Ego resistance
Baby elephants are bound by a rope and can’t escape. When they grow up they still think they are bound, even though they now have the strength to break free.
Why are we so resistant to change? I think it’s because the familiar is easy and it is safe. The ego is actually there as a survival mechanism. Unfortunately playing it safe can and often does come at the expensive of growth and happiness.
It’s a bit like growing muscle in the gym. The body doesn’t really want to grow muscle. Muscle requires a lot of calories to maintain, so it can become a hinderance to our survival in a natural setting where food is often scarce. Your body will only put on muscle mass if you shock it into thinking it needs that muscle to survive. That’s why you have to try so hard in the gym. If you just go in there and casually lift weights while you’re checking Instagram, you’re not going to get anything built. You body will happily make do with what it has.
Physical survival is one thing, but the ego puts up the biggest fight when it’s very essence is threatened. The ego will fight tooth and nail when you start to realise that you are something beyond it. It will use all sorts of tricks, fear primarily, but also cynicism, ridicule, negativity, laziness and forgetfulness. Whatever is required.
Thankfully it is in competition with the omnipotent powers that be, and in the end they win out. The ‘universe’ if you like continues to move you along a path to where transcending the ego becomes your only option. This often takes the form of difficult life circumstances or just plain old unhappiness. Or dissatisfaction, where for example you have worked really hard to achieve some goal. Perhaps it’s a work achievement, when you finally get there and after the initial elation has died down, you feel a familiar feeling starting to creep into your gut that something is missing. Now at this point your ego could kick in and tell you that it’s because you need an additional achievement, then finally you’ll feel satisfied. In reality this cycle just keeps repeating.
If you’re fortunate you’ll wake up one day and realise that those achievements will never give you the deeper fulfilment that we all crave. But your ego will do its best to prevent this from happening. For example it might be telling you right now that this is a tiresome topic and that you should do something else like check the news or check your messages. And boom if you do that you’ve just given in to the ego’s distraction. And who knows how long you’ll have to wait to be reminded of this truth again.
The same thing happened to me recently.
Australia had just opened it’s borders after a painful 2 years of covid lockdowns. After being sat at home for most of those 2 years I couldn’t wait to get out. Adventure beckoned but at that stage many countries weren’t yet accepting visitors. Thailand was one of the first in Asia to open its borders, so even though previously I didn’t have much interest in visiting, I jumped on a flight to Phuket. Initially I still felt pretty numb, but as the days went on life started to return to my hibernating system.
As I sat in a cafe one morning a man who seemed to be in his 60’s said hello and we got chatting. Usually I wouldn’t have indulged the conversation, but I figured hell I’m on holiday, let me see what this guy is about. He seemed nice enough, he was from Poland. Separated from his wife he’d decided the spend his retirement in sunny Thailand and skip the harsh Polish winters.
He had some funny ideas though, bordering on crazy if I’m honest. He told me that he leaves his hotel room open, with valuables including a laptop sitting openly on the desk. When I asked him why he replied that, “it’s not in my karma to be robbed right now”. There was more too, but ill leave out the other conspiracies since they were quite distasteful. This was hard to reconcile in a man who otherwise seemed to be quite genuine and generous. He took me around to a couple of his favourite spots on the island and showed me some areas that might be good to stay in. He also invited me to his birthday dinner with a few of his friends.
In a reversal of the custom he gave us gifts for his birthday. To me he gifted a book by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth. A book which I left in its plastic wrapper. I really thought to myself that given that this guy is a borderline nutter, the book can’t be any good. So when I left Thailand, I also left the book unwrapped and unread.
Fast forward a year and I was based in Bangkok. For whatever reason I was going through a real rough patch. Lo and behold I was given another Eckhart Tolle book, The Power of Now. This time I read it. And of course it was life changing.
The lesson in this is that if I hadn’t been so cynical in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to learn the hard way.
Most of us are intent on learning the hard way. If you’ve made it this far into the article perhaps you’re ready to begin putting the ego aside. It’s a process, it won’t happen in an instant (except in some rare cases).
None of this is to say that achieving those external goals isn’t important. In fact I think striving for your goals with all your might is vital, energising and ideally can make a contribution to others. At the same time the idea of spirituality is to be happy whether you achieve those goals or not. Ironically the less you are dependant on the outcome, the more likely you are to achieve it.
While an aim to transcend the ego is ideal, it doesn’t absolve us from dealing with the problems that confront us in every day life. Whatever stage of realisation we are at, we are still confronted with challenges in life that need to be solved and not avoided.
“The tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.” - The Road Less Travelled
It’s a balance then, to address the things we need to in daily life, while also transcending the constantly nagging ego.