Thursday, August 2, 2018

What’s Ego?

Spiritual seekers often think ego is a bad thing.  It seems that ego creates lots of suffering in us and is an obstacle for us to lead a happy life. We want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

However, is it possible for us to will it away?  Isn’t this attitude the same like we want to get rid of our emotions or suffering? The truth is, we don’t even understand what the ego is. Do you know what exactly is the ego? How can we get rid of a thing when we don’t even know where it is and how it looks like?

So, perhaps, the first step is, to understand and know what is ego. Is it ego in action when we want to show off something, like our appearance, our social status?  Is it ego in action when we feel proud to share our spiritual insights with others? Is it ego in action when we identify with some images, like being a kind spiritual seeker?  Is it ego in action when we identify with some emotions, like happiness or depression?

What’s ego anyway? Let’s do our homework and then we can know when we are creating suffering for ourselves.

By Su Zhen

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