Hello all! In my previous post, The Ego: Friend or Foe Part I,  I explained to you what the ego was, how it formed, its purpose, and its components. For those of you who haven’t read Part I on this series, I suggest you do so before reading Part II. For those of you who have read Part I, lets continue where we left off.  

 As I stated in the previous post, the ego is “EVERYTHING that we believe we are and EVERYTHING we associate with ourselves”.  Its purpose is to provide us with a perspective, and this perspective is the starting point from which all of the interpretations we make about the world around us are made.  The ego forms during childhood based on what other people tell us about ourselves. The things that are most significant to us or the things that we hear the most about ourselves become part of our identity. As we grow older, other people, careers, and property gets integrated into our ego as it seeks to expand itself beyond the limits of our physical bodies.  Today we will discuss the relationship between our egos and ourselves.

The Ego is the False Self

Many eastern religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism describe the ego as our false self.  It is who we think we are.  Over the years, we’ve been told millions of things about ourselves, and this feedback forms the foundation of our ego.   In Part I, I used myself as an example. I recollect that as a child,  I was always told that I was smart and that I was creative.  But I beg the following questions;  smart and creative compared to whom and smart and creative compared to what?

The answers to these questions are smart and creative in comparison to others.  Who? Well it depends on who I’m around I suppose. As a child, I was labeled gifted because I scored better than 96% of the general population on the test used to make that determination.  Notice that in order for someone to be considered smart, there must be someone or some average for them to be smarter than!  That goes for everything else as well!  In order to be considered tall, there must be someone present or there has to be an average height for you to be taller than.  To be considered attractive, there must be someone or some standard to be more attractive than.   EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE!  So if everything is relative, am I really smart?  Or does whether or not I’m deemed intelligent depend on who’s around me?

Imagine if I went to college with kids who scored in the 98^th percentile on that same test that labeled me “gifted”.  How would I feel?  Probably quite dumb!   I probably wouldn’t consider myself intelligent, as my classmates would have superior intelligence to me. I probably would be the kid who struggled in class. I probably would have gotten teased for not knowing the answer to advanced calculus equations, which would probably be elementary to my classmates.  

Or imagine a woman,  who after being told she was “the most beautiful girl in the world” all her life, dating a man who’s only dated supermodels his entire life. How would this everyday girl, who self identified as being prettier than most women, feel when this guy treated her like an ordinary girl.  How would she feel knowing that she’s merely average in his eyes, and he’s not acting a fool over her or drooling over her like boyfriends past?          

These two examples are why I consider the ego a false self.  EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE! So if our personality characteristics can only be described in comparison to others, where’s the stability in them? THERE IS NONE!   Even though I’ve been told I’m smart my whole life, there are times when I feel like a complete idiot when reading about quantum physics or computer programming. Luckily, my whole sense of identity doesn’t hinge on being “smart”; but what if it did?

Unfortunately, too many of us stake our entire sense of being on our personality characteristics, our loved ones, our jobs, and our material possessions. This is the reason the multi-million dollar investor jumps off the 10^th floor after learning he’s bankrupt!  Or why the powerful lawyer shoots himself in the head after being disbarred!  This is the reason a boyfriend kills his girlfriend and himself after she breaks up with him!   The ego is the reason we suffer!

We act as if the things that make up our personality are permanent. We act like they will last forever. However, EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE, so if we use these impermanent characteristics as the foundation of our self perception; we are building our identities on sand!   

So what should we use as the foundation of our self perception?  We will discuss this in Part III of The Ego: Friend or Foe.