On Not Taking the Problem of the Ego Too Seriously

We hear a lot of talk about the ego, how insidious it is and how it works against awakening. Much of that kind of speech is useful up to a point. But we ought not let ourselves be fooled by the way we sometimes talk. If we take the so-called ego-problem too seriously, we might end up thinking that the ego was a thing that we could point to or feed or put out of the house, like a puppy who is no longer appreciated when the master notices that the little feller has been chewing on his shoes.

It is true that ego, as a complex of ideas and as an ongoing construction project, is implicated in our dissatisfaction. But we cannot get rid of dissatisfaction by throwing away the ego, even if we want to. Our minds do not work that way. If I choose to take that path, the best I can hope for is some kind of dissociative personality disorder. If we had no self whatever we could not be part of a community. We could not make any sort of human life at all. Ego is a set of concepts and neural operations that form the focus of the human being’s communications with others and with itself.

AND the self is not a real object. It is not a being that exists independently of our relations and development. It is not permanent. It is not self-existent. It is not even perfectly stable. As a unitary, immutable agent, the ego is an illusion that results from a complex collaboration of faculties that have evolved in a way unique among beings. Our ability to maintain the semblance of continuous consciousness is what makes us the kind of organism we are, capable of doing all sorts of amazing things, and also capable of harboring the most complex delusions. The self is a very powerful magic show closely related to the illusions of agency and consciousness. But the ego is also a necessary element of our being-in-the-world, real but not real in the way we are taught to think of it.

One obvious problem with “I” is the importance we give to our desires, preferences, agendas, stories, opinions, and so on. Here the task is to train ourselves to step aside from the torrential stream of our own narratives, and to learn to look at our desires, etc., as transient products of momentary causes and conditions. As one of my teachers put it, “Most of the things that you hold so precious and take so seriously are just brain farts. Watch them for a few minutes and they’ll go away.” However, when it comes down to it, we are extremely reluctant to give up our habitual way of relating to experience. We will go to great lengths to delay the change in perspective.

Yet we hear again and again from teachers of various spiritual traditions that the ego is a tyrant; a vicious, even demonic being who stands between us and Enlightenment. Thus the ego is made to appear as an enemy, a notion that is self-contradictory when you think about it. The ego is also portrayed as something dispensable. Get rid of it, and you are free! That view is not only false but a little mad. It is by means of the magic show—the process by which the nervous system of the human being produces self, world and all the rest—that we can negotiate the events of our constantly changing lives at all.