What is the ego?

Up until I read Eckhart Tolle’s book, I thought that we used the ego as a label to give to people who see themselves as superior to the people around them. In my eyes, people with huge egos were often arrogant and self-centered. Eckhart Tolle has a much wider definition when it comes to what the ego is, how it’s recognized, and how our ego affects our lives. 

The ego focuses on building an identity that stands out from everyone else’s. It does so through our minds. But it’s more than that. Tolle says that the ego prevents us from seeing a situation as it truly is and from finding out who we truly are. As long as we are not aware of our ego, we subconsciously identify with it. When we identify with our ego, we are not able to control it. Instead, it controls us.

The ego is always busy with comparing and is never satisfied. It always wants more and better. In that sense, you could say that the creatures in the The Hungry Ghost realm of the Buddhist philosophy are also completely taken over by their egos. The ego refuses to accept things as they are and always takes things personally.

The four ways in which the ego reveals itself

If you want to become more aware of your own ego and of the ego of the people around you, it would be good to know that the ego usually reveals itself in four different ways. 

1.    The ego reveals itself through comparison to the past

When we lose ourselves in our egos, we keep holding on to the past. Our mind keeps wandering off to memories we have and thinks about what we should have done differently. These memories re-active the emotions we experienced back then. We experience these emotions, such as regret, anger, guilt, or frustration, over and over again. The ego is unable to accept the past as it is, which is kind of strange when you think about it as there is nothing we can now do to change the past.

Also, we experience the present as good or bad by comparing it to the past. If someone or something gave us joy in the past, we want to experience that same feeling when connecting with that thing or person in the present. This phenomenon is also known as attachment. The ego gives us an unrealistic expectation of reality. It believes that good things and feelings can stay the same and gets scared when things change. In reality, things always change. It’s the one thing we can always be sure of. I don’t believe this is a bad thing. It gives beauty to life to know that there will always be some kind of mystery to it and when going through bad times, to know that things can always get better. 

If you’d like to read more about attachment, make sure to read my article on The Power of Experience. In that article, I discuss why it is essential to see the difference between love and attachment.

2. The ego reveals itself through comparison to the future

Even though there is an apparent movement in which people focus more and more on mindfulness and on living in the moment, for most of us it comes naturally to focus more on the future than on the present. We are already thinking about what’s for dinner when we are in the office, we wish we were already on vacation, we wish we already got the things we are saving money for or reached the goal we are investing time in right now. 

We see the present as an in-between stage until we accomplish our goals and realize our wishes and desires. But, when the future changes into the present moment, we don’t realize that it already is. 

Another challenge when focused too much on the future, is that more and more young adults experience a quarter-life crisis, during which they feel like they are falling behind on some kind of schedule. We should already be married, bought a house, have a kid, or have that dream job. Where it used to only be our direct environment that we would compare ourselves to, nowadays we have social media as well. Young adults have become addicted to a medium that constantly confronts them with the ‘good life’ other people are living and reminds us of the normal lives we are living. That brings us to other people. Often, we feel a certain kind of pressure because it feels like the people around us already accomplished what we want to have ourselves. We compare ourselves to other people and in doing so, we rate our success.

3. The ego reveals itself through comparison to other people

Humans perceive the world from a relative perspective. This means that whatever we perceive, can only be labeled when we know its relative value. Take volunteering, for example. 1 of every 4 American adults volunteer on a regular basis. Close your eyes for a second. Are you hearing your thoughts? 

What did they say? That’s a lot? That’s nothing? That might be true, but Americans are horrible at … That doesn’t surprise me because I know someone who … 

What just happened in your mind? Did you catch yourself thinking about whether you volunteer? How do you feel about the fact that you have or have not done volunteering work in the last year? The ego takes everything personally. If you haven’t volunteered yourself in the last year, do you suddenly feel a slight discomfort? Are your thoughts saying things to explain why you haven’t? Or is it reminding you of something you did do last year and feel good about? If any of the former questions, could be answered with a yes, then we just activated your ego. Apparently, your ego finds volunteering important as it is a tool to make your ego feel good about yourself. Want to know if you find volunteering important as well, then it’s best to do some volunteering work and find out how it feels in the moment. More about this topic you find in my other article called “The Power of Experience in finding out who you are”. 

The ego reveals itself through comparison to other people because it wants to feel superior to others and build a solid identity. It makes the ego feel safe and valuable because it knows where it stands.

The two type of thoughts

We have two kinds of thoughts, both coming from our minds. We have the thoughts we produce when we use our minds, and we have the thoughts that our ego produces. In the first, we use our minds and in the latter, the mind uses us.

