“Ego, in the yogic philosophy, is a false identity created by the mind. Anytime you say, ‘I am something’, it is your ego speaking. The main role of the ego is to create and maintain a sense of identification with something.
The kinds of identifications are endless. For example, you can identify with a nation. If you really think about it, such identification is completely ridiculous. National borders have been created artificially and changed throughout history. Similarly, you can be identified with a religion, a profession or even a food diet.
In a different sense, you identify yourself with an idea or characteristics that the ego clings on to. For example, if someone says ‘you are beautiful’ or ‘you are smart’, you might have a mental picture of yourself telling you that you are beautiful and smart. Similarly, if someone tells you — or even if you tell yourself — that you are ugly and a failure, your ego might identify with that. If you ever need to define yourself, these are the characteristics that will come to your mind.
So why is ego bad? In short, ego leads to a lot of suffering and negative emotions. There are three main problems with ego.
They don’t know themselves, or who they are, and therefore they cling on to external factors in order to define themselves. Without external identification, they would be lost. The problem is that any disturbance in the external world can cause internal turmoil.
Second, if you have a strong sense of ‘I am this’, your ego will get hurt in case somebody tells you otherwise. Why on earth would you get offended or have negative emotions when somebody says that you are stupid? It is the ego, believing that it is in fact not stupid and desperately wanting everyone else to recognize that.
Third (and this, in my opinion, is the worst consequence of ego), if your ego has a sense of who you are, you might actually identify with it so much that you become exactly that. All identifications are useless, but the negative ones are perhaps the most harmful.
If you believe that you are a failure, you will eventually behave in your everyday life as if you really were a failure. You will react to situations in a certain manner, you will not seek out opportunities, you will be anxious, you will radiate a certain energy around you. Eventually, even if nobody in their core can be a failure, you will create such an environment where your illusion will be indistinguishable from reality.
For these reasons, ego doesn’t serve you very well. And according to yoga, if something doesn’t serve you, you should let it go. But the quote that I want to mention today is an important insight for more advanced yoga practitioners who already work on eliminating their ego.
The Osho Quote – The death of ego happens only through surrender. People come to me and ask, ‘How do we not be egoistic?’ But you cannot do anything to be non-egoistic. Whatsoever you do will make you egoistic again. You can try to discipline the ego, but you cannot be non-egoistic because whatsoever you do, enhances the ego. You may try to be humble, but if it is your humbleness — practiced, disciplined by you — then deep down in your humbleness the ego will remain crowned, and it will go on saying, ‘Look. How humble I am!’
Essentially, Osho explains that the ultimate method to drop the ego completely is non-doing. An egoless state is a state where you are emotionally indifferent, where praise doesn’t excite joy, and criticism doesn’t hurt you. The initial stage of dissolving your ego is to turn in and destroy your identifications with any external factors and characteristics. But in order to get rid of your ego completely, you will need to go a step further — you need to surrender.”
https://medium.com, Osho’s Path to Liberation: Drop Your Ego Completely, Adela
