Eckhart Tolle defines the ego as the complete identification of consciousness with the stream of thought and its accompanying emotions. He calls the resulting loss of inner spaciousness 'unconscious living' and notes that recognising the ego's sabotage of arising presence is part of awakening.
Transcript
Complete loss of spaciousness. Inner spaciousness is the unawwakened state. Complete loss of inner spaciousness. There's no awareness of anything in you except just complete identification with the stream of thinking that is mistaken for who you are. And that's the ego. to mistake who you are, to confuse who you are with the incessant stream of thinking plus the emotions that accompany the incessant stream of thinking. That is what we call unconscious living. And that is what we call the ego. The ego being a sense of self, a sense of identity that is based on concepts and is based on concepts of thoughts, on thinking. And that kind of unconscious thinking is amplified by the emotions that are created by that unconscious thinking. So you believe in every thought that comes into your head. And the body reacts as if every thought were actually reality not doesn't realize that it's just a thought. He betrayed me. Wow. thought comes and you it's you don't realize if there's no spaciousness. You don't realize that that is that little phrase is a story and you choose to completely believe in it and it's not a pleasant story. something bad has happened to you is implied in it and then you experience emotion that is generated by the body uh when something bad is has happened to you. So there are events and there are narratives. The events are neutral. The narrative is the interpretation. So as I speak be aware that there is an undercurrent of spaciousness. And the moment you become aware of it that spaciousness is not just in me. The moment you become aware of it it's also in you. It opens up in you. And that's how true spiritual teaching happens in which all conceptual explanations are secondary. And the primary spiritual teaching is you become receptive to the state of consciousness of the teacher and the teacher is just doesn't doesn't have an identity that is teacher. The teacher is a temporary function. I am a teacher at this moment, spiritual teacher. But that's not my identity. It's just if I believe that I am actually that my true identity is a spiritual teacher, I would be lost. I would be lost in ego. I would be lost in a conceptual sense of self. It's only a function. So when I say be receptive and open to the one could almost a transmission that comes when you listen to a spiritual teacher and spiritual teacher is a function not an identity. It's only a function while the teaching happens. When I walk away from here I'm no longer a spiritual teacher because the function has come to an end. So the the essential teaching is the teaching of the transcendent state of consciousness which is a state of inner stillness or spaciousness. And I will be reminding you frequently of this even while I speak about certain things such as the obstacles that can arise as you begin to awaken. The ego's tendency to want to sabotage the arising presence. These things can be very helpful to know. They in fact it's important to know these things so that you don't get deceived and hypnotized again by the conceptual mind.