perhaps last into their early or mid-20s and then begin to be transcended so that the human being can enter the next stage of human development, which is self transcendence. From self assertion, which is your form identity grows. But then, and perhaps a civilization will develop a significant ritual or something to express permanently for a young adult, the transition I'm envisaging a more enlightened society on a new earth that would. Well, maybe it's an idea for a movie too. As they reach the early or mid-20s, they transition from form identity and ego into beginning of a totally new stage in life, which is self transcendence instead of self assertion. So self assertion would be the first stage of your, your life and then the next stage where your life really begins to blossom and flourish and you become creative and helpful to others. And you would still, yes, you would be very creative, but not in the service of the little me anymore. In order to amplify your fictitious sense of self, you would be helpful. And because something that is the unconditioned consciousness in you would Begin able to use you, so to speak, as an instrument for coming into this world more fully. But that's not yet how it is for most of us. We had to go through the egoic state and then perhaps it varies. When it began to be slightly transcended. At first little cracks appeared in the egoic shell and that's how gradually this brought you here. If you were still totally trapped in your egoic sense of identity and self assertion, you, you would probably not be here. Unless it is conceivable that one or two people came here. In order to obtain more self assertion. I don't know how, but. Well, sometimes people who heckle, who start shouting, they are people, they come to a spiritual meeting, but they really want people to listen to them. But they don't create their own meetings, they are parasitical, come to another meeting and then they start shouting objections. And I would usually suggest if you have something important to say, perhaps your objection is important. Why don't you create your YouTube channel and see how many people listen to you and then create your own events, see how many people come. If you have something important to contribute, great. Otherwise shut up. But it is helpful to detect self assertion because you may still have remnants of it here and now, here, now, and then detect remnants of self assertion. There's nothing wrong with that. Anything that you detect in you, that is ego is a wonderful thing because you're detecting it, you're noticing it in yourself. And even if you notice it after something has just happened, it's a great thing. It doesn't mean you have failed. If you notice still egoic unconsciousness in you, it's a great thing. It doesn't mean if you then formulate thoughts in your mind that say, oh, you see, I still can't do it, what's the point? I'm still the same and everybody is the same. They're all unconscious and I'm unconscious and it's all useless. So if you detect, for example, and this is a very common way of self assertion on a small scale but continuous scale, which you may find either in interacting with other human beings, either in person or increasingly these days, online, the need to be right is a very, very deeply unconscious way of egoic way of exercising self assertion, the need to be right, which means anybody who disagrees with you becomes your enemy. This is a very, very common form of unconsciousness and you can see it around you if you go online or everyday life. And if you detect it in yourself, you might just, let's say you have a conversation. You're disagreeing, somebody disagrees with you. And then you have to be very alert to catch yourself. Because you can get quickly drawn into unconsciousness. And you begin to defend your mental position. But not just by clearly stating or explaining it a little bit better. No. Your voice goes up, you become more loud. And that's an indication that you're beginning to be totally identified with your mental position, which is ego. And then you find yourself shouting out your mental position. That's the ego. It's wonderful to notice. But at that moment, you probably won't notice it. You're just totally in it. And then you're not shouting something. You're also immediately attacking the other. And you may not only be attacking the other's mental position. You may be actually attacking the other human being for what they are, whatever they may be. You have some conceptual label that you impose on them.
