Personal Development Ideas

Ego management: Did the Universe make a mistake with the ego? November 9, 2012

With all the attention we give to ego management as being a necessary component of eliminating negative thinking in our personal growth efforts, you have to start to wonder as to what useful purpose the ego might serve.

During a discussion period at an Eckhart Tolle seminar, in fact, a member of the audience asked Tolle the question, “Did the Universe make a mistake with the ego?”

Tolle replied that although the ego “may look insane” to us now, it is actually, from a higher perspective, undergoing  an evolution as we progress as human beings.

He said that at one time we did not have an ego. That was the period in which we were at “oneness with nature.” This period Tolle explained, embodied the myth of the golden age, or as the Old Testament described it, “Paradise”.

The development of language Tolle says marked the beginning of our ability to think thus leading to the “voice in our heads” that we associate with the ego. Tolle says that at first, people thought this voice in their heads was the manifestation of the gods speaking to them.

At some point however, the voice in our head became all pervasive and thus took away people’s sense of their real identity, an identity which was non-ego-based, and rooted in their basic being. Thus, our identity was no longer in the roots of our being and our identity became associated with the voice in our head.

Tolle says that as we work at going beyond this form of the  ego we are going back to the core of our being.

The take-away from Tolle’s discussion would appear to be that certain aspects of the ego were, and still are, necessary for thinking and progress, but for inner peace we need to go beyond the ego as the chattering voice in our head, and do the inner work to discover the peace of knowing our true being.