The Purpose of Ego as an Integral Part of Spirituality
By Enoch Tan in Mystery on February 25th, 2008 / 5 CommentsIn certain spiritual schools of thought, we have been conditioned to think of the ego in a negative and limited way. However it is an erroneous mentality to think of the ego as something that’s unwanted and to get rid off for spirituality purpose. The ego exists for a purpose and it’s an integral part of spirituality and the totality of being. To remove the ego is like removing the left hand and keeping the right. It’s a ridiculous concept that shouldn’t even be thought of at all. Spirit and ego go hand and hand for complete experience.
The purest definition for ego is the individuated consciousness of Infinite Being. It is who you are as a unique and distinct personality apart from universal consciousness. It is your expressed self that is localized within time and space. It is your existence as a free will entity that can think and act with or apart from higher intelligence. Imagine Spirit as an ocean and the individual wave as ego. The wave and ocean are one just as Spirit and ego are one. One represents the whole and the other represents the part.
Ego has its use for Spirit. Ego is the way by which Spirit perceives reality from one place and one moment. Ego is how Spirit has uniqueness of experience. Ego is also how Spirit expresses in a particular way that is unlike any other. The reason for not being attached to ego or your own personal reality is so that you are free to realize your total Self as Spirit which is unlimited, unbounded and capable of being, doing and having anything. Then are you truly free to live your life fully with the power of Spirit.
Without ego, there is no independence of thinking, which means you as an individual would not exist. You would not be able to have the experience of a unique personality along with personal memories and choices in this universe. So it would be pointless to do away with the ego since Spirit created ego to express and experience itself. The key to spirituality is not to get rid of the ego, but it is to become not limited by it. Spirituality is about realizing Spirit and harmonizing ego with it. We become One and All.
Spirituality is not about power over anyone. It is about self- empowerment, about power with everyone. The ego of a spiritual person is not a problem. It is an essential part of the human system, created expressly by The Creator of all life in order for it to experience self-consciousness from an infinite number of viewpoints. Infinite Being is the all-encompassing consciousness from which the universe was created. Everything in the universe is made of consciousness. Each snowflake is unique, so is each person.
You cannot cut off a part of yourself. The ego cannot be cast away and forgotten. It is your essential sense of identity. Even if someone were successful in casting away a part of themselves, there would come a time when they would have to retrieve that lost part and integrate it back into themselves in a healthy, holistic manner. That is why you always have reoccurring problems in life until you’ve resolved those parts of you which the situations keep bringing up. Psychological integration is wholeness of being.
You are an expression of Infinite Being as it experiences itself from all possible viewpoints. The best way you can serve yourself and Infinite Being, the source within us all, is to live your life to your own, personal, highest potential. And celebrate who you are, because there is no one exactly like you in the entire universe. Knowing this truth frees you to embrace your ego completely and allow it to be freely and fully expressed. You have every right to be who you are because you were designed to be that way.
Your primary purpose in life is to experience life from one individual, unique point of view. That answers the great question in life about what you are here for. You created yourself to exist in this physical world for the purpose of expressing yourself in a particular way and to live life with a unique experience. You are meant to live your life and not the life of another. So you are the best person you were born to be and you have the best destiny that you have given to yourself. Go ahead and live it to the fullest.
There are two extreme paths that a person can go in life. One is the path of extreme selfishness and the other is the path of extreme selflessness. Extreme selfishness is to seek to benefit oneself as much as possible while extreme selflessness is to seek to benefit others as much as possible. But both paths ultimately end up in the same place. Because in order to benefit oneself as much as possible, you must benefit others, and in order to benefit others as much as possible, you must benefit yourself too.
By helping others to the detriment of yourself, you become disempowered from serving them as best as you can. Not only that, you also now need others to help you in areas where you are in detriment. By serving yourself to the detriment of others, you cause your environment to deteriorate and therefore worsening your overall situation which isn’t to your best interest. The best way of being is to serve others and yourself completely. Ultimate selfless and selfishness are one because you are the Self of all.
People who only take from others or only give to others are ignorant of their total Self as Spirit or Infinite Being. We are all here as unique individuals to share our special gifts with each other. Giving and receiving are necessary steps to complete the process of energy exchange between ego and ego within Spirit. Your unique gift is given to the world when you express your unique self here. The best way to help others is by doing your own thing. By shinning your light, you inspire others to shine theirs as well.
