The Human Ego
When I look at others,
My ego evokes envy and hate
and desire to control.
I don’t wish others well,
or at least, not better than me.
I want them to succeed a little,
a relative success,
but I want everyone to see that I am more successful.
Time to Break Free
Our nature, through which we sense the world and ourselves alive and operating in it, is a program that depicts a certain reality for us.
It is called “Ego”—the will to receive and to enjoy by myself and for myself, even when it is at the expense of others.
This software locks us from within, immerses us within it, draws all of our attention, and actually compels us to focus solely on ourselves.
We operate according to this program and cannot even contemplate the existence of another reality.
Ego - Human Nature – The Will to Receive
We must not destroy anything within us.
Even the most negative attributes should remain.
We do not create anything new,
but only correct how we use
what already exists within us.
Contrasts
Question: Why were we created with ego in the first place, if we will eventually have to correct it?
We come to know the world by comparing opposites—hot vs. cold, black vs. white. We recognize one in relation to the other. If everything were white, we wouldn’t detect anything. Likewise, if everything were black, we wouldn’t detect anything, either.
Contrast is always necessary, the disparity between colors, sensations, and places. We sense the differences between things, but not each thing separately.
The Creator is love and bestowal. However, we will not be able to sense what bestowal is if we are not opposite to it. This is why we need the ego—“help made against him.” Being opposite from the Creator helps us know and sense the Creator.
The Creator—the desire to love and give
The creature—the desire to receive
Because we are currently opposite from the Creator
we are hiding Him from ourselves
Correction—as we acquire the quality of love and bestowal
we equalize with the Creator and begin to sense Him
Love
means to regard the other as yourself.
You know the other’s desires. You sense them as your own desires,
and you do everything you can to satisfy them.
Emerging into a Reality of Love
Question: People around me want nothing but to hurt me! What do we do when one tries to love and the other does not?
The mutual love that we aspire for is impossible within the ego. I “love” another person because he is good for me, but in fact, I want only to exploit him.
Love within the ego is like loving fish—I love fish because I enjoy them. In the same manner, as long as I enjoy someone I enjoy being with him and I “love” him. But the moment I don’t enjoy being with him, I push him away.
But there is another love, one which we still don’t know. It exists above our selfish considerations, above our nature. When the picture of us being parts of a single, inclusive, and interdependent system is revealed to us, we surrender to its power and the true love of others awakens within us.
And beyond this love there is an even higher love. Beyond mutual dependency, the quality of love itself is drawing us towards it, for we realize that loving and bestowing are the most exalted things in reality.
Love allows us to transcend our regular perception and begin to sense another reality.
When our natural aspiration to absorb everything within us changes into the aspiration to love and to give, the minute and limited reality we now sense relinquishes its place, and the complete reality appears to us—the spiritual reality.
One who comes to feel the spiritual reality realizes that people mistreat each other because they are naturally controlled by the ego, not because they are evil. He discovers that they were deliberately created that way to eventually attain independent awareness of the nullity of the ego. Only then will they emerge from it into a reality of love.
A Social Network on the Spiritual Level
Question: It seems to me that people prefer to communicate by e-mails and SMS instead of speaking to each other. Why is it so?
Today the ego has evolved to such a degree that we prefer a more virtual relationship with others.
It is not that we do or do not want others. But we feel better, more comfortable, more complete when we connect with others through text messages or a computer screen, or something else.
Why? Because in this way we don’t touch others’ bodies, their external forms.
To understand why it happens, we must know the root of this phenomenon. The desire to receive in us has evolved and wishes to transcend the animal level of our bodies. The animal level has nothing further to give us; it does not provide us contact with others. However, we do seek deeper contact with others, so for the time being we turn to virtual relationships.
In the next phase, virtual relationships will not satisfy us and we will want an even deeper connection. Amidst the virtual connection, we will sense a need to be internally, spiritually connected with others.
The more removed we become on the physical level, the more we sense the need for connection. This explains the revolution of the internet and why everyone is so drawn to it.
Where does this attraction come from, which sometimes turns into an actual obsession? It comes from our wish to satisfy our need for connection with others. Although social networks and forums today are usually filled with drivel, and surely there is no true fulfillment in this connection, there is nevertheless a kind of connection here and it addicts us.