Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Steve Pavlina - The War on Ego


A great post in defense of the ego from Steve Pavlina. No matter where you look in the personal development world these days, someone is attacking the poor little ego, especially Oprah's favorite new guru, Eckhart Tolle.

Here is the beginning to what is a much longer article.

The War on Ego seems to be gaining popularity in some spiritual circles. Within this context the ego is basically your identification with your physical life and all its trappings, including your name, your personal history, your career, your relationships, and your current life situation. The ego is how most people choose to identify themselves.

The War on Ego emphasizes that you don’t have to identify yourself with your ego. You can instead choose to identify yourself as a spiritual being having a temporary human experience. You could also move beyond that and identify yourself with pure oneness or consciousness, devoid of any particular individuality. With a little practice, states such as these can be experienced during meditation, but they can also arise spontaneously.

Because the egoless state of being can feel so elevated and joyful, some people choose to point fingers at the ego as the cause of all human suffering. They argue that the world would be a much better place if we could simply let go of ego identification and identify ourselves as pure God or Source energy instead… or perhaps relinquish individual identity altogether.

Although War on Ego has a positive intention behind it, in practice it’s rather misguided.

I agree that ego identification is a big problem for a lot of people. When you think your physical life is all you have, you tend to become very attached to it. Protecting, defending, and securing your physical identity occupies a significant part of your time, energy, and attention. If anyone interferes with the security of your physical life, they become a threat. This creates stress and often leads to some form of violence. Violence is the natural consequence of a posture of self-defense.

I disagree that the solution to ego-based problems is to denigrate, eliminate, or transcend the ego itself. The ego isn’t the problem. The ego serves a very useful function, and it’s a mistake to try to tune it out.


This is good and useful stuff for anyone who has been convinced that the ego is evil or unnecessary. Next time you are negotiating traffic on the freeway at 75 miles an hour, try doing it without ego (just let me know where you'll be so I can be elsewhere).

Steve also offers some suggestions for negotiating a truce.

Instead of trying to abandon your ego, why not give it something more significant to sink its teeth into? Set your ego upon a global-level goal that really inspires you — the kind of goal that stirs your soul. Integrating your physical life into your identity isn’t a bad thing if your physical identity and your spiritual identity are aligned.

The main caution is that you have to stay focused on the overlap between your individual good and the good of humanity. This takes a bit of practice because it’s a different way of thinking about life than most people are taught. We’re encouraged to think about how our actions affect the people closest to us but not the entire body of humanity. There is an effect though, and it does make a difference.


Read the whole post.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good stuff thanks for sharing...