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Chapter 3

The Ego-mind

The main thing that makes mindfulness a difficult practice is surprisingly not coming from the outside, as an external factor. Our main obstacle against mindfulness comes from our own minds and it is called the Ego. Some people may call it “my personality”, some may ignore the very notion of having an Ego, some will not even acknowledge its existence. But the Ego is real and somewhere in the middle of our lives, it becomes the greatest threat to most of our efforts of living our life, consciously. There are many people that feel the urge to radically change their lives, by stopping the unconscious and sometimes toxic behaviors that they were immersed in for the most of their lives, and this is the call that we usually feel when we need to drop our Ego, and embrace a conscious, simple, and fulfilled life. In this chapter, we will look at what the Ego actually is and how it behaves, so we can develop an understanding about how we can transcend it, in close relation to our practice of being in the present moment.

The Ego is a natural component of the human being, and most people regard their Ego as their own native and unchangeable personality. Most of the people today are thinking and affirming that that’s how they actually are, and in doing so, they are completely identified with it. We usually live, act, and think out of our own Egos, and we have given our own Ego the right to choose for us the right path in life. By seeing things through our Egos, we always consider ourselves as being “different” than others, we always see our uniqueness, we always see a separation between ourselves or “me” and the others. We have developed our proud side so much and we are very pleased with what we have become, thinking with a rather superior mind, looking to comforting our own desires, always tending to our own satisfaction, to our own benefit, basically to our sole well-being. And even if we manage to be successful for a while, this way of thinking will, in the long run, start to slowly run against ourselves, by limiting our perception on our life, and by making us live a surrogate experience, where everything is seen from a limited materialistic perspective.

The Ego begins to form in early childhood, and through the years, it shapes into what most of us call “our personality”. To a certain extent, our Ego does its job wonderfully: it learns the difference between good and bad, it makes us unique individuals, based on a set of personal preferences, it further adapts based on comparison to others, and it guides us on our way using a list of preferences, beliefs, and biases that our mind has chosen. This gives us a sense of who we are, a sense of “self”, that is strengthened by our unique decisions. But at a certain point in our lives, when we mature, life gets real and rough, situations start to get more stressful and the Ego cannot do its job like it used to. Our Ego starts to confront himself now with others’ “unique” Egos, and life becomes increasingly difficult to deal with. Because of this, we try harder and harder to solve our problems, still acting from the level of our own Ego, from the same level that generated these problems in the first place. The harder we try, the more our Ego gets us in unwanted situations, the more it complicates our lives, and the more it fails. Most of our failures are based on the distorted perceptions of our Ego and its reactions to these perceptions because the Ego is merely a rational projection of our minds. This way our Ego gets more bruised, and a bruised Ego will start to react to almost any negative situation, trying to defend itself, creating more unhappiness and turmoil for more and more people, including ourselves. I am talking intentionally about our own Ego as it were a separate entity because we need to see it for what it really is, and gradually detach from identifying ourselves with it.

Our Ego is a mere mental projection, which is emanating from our minds, that creates a sense of “self” or a temporary identity for us, so we can integrate and find our place in the world. When we reach maturity, the Ego needs to be understood and transcended, so we can reach a level where we are completely aware, conscious, and responsible of our actions, and not at the mercy of the instinctual reactivity of our constant thinking mind. We need to understand, transcend, and befriend our Ego, and start to shed out all the negative aspects that make us who we have become, so we can further evolve. If you want to understand from a visual example, the human Ego can be compared to the continuous growth of the cocoon of the butterfly, that at some point needs to be shed, so it can be able to fly or, in our case, to become fully conscious or aware in the present moment, so we can feel the freedom that we are intended to feel, at maturity. We need to see here the difference between being conscious during our day, as a natural factor, and being conscious intentionally in the present moment, where we deliberately focus our awareness, as a practice. The latter is that which we will be focusing on to describe the practice of mindfulness, in this book.

Emerging from the cocoon of the Ego so we can become the butterfly is not an easy task. We have developed such a complex personality from childhood until adulthood, that has now all the good and the bad aspects of ourselves interwoven together. We relied so heavily on our minds that we have become only our mind. We judge and analyze everything through our minds, and this has become our normal occupation, and because of this, we cannot see past our own minds, past our own thinking. We are locked in the mental plane in the present moment, and we are so identified with it, that we cannot rest for a moment not thinking about things, most of the time not really being aware of what exists around us. We need to look more closely at how we can transform into the beautiful butterfly that we are, by shedding our Ego to embrace our soul, our heart, and our awakened mind.