An example of us using our minds, is when we are facing a problem and are looking for a solution. We use our minds to think about what our options are and what we should go with. An example of our mind using us, is when we are facing a problem and are lost in negativity: “How dare he say that to me”, “Why is this happening to me”, or “I need to share this with someone because this is ridiculous, and I am sure others agree with me”. Like I said before, the ego takes everything personally. As soon as we hear ourselves say or think the word ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, and ‘mine’ when we feel upset, we know we are speaking from our ego.

If we want to be able to see the difference between our thoughts and our ego’s thoughts, we could also look at how accepting our thoughts are. Are your thoughts negative and not accepting reality, then they are from your ego. Are your thoughts positive and accepting reality, then they are from you. 

The ego in discussions with others

Often, you can also find your ego in discussions you have with others. When you are stating a truth, and someone disagrees and you feel a certain frustration boiling up and an urge to go into discussion, that is your ego. As Eckhart Tolle says in A new Earth: “The truth, in any case, needs no defense”. There is no need to defend that plants grow, for instance. That just is. What you are defending is your self-image, your credibility, your reputation, mine-words. For that reason, when you experience a clash with someone else, ask yourself in what kind of discussion you find yourself. Is it a discussion about who is right or about what is right?

Also, remember here that there are tons of situations in which both parties can be right. Many topics that are discussed are discussed from a matter of perspective. Something can feel right or logical to us but wrong or illogical to others. I don’t believe there is such a thing as inherently good or bad or wrong or right, just topics most people agree on or feel the same way about. To solve arguments that are based on a matter of perspective, is not to determine together who is right or wrong, but that both parties are allowed to see things as they see them and next to find out what you could do to get closer together or to find a common ground.  

Last, but not least, the ego loves to compare you with other people in terms of what each of you have.

4. The ego reveals itself through identification with form

I think the need of the current society to look for distractions has to do with the fact that we don’t know what to do with ourselves in moments of stillness. When we sit still, our mind takes us to the past, future, or an alternate reality. When we distract ourselves, we actually focus on distracting ourselves from our thoughts going to random places we don’t want to be in. Our thoughts go wild, it might even be compared to an addict having withdrawal symptoms. Before we know it, we find ourselves in a thought that makes our present feel highly uncomfortable. When we identify with our thoughts, we believe our reality is uncomfortable, when in fact it often isn’t. It is just our ego that, through our minds, makes us believe it is. 

And so, we are looking for distractions. We even find distractions from our distractions. We get home and turn on the television. Watch something, think of something, grab our phones. Look at social media, feel inspired, and want to buy something. Want to compare prices or read reviews, and go to another website. Look up cause something catches our eye on television, think of something else, and look it up on our phones. It’s all a series of distractions that keep us from sitting with the thoughts we have. 

I think this is why we feel too attached to our phones. There are tons of things we could do on those devices that distract us from what we actually need: Peace of mind. 

To feel better, the ego feels like it always has to have more and to own more. After all, in this world, the more we have compared to others, the prouder and more successful we feel.

Identification crisis

Once again, think about all the things you call ‘mine’. My house, my phone, my car, my job, my wallet, my partner. Now, think about losing any of these things. Now that you caught that thought, what kind of emotions are you feeling? Stress? Anxiety? Anger? Hopelessness? It is the ego. The ego identifies itself with this stuff or the people you feel related to, and now that it lost them, it goes through a (sometimes minor) identification crisis. It might be the reason that many people feel lost after they lose their house or their job. They saw themselves as people who were stable and successful. Now it doesn’t feel like that anymore. They feel ashamed or like a failure because they no longer feel successful, independent, or superior. They lost something they identified with, and now they feel incomplete.

The role of the ego in finding long-term happiness

The ego is always fighting for survival. It always wants to feel superior and often wants things, situations, and people to be different than they are.

“Most egos have conflicting wants. They want different things at different times or may not even know what they want except that they don’t want what is: the present moment. Unease, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction, are the result of unfulfilled wanting.”

– Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth

When we are not aware of our ego, thus letting it guide us, it will keep us from seeing the world as it truly is. The most important thing for the ego is that it survives. To do that, it has to be active in ego-challenging times. As long as we let our ego take the lead, we feel the need to compare situations and people to ourselves. We cannot see someone’s action just as it is, but we relate it to the consequences it has for our own self.

This article has a part 2. Read more about how to recognize the ego and how to disidentify with the ego in part 2 of The Role of the Ego in Finding Long-term Happiness.