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You’re not as smart/good/kind/beautiful as you think.
If that rubbed you in the wrong way, then it’s because that’s part of your self-identity.
I don’t mean that being smart/good/kind/beautiful is part of your self-identity (though it might be) but the fear that you might not be smart/good/kind/beautiful is.
Any words that hurt us point towards a belief we have accepted as truth. Only the statements that we hold as potentially true can hurt us.
If I call you a hippopotamus, you probably couldn’t care less. If I call you dense, you might feel offended. This is a clue to where your identity got wrapped up in a whole lot of bogus.
The problem is not that you might be a little unintelligent. The problem is that you are emotionally invested in the idea of being a smart person.
Ego is not just all the “bad” stuff. Ego is everything you believe yourself to be, including you as a smart/good/kind/beautiful person.
If we ever hope to stop playing the ego game, we need to stop defending and pampering it whenever it feels rubbed in any way, right or wrong.
The Ego Game
When someone calls you stupid, your first reaction is most likely defensive. You protect your self-image by saying that you’re not stupid or you might insult the other person back.
This is the ego’s game: Protecting, deflecting, fortifying, pampering, soothing, etc.
When the ego is hurt it protests and does everything possible to preserve its image as a smart/good/kind/beautiful person.
Usually, this reaction happens immediately. And if you keep reacting that way without ever asking yourself what is going on, you’ll keep playing the ego game until the day you die.
Playing the ego game is exhausting. Projecting your self-image onto the world just to defend it when someone attacks it is exhausting.
It really sounds like I’m bashing ego so I need to repeat this: Ego is not the bad guy.
What I mean is that the identification with a fabricated self is influencing our lives to an enormous extent. And you don’t know how enormous that extent is before you start breaking the identification.
Everyone’s fabricated self is unique. Ask yourself what kind of person you are and what you care about, and you can start making your own picture.
Here is the twist: Every little aspect that makes you you is fabricated.
Everything you tell yourself about how you’re this and that and the other is made up. By believing you are a certain person with these qualities, ideas, and convictions, you are reducing the truly infinite to the falsely finite.
As long as you’re fully identified with the story you tell yourself about yourself, you’ll always get caught up in the ego game.
I might make it sound easy to stop playing the ego game. Oh no. It’s not. It’s not easy because no one wants to stop playing the game. If you say you want to stop playing the ego game, ask yourself who’s saying it. Ego.
We can’t make ourselves stop playing the ego game nor do we need to. We just need to open our eyes to the game; the rest is out of our hands.
I’m not trying to sell you an ideology or a belief. The ideologies and beliefs are what’s in the way.
Our constant struggle with ourselves, others, and the world is based on wrong beliefs about who and what we are. Therefore, the next time your ego is hurt, see it as an opportunity.
Stop Defending
When something or someone triggers an emotional response and you feel the urge to defend yourself, don’t.
Don’t defend yourself. Take the full hit.
Understand that the only reason you want to defend or explain yourself is because your self-image has taken a hit. Our self-images are imaginary and we’re suffering when we’re identified with them.
Even though some of us might know we’re not our self-images, most of our thoughts and behaviors reflect the belief that we are exactly our self-images.
Some people say you need to “kill” the ego. But you’ll never be able to fully kill the ego (except perhaps through physical death). The world is a costume party and we all have to come as someone. No one can come as no one.
The ego is the costume. What’s the point of fighting a costume?
You don’t need to kill the ego. All that needs to be killed is the identification with ego. “Kill” sounds a little violent. It’s less a killing and more an understanding, deconstructing, dissolving.
Seeing through the identification doesn’t mean you have to become a new person. It enables you to no longer cling to a fixed image of yourself, allowing you to become a new person much easier if you so wish.
By taking the hit you can start seeing what the self-image you’re attached to looks like and start unraveling it.
Something that might be difficult to grok but makes this whole endeavor a lot easier is understanding that whatever anyone says to or about you is only ever about them, never about you. We are projection machines. The scope of our projections onto others and the world is impressive.
Taking the hit doesn’t mean to let people walk all over you. You can extract yourself out of situations, and, actually, react in any way you like. The point is not the reaction per se but the unconscious reaction based on false identification.
And even the unconscious reaction is not a problem. It’s simply a gateway to the inquiry we’re doing here.
What Is the Right Identification?
Some psychological theories postulate that the right self-identification is important. In other words, you need to foster a positive self-image instead of a negative one.
And while a positive self-image most certainly results in a better life experience than a negative one, it’s not what you really are.
Holding on to any self-image leads to trouble. It takes effort to maintain and makes you vulnerable to the opinions of others. The goal shouldn’t be an improved self-image but no fixed self-image.
Why play the self-image game at all?
And yet, no longer identifying with a fabricated self automatically leads to the things we hope to get from a positive self-image (without the effort of trying to convince yourself of something) — inner peace, more harmony, happiness, confidence, etc.
A negative self-image is full of inner violence which never feels good. Suffering (= pain x resistance) is always perpetuated by false beliefs about yourself and all beliefs are ultimately false. All suffering is based on false identification and all identification is false identification.
When you realize that why wouldn’t you choose a more harmonious, loving inner state?
If you ask yourself “What am I?” with sincerity, and then look in your immediate direct experience, you won’t find any fixed separate entity called “I.” Saying “I am the body,” or “I am the mind,” or “I am ____” cannot ever be the complete picture. Keep looking.
Where are you? What are you? Don’t ask anyone else for the answer. Other people can only give your third-person answers about you. But you are first-person.
What is the one ____ that’s always right here?
Answer: The vast, boundless space of experiencing. Also called awareness or consciousness or Tao or whatever word you can come up with.
Your immediate direct experience before you take hold of it is indisputable. This is not an entity. It can never be hurt.
We’re all so intimately familiar with it that most of us never stop to pay attention to it. It’s the common denominator. Whenever there is experience it’s right here and it is this experience itself.
If you identify with anything, ask yourself what makes this identification possible in the first place.
What is the one ____ that relativizes everything and can never be relativized itself?
What is beyond subject and object?
You, what else?
Luka
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