The Ego is usually formed out of a melange of true, false, and incomplete beliefs, prejudices, and mental filters, through which we perceive our world. The Ego loves to judge, criticize, compare, and to always keep alive by encouraging us to ruminate a thousand thoughts in our minds, so it can still have an identity, kept alive by the story going on in our head. We need to understand, acknowledge, and gradually distantiate ourselves from what the Ego is if we want to feel the freedom that the natural and clear state of our mind provides. If we want to go further, evolve, and become the better version of ourselves, each and every day, if we want to act out of a clear and awakened mind, we have to learn to step back from our Ego which can only be silenced through our focused awareness, in the present moment. This is where mindfulness comes in; while being mindful, while being aware of the present moment, the Ego cannot follow, because by just being aware in the present moment, the thinking stops. Every time we need to step back from the stream of thoughts of our constantly thinking mind, we can simply rest in the present moment, where the random discourse about every little thing that goes in our mind will stop, giving us a chance now to think consciously if we need to, and to relate to what we really need to do, with awareness, in the present moment.

Throughout this book, I will also call our Ego “the Ego-mind”, because the Ego actually springs out of our minds and manifests at the mental level. We think that we are actually only our mind, which in fact is not true: we have a mind, but we can also act from our hearts, from our souls, from our intuition, or from an Awakened mind which can think, this time, consciously, and with intention. Mindfulness always brings us liberation from the cage of our own “small” mind. We call our Ego our “small” mind because it is separated from the whole, and because it cannot see, usually, the big picture, in any of the situations that arise.

Anyone can remark that at the beginning of the practice of meditation, we easily notice how we are trying to have a clear mind and somehow cannot “seem” to stop the stream of thinking that is going on inside our minds. That which we observe there is the Egoic mind, our “small” mind, the part of our minds that likes to ruminate inside all the problems that we have and that we might even run into, as possible sceneries. The Ego is that part of our minds that doesn’t stop talking throughout the day, that needs to reassert itself so it doesn’t lose its identity and its momentum, building up stories about this and that, criticizing people and situations, analyzing everything and even more than that, making us make rushed decisions that most of the time affect our lives and relationships in a negative way. We might say that “we are talking, not our minds” and that “we are always in charge of what we think, being able to stop at any time” but when we engage for the first time in meditation, even for 2 minutes, and rest lightly focused on our breathing, we will see that this is not actually true. Even if we do try to meditate with the goal of not thinking one thought for at least 2 minutes, our mind cannot stop thinking just another thought.

Indeed, managing to stop our thinking-mind from ruminating on thoughts is really difficult, at least in the beginning, because our minds are used to think all the time, and because thinking has immense inertia. In fact, that’s what we did for years and years, most of the time not being aware that we are completely engulfed in our heads, churning thoughts about myriad things, imagining possible outcomes that had never happened or even recalling negative experiences from the past, where we can easily experience the “victim” mentality. In order to stop our wild minds and be able again to make conscious decisions in the light of our presence, we need to first understand and befriend our own Ego, our own present mind, our own way of thinking, that kept us for the most part in the illusory perception of the real world, making us believe that the world is exactly how we think it is. Let’s look now at some aspects of our Ego, so we can understand more how it works.

Our Ego is centered around itself, or rather around ourselves, and it can only see the materialistic aspect of the world. Moreover, the Ego seeks to only serve itself, it seeks outward recognition in this world, it sees life as a competition, or sometimes like a battle of some sort, it seeks to preserve itself at all costs, and it is always in a constant look for more, in the outside world, be it that they are material possessions to bring it more happiness, or more knowledge that can enhance its inner-dialogue. Our Ego is always looking toward material values, time, money, fame, success, and social position because it resonates completely with the material world. By dwelling only in our own Egos, as a life experience, we see ourselves as being just our Ego, or our personality, and our own physical body. Because the Ego tends to separate itself from the others as in being unique, proud, successful, and smart, it cannot see the oneness in all things, where we are all one, interconnected to one another, and it always looks for all the answers outside of this kind of unity, hoping that at some point, it will find what it is looking for.

While immersed in our Ego, we see the world through the mental filters and beliefs that we accumulated in time. We did not always have a wider perspective of insight, so the Ego formed by believing and thinking in a limited fashion, mostly by copying others, and at the same time, creating for itself a so-called “unique” environment, out of its desire to stand out, or to be “something”. We have created, over the course of time, a self-superior image that stands out in front of the others, or that which is called pride, so our Ego can “evolve” and gain the prestige that it was always looking for. To elaborate further, our Ego thrives on dramas, fear, aggression, ignorance, hatred, and stress, and it does that by sustaining the continuous chatter in our minds, basically keeping alive as an entity, that is fuelled by our own negative thoughts and by the things that constantly happen on the surface of the present moment.

