THE (UN)IMPORTANCE OF AN EGO
By Ben Henbest
April 8th, 2014
Do we really need an ego? What are the benefits of ridding ourselves of it? Our ego is an actor. It is almost the definition of psychosis: a separate entity inside our own mind that seeks social acceptance at any cost. Our ego is an actor. It chooses who we are in particular situations and with certain people, and does everything it can to protect its identity and part in the global play.If we are with good friends we act a certain way, with our grandparents another, and in a job interview, another. This all seems quite natural if we’re in an enclosed social environment where we have to only play one part. However, if we’re with good friends and an attractive girl enters the group, we change. Our ego becomes a different actor, having to merge the ‘friend’ actor with whatever actor it feels best with the new attractive girl. For example: intelligent guy, funny guy, smooth guy, successful guy. Merging two actors is stressful for the ego and it doesn’t like doing this as it has to impress and interact with other actors that don’t all compliment its part in the play.
Written by : Ben Henbest
@rowconn
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There is an emotion exclusive to the ego, and that emotion is embarrassment. Embarrassment is quite simply when the ego realises that it is not playing its part well. Its character has been seen through. The funny thing is that most people in the world are actors; our egos have completely taken over our true selves, like parasites controlling their hosts. There is an unspoken rule amongst most people in the human race that goes something like this: “I am an actor and I know that everybody else is an actor, but we agree just to play our parts to the best of our ability, and if your actor gives itself away by playing its part poorly, the unseen audience will be displeased with the play, so you and your ego are looked down upon.” Your ego becomes embarrassed. There is an
obvious example of this that we have all observed at some time or another, yet failed to understand exactly what we are observing. The cool guy in the pub is acting to his friends about drinking lots, being
reckless, being in control, being an alpha male, being successful, being a ‘lad’. Then his girlfriend calls and his actor becomes caring, apologetic, in denial about his alpha behaviour. He will then turn back to his friends, and his actor will pretend that he was acting to his girlfriend and not to them. If he were, by misfortune, to forget to hang-up the phone to his girlfriend whilst returning to his friends, he might be confronted when he gets home, and in this instance would insist the real acting was with his friends and not his girlfriend. Every part the ego ever plays swears blind that that is the ‘real’ person. Every actor the ego plays, however, is false.
So why do we have actors, and why do we have this unspoken, ‘don’t let the audience know we’re acting, don’t let down our fellow actors’ mentality? If I were to rid myself of ego, I would be honest and happy with my honesty because I’m being transparent about my thought processes.
That is not to say I wouldn’t ever make mistakes because I am after all human, but I could happily express my reasons for making mistakes and learn from them in the future. The reason we don’t is that our egos tell us we’ll be ridiculed for such honesty, and we’re better off leaving our social interactions to the finely rehearsed and tuned acting skills of our ego. There are some truths in this to begin with, but these are very easy to overcome. For example if we were to stand next to a stranger at a bus stop and casually tell them how we love them as a person, this would be seen as very bold and probably inappropriate social conduct. On face value this is very likely, but let’s examine it in a bit more detail.
The ego of the unsuspecting person will immediately go into acting overdrive, being confronted with such an unusual situation. The person, along with any bystanders, clearly can’t be offended by such a kind compliment: it is a generous and honest thing to say to anybody, so long as it’s genuine. The problem is that people don’t normally do those things, or more accurately their ego actors don’t normally offer such altruistic comments to strangers. And stranger ego actors aren’t used to receiving them. This is a big problem for the ego and its current actor, since it is not prepared to respond ‘in character’ to such a situation. It therefore panics, and a likely response would be to dismiss the comment, making the complimenting actor look stupid, as it’s clearly not playing its part very well.
There are two ways for the complimenting person to go from here. They can either respond as the person they really are, be happy to have offered the compliment and understand that they are being responded to by an actor not a person, and hope that their stranger companion will realise that later on, and hopefully make a small step to becoming more awakened as a result. The other way is that our ego can’t respond. It panics, try to get back into character and act its way out of the situation... this is known as embarrassment: an emotion exclusive to the ego.
So what’s the best thing to do?
On awakening we clearly understand our ego as a separate entity, and that it distorts our morality and humanism. This is the most important step to make, as once it’s realised it cannot be unrealised. The change is made, your consciousness is irreversibly raised.
Yet egos are persistent characters, and upon your awakening their parasitic nature will try to hold onto some control of you, despite your awareness of them. On awakening you will likely be overwhelmed with such a profound new understanding of humanity, social interactions and morality. You’ll also be confused as to who you really are, since most of your life you’ve been played by an actor and unable to behave as ‘yourself’, rather than a very adaptive and talented actor. Your subconscious puppeteer has now been recognised, and from that instant it is no longer in control.
Your new outlook on life, the people around you and the nature of the world you live in is suddenly like a jigsaw; each piece is very clear but you’re still trying to fit them together to a unified theory of ‘who you are’. You’ll likely speak very differently, try to explain this spiritual awaking to people and feel very knowledgeable and enlightened. This is a perfectly natural and necessary part of your awakening; it’s a wonderful and exciting time, and is the beginning of the end of your ego. However your ego will put up a last ditch attempt to stay in control. It knows it’s been identified and is being monitored, so its influence is very much reduced, but don’t be worried or confused that it keeps trying to take back its host. After all, it’s been acting on your behalf for a very long time.
It will probably try to steal the credit for your awakening. Its newest actor will take the part of the newly ‘awakened’ character and might try to make you appear superior to non-awakened people. This won’t last long because you will be constantly monitoring it, and as you monitor it the instances in which it has the chance to act will reduce. You will realise that your ego is false; it always rewarded you for letting it play its part, but it’s no substitute for being the real you.
Who is the real you? Who is the real anybody? We are all caring people who live in fear from our ego that we aren’t acting well enough, and that our well rehearsed veteran actor will be exposed as a fake. The truth is that once we are rid of our ego, we aren’t vulnerable to embarrassment or fear, because we are honest about who we are. We are all human, we are all good, and we only behave with anything less than complete kindness because of the fear our ego instills in us.
We are people not actors. People are good and kind. Let’s be people.