What is Ego ?
What ever I am thinking is like this running engine. And this thinking about thinking called meta cognition is speedometer. The second thinking is the action in the system itself. The first(speedometer) refers to insight ie seeing how thinking happens, and it is anyway happening. It is not action. But a third one ,the Ego distort the vision. It is an intruder to the system. That insight must be Ego free. Only then you can see what is really happening.
Ground truth is How the engine is running and this internal confidence is speedometer.
The speedometer can be structurally biased meaning the level of delusion can be neurological but the honesty required to question speedometer does not come from biological determinism.
Ego is an error. A structural error. One can say the limitation or malfunction of left brain. It is not designed to look itself and even if It looks at itself it mostly looks dishonestly.
It is said that when it comes to self knowledge you can be pardoned for trusting any random person than you yourself. That’s why it is said to keep listening to teachers, scriptures, mirrors because Ego has an inate tendency to sideline with the truth to preserve itself.
This honest self vigilance is the dissolving of Ego and it is a continuous process like meditation. The moment that vigilance is lowered it again start accumulating delusion.
Ego is an error. Without Ego one do not run away from pain or truth when it is helpful because it is only physical that is affected as it should be. Psychologically if one negates Ego one negates a doer so it neither takes credit nor blame for the action.
Thinking
Even bees think. Even they have sense of I. Ego is not an evolutionary advantage for humans but a vestigial baggage.
But humans are unique in this respect that they have the ability to not only observe every object but also to observe the observer, the subject, the Ego.
That makes us human. Basic morals and empathy is not the pre disposition of only humans. Even animals have that sense of reciprocity and cooperativeness. If we judge humanness by this scale then we are no different than an animal like a dog or a cat.
This honest and ruthless examination of self is the true beauty of humans. Otherwise because of our mental and physical faculty being much advance our Ego makes us worse than animals.
Only human species population is growing in this world. Rest that we do not eat and hence is not artificially produced are going extinct. About 200 species go extinct everyday. This is not greatness but our shallowness.
Ego doesn’t like being called bad let alone worse than a dog. Why will it naturally gravitate towards teacher and scriptures. It will always avoid it and therefore keep adding things to itself, keep forming numerous identities. All of them are because of false sense of actor when in reality there is none.
I think that’s why I naturally avoid thinking of myself when on substances because then it will be Ego hallucinating. I think of other boring topics like politics and not science, mainly the language part that the left controls which is ike the basis of politics. Otherwise I struggle for the exact or right words.
I can call myself natural in that moment because I am not utilising my EGO but my mind. Maybe that’s why various animals starts flocking around me because they sense beauty. They don’t have the liberty of being egoless. If I am Egoistic then also I am natural but not beautiful. They flock around me even when I am not on substances but when very focused on to something like on my laptop.
But my structural part is conditioned and programmed since childhood to not use left brain for politics but science and to value facts.
I was always groomed to be a nice, obedient child and be self critical even when not required. Substances that I often take help me over power that years of conditioning specially around my progenitor who is structurally Schizophrenic. Otherwise I can only do study when I am near her or in same house or in the job decided by her.
In NTPC also I used to only study SEO. BARC was a little different but her accompanying me in the joining formality made it like her and not my job.
But since I am grown up now I don’t like to always study.
Nepal Tragedy
Since the observer is observed I was wondering of any flash flood inside me on 26 Aug. China is my big brother identity. Nepal my hindu identity.
Huge peice of ICE was broken that washed away my Hindu identity. Now I am secular I think. But I can’t figure out that peice of ICE. Whose hand is behind this so called natural tragedy.
Ishavad Upnishad says
All this right in front of me, in my sensory zone, in my field of experience that is sensually experienced, all this belongs to prakrati, it is not mine. Drop the ignorance and then let consumption happen. Drop the EGO, and then let consumption happen. Do not covet because anyway nothing belongs to anybody.
EGO cannot be overcome because the one trying to overpower it is Ego itself. EGO can be seen through. It can honestly look at itself and figure out its way. This is because Ego is the first inner operator, the most primal, the most fundamental with nothing below it. What happens after that is not in Ego’s province. Good action are thus action that proceed from minimal Ego.
Ahinsa or non Violence is not some pattern of action. It the the direct and unintended result of minimisation of Ego. It’s neither negative not positive.