The biggest problem that we have is that we are identified with the stream of thoughts going in our heads as to our “I am” identity. People think that they are their minds, or that they are the discourse in their heads, and identify so much with what that message is saying, which comes all of the time out of the reactiveness of our own Ego, that they basically give out their conscious existence in the “hands” of their own minds. Our “I am” identity is actually our consciousness, our awareness, that appears effortlessly when we exist, in the present moment. Some people will still live their whole lives into their Egos, most of them ignoring this aspect completely, and not knowing and not wanting to know anything about it. That’s why in our world, the Ego has become the norm, an accepted behavior for all ages, in the name of our birthright that gives us the freedom of expressing our minds, in any way we see fit. Most of our society’s understanding is now still at the level of the Ego, or at the level of the rational mind, where everyone is just sharing, in a “spiritually unconscious” manner, their own thoughts.

A perfect example of our own Ego emerging is when someone else makes us defend ourselves, or defend the image that we have created about ourselves. We are completely identified with our own body, with how we look, with how we think, and with how we have become, and we tell ourselves in our minds that this is who we are. This is the Ego, and by reacting “unconsciously” in defending this image, we are always trying to protect an illusory aspect of ourselves which makes us who we are, in a materialistic world of Egos.

But there comes a point in our lives when we feel that we need to be committed to finally be successful in our lives; we decide to strive to attain and manifest all that which we desire or to finally begin to live our lives, with a clear mind, with no attachments, with no things that would keep us anchored in the past. We start to wish for higher goals, desire new things that would give us stability in our lives, such as a successful career or that financial freedom that would grant us a base for a sustainable life. To our surprise, the first layer of resistance to our own success exists right inside us: our Ego.

Our Ego’s way of functioning is mostly logical and analytical and based on past previous experiences. Because we had such a hard time attaining or manifesting our desires in the past, the Ego cannot believe that we can manage to really do this now, in the present moment, so it will turn around, analyze, sabotage, and bring all the possible negative outcomes into our attention, commenting negatively and basically questioning everything that we are trying to accomplish. Have you ever had these thoughts that say “but what if I do not succeed at doing that” or “what if this is too much for me” or “what if I will be rejected”? This is how our Ego is questioning everything in our life in the light of its negative perspective; it loves rationalizing, analyzing, and comparing, with all the situations in which we didn’t succeed, justifying this as “much-needed reasoning”, that will protect us in the case of a “future failure”, which, in fact, might never happen. Thus, our self-esteem and our drive to succeed are gradually lowered, to the expense of having a safety net, in case we fail. This is how our Ego works, this is how it functions, because all of its reasonings are ultimately based in fear, as opposed to the calmness and peacefulness that we find in the mind of no-thought, that we find in the practice of mindfulness, where we are just purely and simply aware of the present moment.

We have to understand that in themselves, our minds are simply perfect. They are a complex and inexhaustible source of wisdom and intelligence with which we perceive our reality. We are perfect as a being, as a whole, and we are flawless in every way we look at us. When we are talking about our Ego-minds, we are talking about an entity or a mental projection that formed as a result of our thinking, when we were using mostly the rational part of our minds, looking to understand life itself. The Ego that formed over time is, in most of the cases, incomplete in any way we look at it: it is merely a logical construct that makes use of past experiences to understand present moment challenges. We cannot perceive or see the world in its entirety when we look at it from the perspective of our own Ego, or from the perspective of our “small mind”: we can only understand and witness the world as it is when we step into the awareness of the present moment and see life with clear and undisturbed perception.

When we manage to step out of our Egos, when we step into the awareness of just being, when we step into the higher aspect of our intellect which is our awareness, our consciousness, our minds get cleared gradually of all the Ego’s thoughts, labels, filters, and mental constructs, and we get to see the larger picture, where greater wisdom is emerging, where insights come easily, where we see the world with a wider and greater perspective. When we are stepping out of our own Ego, we are not taking anymore into account all the false beliefs that we have formed over time, because of our wrong thinking, because of the society’s ways in influencing people’s thinking, because of unjustified judgments, or because of beliefs that formed out of anger, ignorance, and greed. Stepping out of our Ego is a necessity for everyone, as only by doing so, we can fully and consciously use our minds and our thinking, to live the free and fulfilled life that we deserve.

