What is the Ego?
Our new special theme begins by saying, “The ego is idolatry…”
We can stop right there. Already we have something to contemplate.
What is idolatry?
Idolatry is extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone.
In order to turn this definition into helpful insight, let’s pause and look at the definition slowly and contemplatively:
Extreme admiration, love or reverence
for something or someone.
In our last special theme, we saw that Truth is the absence of consciousness. Now we see that ego is the extreme admiration, love or reverence for something or someone—that is, love for object rather than for absence.
Can you find that— extreme love for object rather than for absence—in you? Can you see that which is intently focused on “something or someone” instead of absence?
Close your eyes and look. What is interested in thought, sensations, sounds—anything but absence?
It may feel like ‘me.’ It may feel like a sense of what you are. It may feel like your very existence. But it is none of those things. What you have just discovered is the ego.
Ego is that which admires, loves and reveres some thing. Ego is that which keeps us engaged in outward focus.
Fear binds the world. Forgiveness sets it free.
Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
When it comes to the ego, fear is actually the belief that the absence of someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
Today’s lesson says,“ego makes illusions.” Another way of saying that is outward focus makes illusions. We could also say attachment to objects, including thoughts, makes illusions.
The lesson also says that “Truth undoes” these same illusions.
In our last special theme, we saw that truth is the opposite of illusions. That means it must also be the opposite of outward focus.
Of course, the opposite of outward focus is inward focus. It is through inward focus that we find Truth, of which our lessons says, “It merely is. And by its presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the real. … Without forgiveness is the mind in chains, believing in its own futility.”
In our first special theme, we learned that forgiveness is abiding as the unaffected Self. That means that the ego is undone by turning inward and abiding there as the unaffected Self.
Please contemplate this tip. Notice the ego in you. See it in action. Also contemplate how ego is undone. And then with this clarity, enter into your meditation for today.
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