Personal Development Ideas

The ego and the unconscious formation of prejudices March 12, 2014

If we are to realize our personal development potential, an important goal for us should be to try to diminish as much as we can the role our ego plays in our lives.

The ego – a phenomenon which Eckhart Tolle describes as a constantly chattering voice in our head; a voice which can interfere with taking our personal growth to a higher level of consciousness.

For Tolle, the need for discipline in the conscious management of our ego is one of the foundational requirements for discovering our true inner being. It is the pervading principle underlying personal growth realization in Tolle’s 313-page book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Paraphrasing Tolle’s view of the ego, we can say that, left to its own devices, the ego will construct many prejudices (1), and one of the ways it does this is by continually categorizing practically all of our experiences onto a neat bookshelf of attitudes.

In A New Earth, Tolle comments, “The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality; the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.” (2)

The problem, for most of us, of course, is that the formation of these verbal and/or mental labels about things, people, and situations is something we are not consciously aware of; because the process is performed unconsciously by the ego.

And this ego-process is something must make a constant, daily effort to resist.

One of the reasons why personal development/growth is a lifelong effort, and not a quick-fix program.

(1) I am using the word prejudices in the sense of forming any pre-judgements about externals.

(2) Page 26, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth; a Plume Book, paperback