EGO: The Root Cause of Sufferings

What is suffering? Is it some kind of disturbance? If yes, why are we disturbed? Who makes us miserable? Now here, if you look outside and point him, her…and so and so and such and such thing or this or that circumstance…let me tell you friends your list will be endless. If you look outside you will never be able to find the right answer. So, just close your eyes and search and look within. The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you and the culprit is YOUR EGO!

       But what is ego? When a child is born, he has no knowledge of his consciousness, his own self, the first thing he becomes aware of is not him self but, the other. It is natural, because the eyes open outwards, the hands touch others, the ears listen to others, the tongue tastes food and the nose smells the outside. All these senses open outwards. He opens his eyes, sees others. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feeds the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body. This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself. Is it not this way? This is awareness, not of who he is but what his mother thinks him to be…beautiful, intelligent, and the child feels good when he is loved, he feels appreciated, he feels good about himself and…EGO is born. The feeling of ‘I am good, I am valuable’ creates a reflected center, a center- which is not real. It is simply what others think about him. Similarly if he is ‘not loved’, ‘not appreciated’ that too is ego, but an ill-ego. The mother was his world when he was born and then others join in.

      The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon – it is society, its not you. It is the reflection of how the society views you, your family, your friends, your religion, your country…ie. Me, my family, my friends, my religion, my country. And we remain happy in this false thing. Till the time this I-ness and My-ness are fed by others i.e. the society we live in we remain satisfied. Just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, the ego goes on finding causes to suffer, because it longs for attention. This sense of one’s own person becomes a kind of cage, a prison which shuts us in, prevents us from being true, from knowing truly, acting truly, understanding truly. It constricts us, squeezes us, and puts us in a very hard shell, where we feel protected with a continuous pampering by ‘others’. All illusions… for then, whatever, we do outside this is planned, manipulated, controlled for we don’t want the shell to be broken. Our behavior changes, our thoughts change, we resist, we stifle, and we are choked because now whatever we do is in accordance to ‘what the society thinks of us’ and not what we truly are. Now we have two centers. The one we came with and the one which is created by ‘others’…which is ‘ego’. See the trick, now we are controlled by ‘others’, the society. We  behave in a certain way, we laugh in a certain way, we love in a certain way and that way makes us a coward, for we are scared, we don’t want our reputation to be tarnished, our eminence to be lost and to safe-guard this ‘ego’ of I-ness and My-ness we go down to the level of hurting, abusing, hating other beings, conflicting, clashing with them, filling our self with all the negativity in this world just to maintain what we have manipulated all the years through. This is suffering; this negativity is suffering, is it not?