The Ego: What is this thing that won’t die that I’m trying so hard to kill...?
Despite my lack of academic training in the human mind I thought I would come at this topic from a spiritual and Buddhist point of view.
Picture this: it’s late 2020. My life has stalled. I’m living in my ex-boyfriend’s flat on the outskirts of east London because at that moment in time moving is out of the picture. I can’t find a job, not that I want one. My savings aren’t as resilient as I once believed. 18 months before, after attending a sound bath with my mum, my whole life had been thrown into question. I’m lost. I’m afraid. I’m angry. I’m sad. The world is a complete mess. I too am a complete mess. I learn about a thing called a ‘spiritual awakening’ after googling about existential depression and being directed to something called a ‘dark night of the soul’, it was nice to learn that I didn’t have a brain tumour at least. Being bored and desperate for more information I search for some videos on YouTube. From there I learn that my ego is to blame for the shitstorm of my life. I come to the understanding that I must destroy my ego because it’s fucking shit up for me. No one wants their shit fucked up, especially by an arsehole ego. At that point I make a resolution to kill my ego. I sit to meditate. Inhale, then a long exhale. I have an idea for a mantra. The mantra is “I will get rid of my ego”. From the depths of my being I hear a reply telling me that no, I won’t. This scares me. My ego has just answered me back, it’s out to get me. Maybe it’s stronger than I am. Maybe it’ll swallow me whole and then destroy other lives too that aren’t strong enough to destroy it. Over four years and a much deeper spiritual practice later my ego is still very much alive and well…
Ajahn Brahm, A Buddhist monk with a mega sense of humour, did a talk this year. In fact, he does many talks, nearly every Friday. During the Q&A of one of them someone asked him what the ego is. His answer was that the ego is your conditioning. He never said anything about the ego being a destructive arsehole. Ajahn Sundara, a Buddhist nun who told me that I need to get out of my head with a kindly smile on her face, says that if you want to know what your conditioning is just look at your comfort zone and that’ll tell you everything. In short the ego is your conditioning and your conditioning is your comfort zone.
What exactly is your conditioning then? What does it mean to be conditioned? Some sources say that conditioning starts before you’re even born. Conditioning is what we receive as children. Some of it is bad, some of it is good. It’s the bad conditioning that concerns people. As an English woman I received the conditioning for things like being quiet, submissive, being second place to my male peers, stuffing emotions, being polite, etc. As an individual I received the conditioning of being a rebel, having an opinion, diplomacy, creativity, sticking to my guns, etc. Both lists are very limited, they’re just to give you an idea so you can reflect on it yourself. The comfort zone for me usually means avoiding people, not speaking up, going along with the programme, and so on. Stepping out of my comfort zone looks like finding the right people to surround myself with, speaking up, asserting myself, you get it. Hopefully this’ll give a starting point for these things.
What I’m finding with conditioning, having reflected on it a lot this year, is that the negative conditioning is the world’s attempt to stifle your authentic self. The bad conditioning that you receive is often the opposite of what’s authentic for you. How many ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ sweet-natured woman are actually strong-willed forces to be reckoned with who no serve no master other than themselves deep down?
Sometimes in a person’s bad conditioning there is good to be found. Are you a massive people pleaser? I bet you’re a really supportive person. Are you pushy with other people? Perhaps you’d do well in a position that encourages people to be their very best like a life coach. This is up to you to do your inner work and to reflect on it.
The ego also has instinctual tendencies. We have this knack for forgetting that we’re animals too. We have a need for food, shelter, companionship, and many other things. Because we attempt to supress it in a hyper-individualised world it comes out in all sorts of roundabout and not particularly pleasant ways. If our instinctual needs aren’t satisfied this causes so many problems, including physical illness.
Once you come to better understand your ego you’ll find that with loving patients that it is possible to re-condition it. For example, you can swap a 20 minute doom-scroll for a 20 minute meditation. Rather than forcing that change you can gently investigate why you feel the need for a 20 minute doom-scroll when you can be doing something healthier like resting as opposed to straining your eyes. You can look at the patterns of your conditioning and find ways to change it, people who can help support it, maybe even an environment to nurture it. The possibilities are endless. I believe this process is called re-parenting yourself. Speaking of parents, once you start to investigate your conditioning closely you’ll understand where nearly all of it comes from for better and for worse. This is the start of forgiving your parents and changing society for the better.
I believe that it’s 100% possible to go beyond the ego, but that’s the work of yogis and yoginis. I’m not the right person to comment on that sort of thing really. I think we when we use them term ‘go beyond the ego’ what we mean is to integrate the ego. There’re many similes for this all over world and in all in religious traditions. Think of the Buddha and Mara, Jesus and Lucifer, God and the Devil. I don’t think it’s possible to live without any kind of ego, but I do believe it’s possible to have a mastery over it. The mind is a truly terrible master, but there’s no denying that it’s top-class, high-quality servant. I think when we say that someone has no ego what we mean is that they’ve got a mastery over it.
You better believe that I still have an ego, you do too. I have a very spiritually identified ego, also one that gets its nose put out of joint over the most ridiculous of things. I’m learning to be gentle with the thing though. It doesn’t need to be murdered in cold blood like the spiritual bypass community will tell you. What it needs is understanding and retraining. We all have an ego, even the Buddha did and look at what he did with it! During the Buddha’s time there wasn’t even a word for the ego. Ego is a Freudian term.
This is an extremely deep topic. I don’t know if one post could ever do a topic about the mind any justice. As a closing thought with terms like conditioning and reparenting used in this post how could you kill your ego when it looks eerily like your inner child? Have mercy on the thing in the way that the child was never shown.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post today. I really do appreciate it.