5 Faces of the Ego Self

Vic Shayne author *Observations of a Reluctant Mystic — a journey into awakening*

Ancient spiritual traditions across the board have pointed to the sense of self, the “I” or “me,” as the source of all suffering. This self is created by an accretion of thoughts garnered from the earliest age when our authority figures tell us who we are and what our place is in the world. They fill us with ideas and beliefs, ranging from religious to political and so on down the line. The self begins to concretize over time as it absorbs and accepts secondhand information out of which an image is formed — the image of the “me.”

Image by JerzyGórecki, pixabay.com

I am a mirage As an image, the self has no real substance. It is like a mirage that thinks it is real and at the center of all things. It takes on all sorts of roles, yet it remains what it is — an idea and not a reality even though everything seems real to it. The self is self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-consumed. Its focus is upon the world of objects, phenomena, and beings, and its concerns are to realize its desires, avoid pain, find pleasure, and conquer (or avoid) that which makes it fearful.

The self is an illusion and yet it is the person we take ourselves to be. This is because until we have inquired into this self deeply and persistently enough we simply embrace the rather than the reality that is prior to it. And each life is operated from this false self that believes it is separate from all else. It sees its own body from infancy and supposes that it is an island unto itself, apart from the world and all its contents.

Even more delusion to come Even those who want to wake up to realize what this self is — to be enlightened to the truth — most often fall into the trap of being further deluded by the self. So divisive and insidious is the self that it fools itself into believing it is making spiritual progress when all that it is doing is expanding the image to include something more spiritual, better, improved, calmer, and so on.

Six facades of the self While the self may be somewhat of a nebulous term, we may recognize it in some of the roles that it plays. We can take a brief look at 5 of these facades. But rest assured there are many more, as the self takes on the image that suits its purposes in getting through life on a quest to find security, dull its fears, avoid suffering, and find pleasure and distractions.

1. The Doer. The self believes it is the doer, the one who does things such as work, play, interact, and so on. As the doer it takes credit or blame for what it does. But what is the real doer? It is consciousness as the whole makeup and movement of existence.
2. The Thinker. What is thought? It is an image in the form of a picture, idea or even sound that arises spontaneously out of consciousness. Thought arises and then dissipates into oblivion. But when the self engages with the thought it takes on the role of the thinker so that the duality of object and subject are created. The thinker does not realize that it is the thought itself and so it tries to act upon it, make it stop, quell it, or change it.
3. The Experiencer. The self goes through experiences throughout its life, with some deemed to be good and some bad. Others are of no merit. The self takes on the role of the experiencer when it separates itself from the experience. Maslow spoke of the peak experience when the self gives way to the experience and the duality ceases to exist; there is only the experience. Then the self returns to reflect upon, analyze, judge, and relish or hate the experience.
4. The Seeker. Few people, compared to the entirety of the world population at any given moment, begin to wake up and wonder if there is more to life than just the mundane struggle to exist. So they don the robe of the seeker and step onto a spiritual path to find some greater meaning and perhaps even the bliss of enlightenment they have heard about. But in the end there is a realization that the seeker had been seeking itself all along.
5. The I. The self is the I, the me, the ego, the egoic self, the person. Ultimately, the I is an image created out of thoughts. The self continues to add to this sense of I by claiming I am this, or I am that. But before the self has created a litany of attachments, identities, experiences, thoughts, and achievements, it comes into this life as, simply, “I am.” The I-am is the feeling, not a mentation, but a feeling, that you exist. It is primal and without the onus of ideas, attachments, or identities. It just is; you just exist. Over time, however, authority figures in your life pile one identity on top of another onto your I-am. You buy into the belief that you are this or that, and you lose all sight of the I-am in its pure form.

A rose by any other name… The self goes by many names, but all are concepts that appear to disconnect the mind from the whole of existence. There is really no disconnection, however, because disconnection itself is but an idea — an ignorant belief that existence is divided into the I and all else. This division creates conflict personally, interpersonally, societally, and universally. When there is wholeness there can be no division and therefore conflict.

It is the conflict within the self that causes the suffering that so many sages have talked about over the millennia. To stop the suffering the self must be fully recognized for what it is — a sometimes useful and other times problematic image. It must discover for itself — not because others tell it to, but through its own desire for self-realization — that it is merely a mask or cloak obscuring the totality of consciousness that lies at its heart.

Realizing the falsehood of the self requires perseverance and a sincere desire to know what one truly is. Yet even here there is a subtle trap, because the self in the guise of the seeker can become endlessly absorbed in seeking, always pursuing realization as though it exists somewhere else or sometime in the future. As the seeker the mind remains turned outward toward objects, systems, teachers, practices, and experiences.

Instead, attention must gradually turn away from the objective and toward the subjective — toward the silent source from which the sense of “I am” arises. Over time, this weakens the structure of the self and reveals the wholeness of consciousness that has always existed beneath it.

So, what am I all about? Read my latest book and find out… Now available on amazon.com — Observations of a Reluctant Mystic — a journey to awakening