"Ego is the functioning of one's
point of view
in the attempt to cause that
point of view
to survive. The verb 'to ego' means 'to perpetuate one's
own
point of view'."
...
transcend (verb): to go further, rise above, or be more
important or better than something, especially a limit [the
Cambridge International Dictionary]
This essay,
Transcending Ego,
is the companion piece to
In order to
deal with anything,
in order to manage anything, it helps if you have a clear grasp of
what it is you're dealing
with.
A friend of mine is a yogini.
She practises yoga.
There's the physical aspect of her practise: asanas, poses. Then
there's the non-physical aspect which is more than
sittingmeditating
in the
cross-legged "lotus" pose, chanting "Om" ... "Om".
For her, the non-physical aspect is a kind of
religion.
And one of the tenets of that
religion,
is that ego should be overcome, and destroyed. So she dutifully
practises overcoming her ego. But nothing she does works. After each
yoga
/
meditation session,
her ego is still there, still firmly entrenched, larger than life and
twice as natural, taunting her failure to overcome it. Soon she
realizes part of her failure to overcome ego is that she doesn't really
have a clear grasp of what ego is to begin with (being unclear about
what a car is, makes it harder to drive one).
Werner's
view of ego is a
gamechanger.
It doesn't add to the current view of ego. It doesn't fine tune the
current view. Rather, it brings forth an entirely new
possibility for what ego is. Typically "ego" is a noun, a
thing. I have an ego. You have an ego.
Werner's
view of ego breaks step with the view of ego as a noun. For
Werner,
"to ego" is a verb, a doing. I ego (the verb), you
ego (the verb). So what's the derivative of ego as a verb rather than
as a noun?
Consider
two components of
a human being:
your mind, and the Being. You are not your mind. Who you are, is the
Being. Your mind's job is to protect and defend the Being and
anything else it
considers
the Being to be. When your mind deems its job to be so important
that it
considers
itself to be the Being, and starts protecting and defending
itself instead of the Being, we say you are
"ego-ing" (the verb). So "ego-ing" is when your mind protects
and defends itself, instead of the Being. And that's how "ego" is a
verb and not a noun (so
the verb "to
ego" literally means "to perpetuate one's own point of
view").
Given that we now have a clear grasp of
what it is we're dealing
with
when it comes to ego,
the question
now becomes: how do we overcome / destroy ego when it is ego-ing? And
the answer is: we don't. Overcoming / destroying ego is about as inane
as overcoming / destroying your nose when you have a cold. There is
nothing to be done with your nose when you have a cold. Just leave it
be / let it well alone, and let it do its job. That's what there is to
do with ego: leave it be / let it well alone, and let it do its job.
Indeed, own /
take responsibility
for
your ego. That's how you transcend ego. Overcoming / destroying ego is
futile.
It doesn't work. Ego is transcended by letting it be, not by trying to
overcome it or destroy it. You let ego be, and it lets you be.
My friend the yogini was intrigued by the idea of letting her ego be,
rather than trying to overcome it or destroy it. She got that
attempting to overcome or destroy her ego (when ego is an essential
part of the design of
human being)
is like trying to turn what is, into what is not. That's like
a dog trying not to be a
dog
- clearly not a
transformative*
option. And there's something else too: when you let ego be, you're
creating ego in the same space as ego already exists. When you create
something in the same space as it already exists,
it disappears.
Transformation is when what is, is (and when what is not, is not).
My friend the yogini now has
access
to the transformation of
yoga.
That's not a minor outcome to have started with trying to overcome
or destroy her ego.
