Basically, ego is a sense of separation, an identity. It’s an awareness that one is an ‘independent’ life. However, no life is truly independent. All life is dependent or inter-dependent on a huge and wide-and-still-wider support system whose very presence is essential for the survival of an entity.
In many ways, at one level, humans need the awareness and presence of this ‘self’ to help them survive in the face of threats or danger.
Ego, as a sense of self-preservation has an important role to play to help one survive. And, to that extent there’s nothing wrong with ego.
So, this basic awareness of one’s ‘self’ and the need to preserve it is basically what ego is!
However, ego begins to become a problem when it begins to hold too fast to its sense of separateness and separation, to its identity more than its being, often at the cost and detriment to the wider support system of which one is an integral part. In a sense, any threat or perceived threat or danger to one’s identity is at the core of its (ego’s) being. An egotist or egoist is, therefore, in a perennial state of fear that his identity is under threat.
In this sense, ego is the opposite of love. Love, essentially, includes and identifies itself with the survival, well-being and thriving of the ‘ever-wide-and-still-wider’ support group, depending on where its identification goes.
The ‘ever-wide-and-still-wider’ support group is and can be spouse/partner, immediate family, greater family, social group/s, area, country, nation, culture and its sub-groups at one level and the environment, other humans, creatures, life forms, nature, earth, solar system, universe, multiverse and so on…
When one understands and sees the role these differing realities or ‘beings’ play in his survival and well-being and begins to identify with them, his sense of ego begins to undergo a subtle and powerful change. It transforms itself into love that includes that which it has previously rejected – spouse, family, society, nation, humanity, life forms and so on.
So, to sum up, basically ego is a sense of identity which, up to a point, is essential to help it survive. While survival of the ‘being’ in ‘human being’ is important and if the ego plays a role in this, that should be fine. The problem begins when the ego creates boundaries for its identity (not being) that cause it to think, act, behave in ways that are regularly against the interests and well-being of the ever-wider-and-still-wider support group of which it is actually an integral part.
This sense of separation created by the drama of ego leads to unnecessary toxicity and need to manipulate and can cause great harm to the wider group.
That’s when the ego becomes a cancer…
– rajyogi (rajesh kanoi)
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