The Notion of Ego

You know, I got to tell you, I I you know, I feel more and more uncomfortable with as time goes on with the word ego. Um it's it's almost necessary to use it because it's such a common uh common word for speaking about something that's very common in the human experience. But the problem with the word ego is when we talk about your ego or someone else's ego, um the word implies that there's actually something inside of someone called an ego that it's somehow a distinct something. Um and and this is almost seems to be assumed in the language we use but I think it's very very important that we part of looking within fact the thing that you first see often when you look within is you see what is referred to often in spiritual teachings as ego. Ego really isn't a thing. There's not a thing there, you know. Um when the whole notion of ego was invented, you know, it wasn't the universe wasn't created with the idea of an ego. human beings invented the idea. Someone sort of sitting around and and wanting to talk about their a particular part of their experience, a part uh which is usually the the the sort of fusing of of emotion and thought uh in a very sort of almost mechanical conditioned way. And and one of the words that they came up to describe that process, which it really is sort of a process. It's a it's a verb. You know, ego is a verb. It's not a thing. It's not a noun. There's no such thing as as ego as a noun. There's only ego as a process. Almost like the wind. The wind is a process. Do you know um uh clouds floating through the sky, their their movement is is a process. E ego is sort of a process, a conditioned movement of mind. It's not a thing. And you don't have to take anybody's word for that. You can at any moment you can go look for your for an ego, for your ego as a noun, as something as someone distinct. And when you look for your ego as a noun, uh it's not there. It's just there as a process. Thought here, a thought there, a feeling, a reaction mostly, a conditioned reaction, um a desire, wanting, avoiding, happy afraid you know, all these sort of it's sort of a volatile cocktail of thought, feeling, and emotion. Um, all of which is conditioned, biologically conditioned, culturally conditioned, um, conditioned through the family of origin. And then as you get, you grow up, you start conditioning your own ego by what you learn, what you read, what you hear, what you choose to believe in, you know, the groups you choose to associate with, to identify with, you start creating your own sort of ego. Um, but it's really important, I think, to understand that it's just a process. It's a verb. That's when I say it's a process, that's what I mean. I mean, it's a verb. It's a it's a movement. Um, when you go to bed at night, the movement of ego stops when you go to sleep. When you're asleep, there's no uh ego. If ego was a thing, or if it was a noun, if it was something, then it would still be there. But it completely disappears. Not only when you go to sleep, but your ego disappears at various moments during the day. When your mind is quiet or distracted or you're doing something that occupies your attention to such an extent that your attention isn't focused on the condition movement of reactive mind and thought and feeling. Um at that moment the movement isn't there, right? The conditions however are are there for that movement to to come into being right to start moving. When that potential starts to move that's ego. So and it's that that movement that verb that we're all taught to identify with. So the thoughts that are quickly moving through your mind, the the thoughts that are quickly moving through your mind right now, this moment, and this evening, we're taught that those thoughts tell us who we are. That those thoughts are relevant in describing us. That we are also taught that what we feel, we are we are in many ways what we feel. We are what we remember. Our memory is a process as well. It's a movement and all this is sort of taught as we grow up and it forms a kind of perspective. It puts a lens over consciousness almost like a lattice work through which consciousness peers through or sees through. You know in the ancient Greek the theater theater the the word persona really means to sing through or to talk through. And in the ancient Greek theater, they would wear the actors would wear masks. And uh and the idea was they would talk through or sing through the persona, sing through the mask that they were wearing. Their mask was to take on a character that they were going to give voice to and give life to. Um, and and I think the the original meaning of some of these words we lose, you know, that that words like persona or ego are very much really like a mask. It's it's it's a it's something that we look through, we peer through. Consciousness peers through the ego. Um, and it colors the way the ego sees everything. It colors how the ego interprets life.