The limited view of our Ego has always made us see time as linear: there is the past, there is the present, and there is the future; Ego cannot see and understand vertical time, which is being or existing here, in the present moment, because by just existing, by being mindful or present, even for a mere few seconds, the Ego dissolves. By focusing on the present moment, by directing our awareness toward the present moment, by being here and now, all that we have is this eternal moment, where everything has ever happened. The Ego’s “self-identity” is built and granted by events that happened in our past, and by directing our conscious awareness in the simple present moment, it has nothing to identify with, anymore. So, this mind projection that the Ego is, disappears for as long as we keep mindful, for as long as we dwell in the present moment, consciously, where we get a chance of perceiving life in a direct experience fashion.

Conquering our own Egos is not always an easy thing. During our day we are working at our job, we come back home, we go to the city with friends, and we think we are in control of our life and that nothing is wrong. Almost nothing, because for an untrained mind in the practice of meditation or mindfulness, in 95% of these cases, we are all the time immersed in our Egos, making choices from our Ego’s limited perspective and its spiritually “unconscious” nature. It is only when we run into a situation that challenges us out of our comfort zone when we can notice how strongly we react to the external conditions, all of a sudden. It takes only a few negative thoughts that our Ego will think about anything, and we suddenly become emotionally out-of-balance, we harden our hearts and jump in a long train of thoughts. We forget about everything good that happened to us today, because our Ego is suddenly threatened by an external condition, and it feels that it has to protect his existence. We become aggressive and throw words at people until the situation becomes again, favorable for us. Thus, we never learn from our life lessons, we never witness the reality around us as it is, living all the time immersed in our minds and creating havoc whenever our sense of self, our Ego, is threatened.

But when did the Ego take control in such a way over our lives? The crowning of the Ego into the seat of power begins at some point during our lives, when we had become completely identified with the stream of thoughts that runs through our own mind, as to who we really are. Our Ego-mind will try to cope with our present situations and adapt, but because it mostly uses logic, it will not be able to solve all of them, making situations more messy and creating more stress for us to experience, at the mental, emotional, and even in some cases, at the physical level. An unfocused and untrained mind will always ruminate on thoughts, jumping from a subject to another, only to make us poorly navigate through our lives. The only antidote to silence our mind of its daily chatter, so we can experience our day with a clear and focused mind, where we will have the chance to think consciously, is to give it something so it can place its attention on it. Be it paying attention to our breath, a natural process that happens all the time, or by paying attention to the present moment, these two things can be successfully practiced, to easily silence our Ego minds. The untrained mind, and here we mean untrained in mindfulness or in the practice of meditation, is very impulsive, and always feels the need to say more, as it was accustomed to do. But by placing our attention on the present moment, with no need to argue with anything and anyone, or even with no need to make any kind of judgment towards anything, we can step out slowly from our thinking mind’s space and gradually start to see what our life really looks like, when our minds are empty of thought. This feels like a glass of cold spring water, that you drink on a hot summer day. This is what being mindful means when we are with our attention directed in the present moment, right here and right now: life witnessed through direct experience always feels like that, fresh, crisp, clean, and unwavering.

The main purpose of mindfulness is to bring us again to experience the natural state of our own mind. Or, with other words, its purpose is to make us see, befriend, understand and transcend our Ego-mind, so we can witness the natural state of being conscious. While we are in our Ego-mind, we are being called “spiritually unconscious”, or not really being aware of the present moment, of ourselves, and of what is around us, but actually being completely immersed in that which we are doing, being completely identified with the discourse that is going on in our heads about ourselves or others, being immersed in either past events or in possible future ones, confounding our real selves with our own Ego.

In order to restore our true nature, our main concern should be to practice being mindful. Everything else should come secondary. By striving to practice, not only mindfulness but any other chosen practice that brings mindfulness in our lives, we will be able to regain our freedom. Keeping a clear mind at all times has to become a priority for ourselves, so we can act responsibly and with respect to the integral aspect of our being. The more we are mindful throughout our days, the more we are just being here and now with a nonjudgmental attitude, the more we are able to act, speak, and think outside our own Ego. And the more we do that, the more we understand and witness the beauty of our world, as it is.

