What is the ego?

A False Self Image.

• The ego is one's false-self-image.
• Its not something real that one can hold in hands or take a picture of.
• It is just like a reflection to which one is made to identify with.
• In this sense...it can be compared to a reflection on a mirror.

One's Emotional Goalkeeper.

• The ego does the job of allowing only some emotions to pass through while labeling the others as bad and resisting them.
• The ego-cares for you. It thinks that had it not been for its resistance, interference, manipulations and so on...one would be nowhere
• The result...the ego tries to resists some emotions which according to the popular opinion i.e. social conditioning is considered as "bad".
• According to the ego life is going to be ideal/perfect only when ABC happens and that anything other, let's say XYZ should not happen.

MOMENTS when the ego takes roots.

• "If you do this you are a good boy or else a bad boy."
• "Look at JOHN, does he trouble his parents (like you)?"
• "I wish you were like him."
• "You are lazy". (an absolute statement)
• "You are stupid"
• "You are brilliant" (as compared to others).
• "You should be like this." (you are not good enough the way you are now)
• "Life should be lead like this." (Life is not perfect the way it is right now).
• "You are a good boy."
• "I don't know when you will be matured."
• "It is good you are not like him."
• "Thank GOD you are not like the other boys/girls in this society."

Survival strategies for the ego.

Resistance to what is:

• The present moment is not at all perceived as good by the ego.
• It has to be manipulated, changed, moved away, escaped and so on for the ego.
• The ego actually cannot survive for long under the rays of "What is".
• And so...it constantly denies and resists the "What is".
• For the ego...life is all about the past and the future.

Brooding over the past.

• I guess this is self-explanatory.

Strategising for the future. This may not always be planning which is an intelligent activity. It involves living in a dream-world built up of its own thoughts. Thinking, Thinking,Thinking. Thinking is the favorite game as well as the life-blood of the ego. Believe it or not...without thinking...the ego may not be able to survive within one even for a single week. Thinking shields a person from the exposure to "What is".

THE EGO HATES.

• Allowing things to be just as they are.
• It only understands manipulation and tampering with stuffs, be it relationships or a journey or your present moment etc.
• BEING. The ego doesn't even understand being. (Yet the moments that one truly cherishes in life are the moments in which there was no doing but just being. It may be during a first kiss, or first love or during a sexual orgasm and so on).
• Surrender.The ego wants a confirmation to everything. It may play a victim to life, but surrender? Nopesie-nopesie.
• The NOW moment. The food of the ego as well as its structure consists of time i.e past and future(this has got nothing to do with the clock time).
• The thought of being in the NOW also strikes terror for the ego.
• Time, thinking, doing, achieving that is all it wants.
• Silence. The ego wants constant chatter, something to chew always, some clatter, some noise, some activity and so some noise. It cannot tolerate silence even for a minute.