Your ego left unchecked sabotages you. You call a number of things that happen in your life “bad.” What you may not know is that most of these so-called bad things are ego-created, so in essence, they are self-created. I call those things drama. The ego in its operation creates drama, and if only you will be fully conscious, the drama will end.
Eckhart Tolle defines the ego as the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness, the watcher. When this ego encounters other egos, it will either see them as a potential threat or attempt to use them for its own ends. The ego has no real connection to any other being. When you observe the ego, you see the patterns because it has a deep-seated fear and a sense of lack. So it comes up with strategies to combat the fear and sense of lack. These strategies can be clever but they never truly solve the ego’s problems. Ego cannot solve your problems. Why? Ego is the problem.
“Bad” things happen when egos come together. They can come together in groups, institutions, or personal relationships. The resulting drama of the coming together of egos can be in the form of emotional or physical violence, power struggles, conflict, and so on. You can still create your own drama all by yourself. You create drama when you see yourself as a victim, feel guilty or anxious, or sorry for yourself. Most people have invested their sense of self in their drama. Ego runs their life. They are in love with their story which is their identity. They therefore fear and resist the end of their drama. This is why someone with financial need can win N5,000,000 today through sports betting and be back to the same situation of financial need three months later. That is why after being in dysfunctional relationships filled with drama, you sabotage a situation where someone comes into your life to truly love you. You unconsciously act so as to send the person away. In a way, what you are saying is, “If I should respond to your love, that is the end of my drama,” because you think the end of your drama is the death of yourself. You do not see that you are addicted to your drama.
Your ego, your false sense of self, has reigned for a long time and has made decisions, taken actions, and brought up thoughts. Your Being then follows the thoughts, actions, and decisions of the ego even though the agenda of the ego is mostly at odds with your Being. As your Being follows the dictates of the ego, you undergo misery. This is because your ego does not have the capacity to lead your Being which is way more intelligent than the mind that constructs the ego. As long as the ego presides in your life, you cannot have peace and joy. You may get pleasure but remember that joy and pleasure are not the same. Whereas you do not need to look for joy because joy is an aspect of the nature of your Being (you have it already even though it is obscured by your ego), you get pleasure from external things. The pleasure which your ego seeks from external things is superficial and temporal. External things are bound by the law of impermanence, they come and go, and they also change form. They may satisfy you today and tomorrow you are no longer satisfied by them. Rather than seeing what is happening and understand that transients cannot fulfill you, you seek bigger “toys.” This is the reason consumerism is thriving today and the advertising industry keeps having its way in exploiting your ego. They make you feel a sense of lack and present you with a product that will make you complete by filling the lack. You purchase the product and your temporary satisfaction with the product makes you think that your lack has been taken care of. Sometime later the sense of lack returns and you try to fill it up with another advertised product. This goes on and on.
Your Being wants to be in charge but your ego which lives in constant fear does not want to allow that. And so your ego fights your Being. Your ego knows that your Being being in charge implies the end of its reign and even its death. It fights for survival. This is why after decades of living under the dictates of the ego, you find it difficult or challenging to be who you are. When you allow your Being to be without trying to be this or that, the works of your ego comes to question. Your Being examines things that the ego has spent decades putting in place, things like alcohol and drugs. Your Being tries to stop certain foods from coming in but the ego sees this as foolishness. “Have you forgotten the pleasure you derive from these things?” asks the ego, “I need to fix this right away!” Most people then will gladly settle for much less. The reason is not difficult to understand: the inner battle of dethroning the ego and breaking free of its influence to trust and follow the unpredictable, unfamiliar, unorthodox, and uncertain ways of Being seems too difficult. But ask yourself which is more difficult: simply being or trying to be this or that.
