Today, I read a long article about ego: "How to build a stronger ego". Here is my digest. Things in fewer words and shorter sentences.
First, one question: "Do you really want to kill your ego?"
Many spiritual seekers claim it’s wise to weaken the ego as much as possible. Without ego, you may give away your possessions, shave your head, spend all day meditating and doing chores, burn away any last bits of attachments to your previous identity.
So you do need your ego!
Second question: "Do you need a strong ego?"
Your ego is your character, an important part of your human avatar. And if the whole life is a game. You need to play this game with a specific role. So do you want a weak role or a strong role. Obviously, owning a ego and playing with a strong role will bring you more fun in the game of life.
Third question: "How to build a stronger ego?"
Here are some ideas for get you thinking.
Character-building ideas
Honesty – See how honest and open you can make your character. Be honest in your dealings with others. Stop pretending and hiding who you are. Share yourself openly with the world.
Courage – Continually push yourself to face your fears instead of shrinking from them. This will give your character more options.
Exploration – Experiment. Learn by trial and error. Step into the unknown and learn by doing. Develop an ego that loves to dive in and explore new things.
Service – Tune your ego in the direction of serving others, such that the stronger your ego becomes, the more you push yourself to help people. Make service to others part of your identity.
Acceptance – When you accept yourself as having a strong ego, you’ll be more willing to accept other strong people into your life as well instead of feeling you need to attack the strong in order to justify your own weakness.
Discipline – Develop an ego that identifies itself with good habits like regular exercise and solid productivity.
Connection – Develop your social skills, so you can connect with others easily. Learn how to surround your ego with social support that helps to refine your positive character qualities while chipping away at your unwanted attributes.
Living based on Intelligence, not enlightenment
- Developing a progressively more accurate model of reality and living in accordance with it.
- Deliberately engineering your social environment to actively support you in fulfilling your desires.
- Getting stronger. Intelligence seeks its own improvement. You should see yourself growing stronger and stronger.
Engage with life
- Checking out from life and trying to pursue ego-less enlightenment may be popular in certain spiritual circles are recommended.
- Ego destruction is slow suicide. It’s yet another version of giving your power away.
- Having a strong ego is not in conflict with inner peace. Inner peace doesn’t mean being passive. You can be quite active and engaged with life and still feel very peaceful and centered on your path.
- Part of the reason ego-less living has so many people pushing it is that it’s a control strategy.
Own your character
Having a strong ego doesn’t mean putting yourself above others. But it’s perfectly fine to take complete ownership of your character and express your pleasure with what you’ve developed so far.
A underdeveloped ego won’t do your consciousness much good anyway; a weak ego will only limit the range of experiences that are possible for you, thereby stunting your conscious growth.