The Ego Mind

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 Following on from Do We Have a Soul or Consciousness?…

If it is our consciousness that observes us getting angry, then it is our ego mind that is getting angry. So what is the ego mind?

The ego mind is part of us that looks out for our survival - obviously this is a good thing. However, its survival strategies are based on experience - again, often good, but not always. Consider the following:

As a child you get beaten up at school by a bully. Next time you see them in the playground you steer clear of them to avoid getting hurt again. It is your ego mind that is guiding you to do this and you will do it repeatedly, possibly even after you are grown up you will feel a reluctance to be near the bully even though by now you are capable of dealing with them. So, as a child what the ego mind leads you to do protects you, however until you learn a different thing about the bully or allow your conscious mind to decide what to do you will forever be afraid of the bully.

This means that many of our automatic responses are from learned past experience, which can make sense for a time, but after that we need to be aware of what we are doing.

In some instances we are aware, but in others the response becomes a non-thinking habit that we are not even aware that we are doing. For example:

As a child your parents do not offer a lot of love but will give you attention when you are The Best at something, for example sports. As a child, your survival depends on your parents and so you want them to love you so that they continue to look after you, in which case you put all your effort into being good at running so that they can see that you deserve their love and they will thus continue to look after you. Unless you question it, this drive to be good at running could stay with you for many years, making you relentlessly competitive without even knowing what is behind it. It is only when we consciously consider why we do certain things that we realise that it is in response to an old pattern which we then need to let go of.

Here we are again, needing to be aware of what we are doing  😊

The ego mind is therefore very useful, we don’t want to forget that wild dogs can bite and standing too near the edge of the canal means that you might fall in. However we also need to be aware of where our decisions are coming from so that we can question what doesn’t ‘feel’ right to our conscious mind (if we pay attention to it) and let go of un-needed old patterns.

Finally the ego mind is part of our general thinking mind and we know that when we die our mind dies too. As the ego mind is all about self-preservation it therefore has a fear of death. Useful in dangerous situations, but very unhelpful in everyday life as it causes us to live in constant fear of the inevitable end of our life.

Conversely, many of us believe that our consciousness, or soul, does not cease to exist when we die, but continues on elsewhere. You can see how living from this belief - rather than from the viewpoint of the fearful ego mind - helps you to have a more relaxed life and old age, and ultimately a better death.



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