In this post, we look at two further facets of the ego to help you see it more clearly: its superiority complex, and its perpetual seeking.
The ego is always looking for ways to perpetuate itself, and a great way to do this is to believe it’s better than other people. It provides good justifications for why that’s the case. It can even adopt noble causes as a way to promote itself.
I notice this trap on social media. The modus operandi of social media is to basically is to perpetuate this big delusion, the delusion that you’re going to be somebody, and the delusion that your ego is better than others.
Social media is about looking sexier than other people. It’s about looking healthier. It’s about looking confident. It’s about looking rich.
Whether or not these things are true isn’t so important. You’re not those things but you want to believe that you are, because you need validation from others.
So what do we do about this superiority complex? I’m not saying that we don’t aspire to things, or that we don’t do meaningful, fulfilling things. We can’t sit around and do nothing all day. You can live life on more conscious levels than others, and we all have areas where we outstrip others, and we shouldn’t forget that.
Life is here. You’re probably going to be around for 70, 80, 90 years, and you may as well live it. The key is your level of attachment, and the superiority complex is one of the huge attachments we must work through as humans.
If you’re stuck in a perpetual cycle of trying to be someone, you’re likely to suffer even if you become that person. At the root of it, the ego is an illusion looking to perpetuate itself. Having a bolstered ego can never bring true fulfillment, because you’re still living from the ego. You’re living out of an illusion, identifying with something that you are not.
Our Perpetual Seeking
Another huge delusion the ego creates is the idea that you’re going to have everlasting happiness.
Part of the human condition is what we call the monkey mind. This is a key mechanism of the ego, its way of keeping us attached to it. it has us attach ourselves to it.
We’re basically constantly lost in thoughts and and imaginations and memories. Often our imaginations center around a better tomorrow, meaning we never appreciate what we have right now. It never says, “right, I’ve got enough now, I’m going to relax I’m going to enjoy it. I’m just going to live carefree in the present. I’m not going to worry about the future. I’m not going to try to become someone in the future because I’m happy with who I am.”
It doesn’t do that. It’s constantly in imagination mode, and it imagines a tomorrow a better tomorrow in which we we feel better. This is part of the mourning and inherent suffering of the ego.
This could look like earning more money. It could look like expanding more as a person. It could be finding the ideal person to to spend your life with, and so on. It always paints the future as better than the present.
In creating this article, we spoke to many people in our network about their relationship with the mind, including Inés Isern, the owner of thegardensofedhen.com. She shared an insight she had when she missed a train to a conference. As she stepped on to the platform, she saw the train agonisingly pull away, and it triggered a big emotional reaction in her. But at the same time, she fell into a deep witness awareness, and realised that her ever-chattering mind is responsible for most of her turmoil in life.
All you have to do is look at your own life and your results and realise that while you can improve in your happiness, there’s an ever-present sense of unfulfillment, and that unfulfillment is based on the delusion that tomorrow will bring everlasting happiness. That is an ego-driven delusion.
The ego is basically always trying to fill a black hole, which creates a sense of suffering inside us. Since we’re attached to that sense of self, we’re always trying to fill that sense of unfulfillment with more things, even though we’ve been doing that for years and it’s really not been working. We still keep doing it.
The reason it doesn’t work is because the ego is untrue, it’s not real, it’s not a thing that exists. It’s not a permanent thing, but an optical illusion. It’s always looking for distraction, it’s always looking for something else, because it doesn’t want to look at what it actually is, which is that it’s not real.
If we live in this mode for long enough, our life becomes a giant mental maze. It’s as though we have to solve the maze to find more happiness. But once we get to the end of the maze, we realize it doesn’t really work.
We get a promotion. It might give us a momentary boost: we might look at our bank account and see that there’s 20 percent more money than there was last month, but no long-term fulfillment. We earn more money and it doesn’t really help. We find the perfect other half to share our life with and it doesn’t really help. We move to a new place and nothing really changes. We have an idea that our life is going to expand so much, and we’re going to change, and we’re going to explore new places. But once we actually do it, nothing really changes. We’re still stuck with this sense of unfulfillment.
This is the state of the ego, and it’s tough to feel consistently fulfilled when held in its vice.