The difference between being immersed in our Ego-mind, in our daily regular mind that comments and judges everything that we perceive, see and encounter, and being mindful is immense: while being in our Ego can give us this constant nagging feeling about everything because of the way we label and perceive everything mentally, at the conceptual level, and because of the way we constantly resist and judge everything that the present moment has for us, always having preferences and mostly seeing the negative part of things, living a mindful life always shows us a mind that knows silence, stillness, and deepness. It is the difference between being reactive towards a situation and responding consciously to any situation we may find ourselves into. It is the difference between following blindly the dramas that develop around us and intuitively and consciously avoiding them, realizing them for what they are, with wisdom and awareness. It is the difference of living the life where others drag you continuously into Ego made dramas, and having a life of your own, exactly as you want it to be, consciously chosen, where there are no random or arbitrary things that you have to witness. It is the difference between feeling trapped in a bad life situation, and understanding the freedom that begins by simply witnessing the present moment. Through the vehicle of mindfulness, we can safely and consciously navigate our lives, through the rocks and rapids that could easily sink us at any time, so we can reach the safe shore, whenever we want.

We have to understand that our purpose here is not to be against our Ego-mind. We cannot be against ourselves. We have created our own Ego, we have created our own personality, we ourselves have chosen how we think and how we act in life. Any force that comes to counteract the Ego-mind, comes in fact from the Ego-mind itself. Anything that wants to reject, repel, or destroy a thing can only come from our limited perspective, from our limited thinking. The purpose is not to push against our Ego or to try to fight with it. This is still Ego action, that wants to destroy that which we don’t agree with, a totally egotistical and materialistic perspective. At best, we can only silence it by befriending our Ego, by acknowledging and accepting our current thoughts, by accepting and understanding ourselves as we are, through the means of being aware, in the present moment, in a peaceful manner. This is a first step in reaching the mind of no-thought. But to reach that space of pure awareness, we need to practice being mindful every day and gradually observe, understand, and let go to all the layers of thought going on unconsciously in our minds, from the surface ones to the more deep-rooted ones, which are usually harder to detect.

When one is identified with his own mind, with his own Ego, he will always end up suffering. But how does the Ego really lead to suffering? I will try to explain this with a quick example. Say you are being called stupid by someone you know well, in a direct confrontation. You react promptly, retaliating and fighting back, jumping quickly from contentment to an angry and defensive emotional state, showing your Ego in full effect. Now, if there were no people in the world that you would have ever considered stupid, in an attempt to feel better about yourself, then you would have kindly responded to this threat by just saying: “but there are no stupid people in this world, that I know of”. This point of view can only come from a good heart and an open mind, that always rests in the nonjudgmental aspect of the present moment. But since you yourself consider other people stupid, or better said, your own Ego-mind considers others as stupid, because of its desire to always feel superior, your Ego embodies this kind of proud attitude. So when this attitude is projected back from someone’s Ego onto your own Ego, you suffer, because your own Ego gets triggered and it swiftly comes to the surface of your mind, engaging in this small local drama. This suffering is a direct consequence of acting solely from the perspective of your own Ego. Not considering anyone inferior can only come from a conscious and humble approach, where you always see first your own limitations and your own mistakes; in practicing being mindful, you always acknowledge that everyone is basically the same, and you also forgive any instance in which you see other people’s Ego emerging. But to act with this kind of wisdom, to understand and promote only peace and equality upon everyone else, you have to see life through being mindful, so you can step beyond the Ego’s reactivity; you have to be nonjudgemental and simply aware, in the here and now.

That is why it is so important to befriend our minds. That’s why a nonjudgemental attitude is so important. That’s why acceptance and forgiveness are so important. That’s why conscious thought is important. This is why keeping a continuous relation with the present moment is important. When you apply all these things into your life, along with developing and cultivating other virtues, your life gets purified by them, in the long run, and your life will clean itself out of the mental weeds and suffering that the Ego has created.

To conclude, let’s look at a reference about the Ego, found in the ancient texts. In the Bible, Lord Jesus Christ was saying in the New Testament: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”. “Denying himself” is a metaphorical way in which He acknowledged the human Ego, which needs to be shed like an old garment and replaced by a mindful a direct experience, that takes place in every moment of our lives. “Taking the cross and following Him” would also mean taking the responsibility to be conscious, to act with awareness and with a humble attitude, and following into His footsteps would mean starting walking on his spiritual path. So the limited view of our Ego was known even 2000 years ago, where it was witnessed through the spiritual practices that were available at that time.

So far, we have seen that we need to understand, befriend, and accept our own mind as it is, and by understanding how our mind works, we can make the move from perceiving life through our Ego towards a mindful state of being, where we can experience life in a direct fashion, in each moment of our lives. Our journey into mindfulness is just about to begin and in the next chapters, we will start to look at our experience of stepping into the fresh and unwavering present moment.