About the author:
Enoch Tan aims to help people achieve greater awareness in living and experiencing life, to evolve human consciousness to higher levels and to revolutionize the way we understand the mind and reality, because that’s what governs every area of life and destiny. When you learn Secret Knowledge of The
Universe and Answers to Life Greatest Mysteries, you can have Wealth, Power, Freedom and Anything you want! Visit the site: Secrets of Mind and Reality
It will look like this: The Purpose of Ego as an Integral Part of Spirituality
Tags: Awareness, consciousness, desire, destiny, Intention, manifest, mind, reality, spirit, universe
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February 27th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Dear Mr Enoch Tan,
Your article is good to read. The points raised about EGO are not that true. The main purpose of Spiritual practice is for self discovery and self analysis to go towards self reliability and self conscience, these in scientific terms we can call as self critical analysis of what we do. If one has ego it aggravates the problem. Mind will start comparing and it becomes a relative term. Ego is not self, self is the soul which runs the body and mind. In scientific terms all the body mechanisms are controlled or triggered by the mind. Most of the spirituality practices are for controlling the mind, which otherwise deviates from the path of virtually. The attributes what you have mentioned as “When you learn Secret Knowledge of The Universe and Answers to Life Greatest Mysteries, you can have Wealth, Power, Freedom and Anything you want! Visit the site: Secrets of Mind and Reality”. are all materialistic aspects non of them we can take along with us even the body can not be take with us while we perish. Then what for we are living. If we can nor make humanly relationships, live peacefully, harmoniously and how serene conditions prevail on this earth.
Ego is one of the route cause of the most of the problems that we are facing on this earth, next is ignorance. Ego generates arrogance most of the times the people who have this lead to autocratic style. Inability to learn at any age bring ignorance, this coupled with ego makes one to take erroneous decisions.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
From a Buddhist perspective, they do not ultimately say that the ego is negative, they ultimately assert that it fundamentally does not exist. For when we search for that object which we designate as “Ego,” it cannot be found anywhere, for that which we are searching for is neither different from its constituent parts nor the same as its constituent parts. The ego is then a conventional designation, but one that does not ultimately exist. In this sense, Buddhists assert that the ego or the self has no inherent existence - it is a mental construction that we have come to believe in since beginningless time due to the three root poisons of Desire, Hatred, and Ignorance (of the nature of consciousness). By continuing to believe that such a thing fundamentally and concretely exists we maintain a sense of separateness which fixes us firmly in Samsara (the Round of Rebirth, the world of Illusion). From the Buddhist perspective, emphasizing that the ego exists creates a false dichotomy between the ego (the subject) and that which is non-ego (the object). Because there is no ultimate subject, they then in the same way assert that there is no ultimate object. In this way, a resolution of sorts may begin to be approached - however, it must be remembered that even the notion of a Thing which is “resolution,” be it a state of consciousness, a place, an understanding, etc. does not inherently exist either. No Path. No Goal. No Attainment. We are left with a non-affirming negative - a great openness which is no Thing at all. Do we call It God? Do we call It Suchness or the Selfless? Some have. Some have said nothing at all.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:05 am
To my knowledge and as per the vedic sciences and also if one follows some of the stoorie of the History, it is ego that has created problems, specially if they are in the position of power, in general it can seen that as the number of years pass in that position, he/she may be tempted to believe that they are superior to others in all aspects, if there is any challenge comes they can digest it. This common phenomenon in the world. The moment the ego starts building up, so as tempers raise, problems get aggravated. You may be aware that this leads to authoritarian/autocratic style of functioning, then once this reaches high temperatures, people revolt even intellectual start revolting for the restoration of democracy. This sort of behaviour is quite common among the people, this what was described as evolution theory ( life cycle).
I take it this ego as Energy GOes out of the body, if one wants to be tuned better not to be egoistic.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:21 am
If any body wanted to understand the purpose of the ego, it is only the property that annihilates races, regions, religions, sects, subsects and revamps this entire earth from those who have ego. This is the propert of the nature which creates illussions in the minds of those who feel they are great and they can not be conqueered. For your kind information this is the root cause of the most of present health problems that human kind is facing like blood pressure, diabetics, mental disorders, heart attacks at the early ages etc.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:34 am
To my knowledge and as per the vedic sciences and also if one follows some of the storie of the History, it is ego that has created problems, specially if they are in the position of power, in general it can seen that as the number of years pass in that position, he/she may be tempted to believe that they are superior to others in all aspects, if there is any challenge comes they can not digest it. This is common phenomenon in the world. The moment the ego starts building up, so as tempers raise, problems get aggravated. You may be aware that this leads to authoritarian/autocratic style of functioning, then once this reaches high temperatures, people revolt even intellectuals start revolting for the restoration of democracy. This sort of behaviour is quite common among the people, this is what that was described as evolution theory ( life cycle) in Vedas.
I take it this ego as Energy GOes out of the body, if one wants to be tuned better not to be egoistic. ( after corrections)