Dissolving the ego
The dysfunction of the egoic human mind is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet. (…) Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: evolve or die. ―Eckhart Tolle
👥 Serves: 1 person
🎚 Difficulty: Hard
⏳ Total time: Ongoing
🥣 Ingredients: A journal, a pencil or pen, “A New Earth” book by Eckhart Tolle (if you’re curious to find out more about it!)
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Awareness, Liberatory Learning, Positive Emotion
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Abundance, Challenging, Inquiry, Letting go, Liberation, Non-attachment, Peacefulness, Reflection, Self-awareness
Dissolving the ego
📝 Description
Reflecting on your relationship with ego.
In A New Earth, author Eckhart Tolle explains that “[i]f the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction”. Can we learn to transcend our thought, dissolve our individual (and collective) ego, and make space for a new consciousness?
The following recipe distills the wisdom from Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth to guide a deep reflection on your relationship with ego.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Identification
Tolle explains that one of the most basic structures of the human mind through which the ego comes into existence is identification. Your ego identifies with things, making you attached to them, obsessed with them, always striving for more. You might ask, how do I let go of my attachment to things? Tolle warns you not to even try. It will fade away “when you no longer seek to find yourself in them”. In the meantime, you might find it helpful to note down your attachment to things in your journal as a way to increase your self-awareness.
Step 2 – Complaining and resentment
Tolle highlights that complaining is one of the ways in which the ego strengthens itself and “[r]esentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labelling of people and adds even more energy to the ego”. Again, work on boosting your self-awareness. Whenever you notice the voice of resentment, take your journal and acknowledge that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. This will help you create distance between you and resentment, freeing yourself from your ego.
Step 3 – Defensiveness
Tolle cautions you to watch out for defensiveness, which is often masked as defending the ‘truth’. But the truth doesn’t need defending. In fact, what you are defending is yourself – the illusion of yourself to be accurate. Again, you cannot defeat defensiveness by attacking it. Tolle explains, “Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists”. Instead, make way for compassion, acknowledging that we all share the same dysfunctional ego.
Step 4 – Role-playing
The ego thrives on role-playing, settling on certain forms to seek fame. Common roles include the victim, the villain, and the lover. What self-definitions have you imposed on yourself (or others onto you)? What possibilities might open up if you dropped the idea that your function determines your identity? Tolle reassures you that “[w]hen you don’t play roles, it means there is no self (ego) in what you do. There is no secondary agenda: protection or strengthening of your self”.
Step 4 – Unhappiness
Do you experience any of the following unconscious thoughts that feed the feeling of discontent or background resentment?
- “There is something that needs to happen in my life before I can be at peace (happy, fulfilled, etc.). And I resent that it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe my resentment will finally make it happen.”
- “Something happened in the past that should not have happened, and I resent that. If that hadn’t happened, I would be at peace now.”
- “Something is happening now that should not be happening, and it is preventing me from being at peace now.”
- “You should do this or that so that I can be at peace. And I resent that you haven’t done it yet. Maybe my resentment will make you do it.”
- “Something you (or I) did, said, or failed to do in the past is preventing me from being at peace now.”
- “What you are doing or failing to do now is preventing me from being at peace.”
Tolle explains that the way to overcome this background unhappiness is to “make peace with the present moment”. Each moment presents you with the opportunity to be at peace, which is the end of the ego.