You and I

The first thing we recognise once we’re born is the feeling of I and I’m hungry, I’m tired, I feel pain and so on and so fort. And long after that, the baby starts to realise you also exist. Once these realisations take root in the mind, discrimination between you and I, or I’m not you and you’re not I, become more and more obvious, stronger, thicker, heavier, larger and even uglier (with pimples) as the practice is year after year and lifelong.

Ego is
actually just I. You is the affected, subordinate culprit. The more I becomes stronger, the more you is influenced and become nastier, more supportive to I to be stronger, but they become more and more emotionally competitive. They are like two boxers, two sides of warring people, feudal sporting teams, etc. that they need each others for success, glory, victory and the sense of existence; they need each other existence for companion. Without you and I, life can’t be the same as the way we know it is. They are time to time each others’ accomplices.

Actually, ego is not really a strong thing but its roots are as I and you provide the soil for its growth and regrowth and fertiliser that we naturally give it fertiliser and recycle the fertiliser we produced for it. Ego is not strong as we time to time do humanitarian works for others’ sake or we create the emotion of sympathy, love, agreement, empathy, happiness for others, enjoyment in others’ presence, etc.

Ego is not strong but like weed, it does grow back as quick as possible as it doesn’t lose its roots from supportive soil. But it is always spreading, again like weed. If you don’t take care of your mind (emotions) as the weed is spreading all over it, you will only have the bad tempers. The soil is not naturally supportive, although it gives fertiliser to ego and processes fertiliser – as it has lots of them. But when the mind is conditioned by ego, the soil becomes too supportive – like a caterpillar as a host to the growing baby wasp that is eating it inside out.

In this situation, the strength of ego is different in different emotions. The presence of the strength of ego in fear is so strong. And fear along can kill a person. But some people, or some creatures, are so aggressive that their egos are so strong that they live with anger most of the time. Likewise, some people have a lot of love and their egos strongly presence in their emotion of love – whether as a form of possessiveness or compassion. Isn’t it incredible to put compassion and ego as the same thing? But compassion is not ego but the ways individuals view it and possess it are to make them (compassion and ego) as though the same thing. That is the condition of mind.

Ego produces a substance that can be compared to intoxication. That substance can cause a condition like hallucination. What does intoxication do? It deludes the mind, the brain and the intelligence so the intoxicated people have to succumb to misconception, misinterpretation of what they see, hear or what comes out of their thought and the imbalance of emotion and physical activity that usually lead to a harmful event.

So it can be said that ego misinforms or filters information through its misinterpretation and that makes its hosts more egocentric.

To understand, I don’t need to give any example as I write in my view and as your read in yours. We see or do not see eye to eye on the same words we share as writer and readers although we both know they have the same meanings. My concept and your concept make them to be different but we know they don’t volunteer that. The arrangement of words may be beautiful but words cannot be treated like other objects used for art making. Literature can lead us to heaven or hell (literally) on earth.

View is the energy of intellects and concept is of the guessers, even if some concepts are near truth experience – like near death experience has brought a huge debate. Once you know the reality, both concept and view disappear, like thirst disappears after a good nice drink. But without concept or view, one can become unsustainable or it could be a feeling like memory loss – unlike Zen.

Extracting good feeling out of the clearing-concepts-out-of-confusion is maybe like being in the open ocean and thirsty but cannot drink. Without pure fresh water, one cannot drink properly. Yet ego is needed to find pure fresh water but one must be aware of the potential of ego and not to let it grow to the size one cannot control. It must not become the master but must be a servant, a tool, an aids, so it has to know its place or one has to know the place of one’s ego. And this is the capacity of the intelligent people – yet they have to be wise so they won’t be foolish. No capacity can develop itself without the persistent effort. Seeing pronouns as pronouns and reality as reality can make one wiser, I guess. After all, we’re just creatures so you and I mightn’t be too different.

We know the sun is there shining for billions of years but wether it rises or rises from the east is just a local colour. The east doesn’t exist in the space and we have no idea how the sun moves around the Milky Way. Well, who knows or who cares how long it takes for the sun to complete a full circle around its galaxy! And whether we need the sun at all is also a mystery – if there was no sun, organisms would be thriving in the warmer regions of the earth that the ice could be their sky; plants might not be green but they’d find a way to breathe carbon dioxide and cook their food and produce oxygen for higher intelligent creatures. By not knowing the reality, spirituality tends to concern about mere fantasy.

Whilst one has the emotion of concern about one’s spiritual wellbeing, one could end up in the whirlpool of pure fantasy. Life is so ordinary for a lot of people. Life is very demanding, costly and painful. Life seems to be very boring indeed. That enhances the need of fantasy or exaggerates the pleasure in fantasy. When the young fantasize romance, adults fantasize about desirable lifestyle and lots of people used to fantasize heaven and hell largely concerned to sensual pleasures than anything to do spiritual benefits. Imagination is not dangerous but it can be a shoot to grow up into additive fantasy. And that is how ego can manipulate me and you.

The truth is danger is present in every fantasy.

As ego produces a substance that is like intoxication, no wonder how real intoxicants can influence people. Although some people do not use drugs due to education they have, the natural tendency is different.

Kids tend to get injury often as they don’t know to avoid injury and do not have the strength to avoid them, like the adults can. Likewise, some people are more mature, thoughtful and able to understand things with both natural conscience and the intellects developed by good education.

And egocentric fantasy can lead to self-pity, grievances and crimes. And every crime leads the committer nowhere but regret.

Ego lets us to be short-sighted, impatient, and moody. Actually my ego is me and sometimes it’s like a storm and destroys my heart.

The core of the truth is I’m the EGO – Ego Glistened Optical-illusion, Ego Guided Order and Ego Gratifying Organism. And you are SELF – Self Engineered Little Folk.

The best part of it is, it’s manageable.

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online visit (i didn't read all of them):

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/180318/ego
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http://www.andrewcohen.org/teachings/what-is-ego.asp
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http://what-buddha-said.net/drops/IV/Anatta_No_Self.htm
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http://www.taoism.net/theway/ego.htm
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http://deoxy.org/egofalse.htm
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ego
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ego
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGO
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recommended:

http://www.answers.com/topic/ego
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why should i be their leader
to lead their will and lead them to disaster?
why should i be dubbed a fail leader?
rather get rid of all power!

good people won't lead themselves to disaster
without good people, good democracy cannot exist.
without good leaders, good people cannot exist.
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