Ego and its effect

Ego is “I” or self part of a person. It is called “Aham” in Sanskrit and Hindi. It is like your shadow. The moment you have a physical body there is a shadow and there is ego. Ego defines your personality. Ego gives a false sense of self. Your ego interacts with the outside world and with the social environment. A good number of such interactions may be negative. Some people who have cognitive function issues, fuel their own ego. In such cases the personality turns ugly. Such people always bias their attitude in the negative direction. Your ego tries to prove that you are always right. You are not ready to tolerate that other person may also be right. You then have a voice in your head that does not stop talking, judging, commenting on everything that happens. The voice in your head says “This is me talking and everyone else should listen and agree”. The egoist person then becomes a bundle of distorted mental and emotional thought pattern.

In layman’s terms one can define ego as pride about oneself. An egoist person thinks (or example) that his mind, his body, his physical strength, his life, his wealth, his family is superior to that of others. In spiritual terms the soul of such person has a dark aura covering around it. If the ego is high the flow of grace from God is blocked and the person’s life is impacted negatively (as per Spiritual Science Research Foundation).

In today’s complex world we need to bring some life sense. As of now some people have only ego sense, they do not have life sense. When a person is ego sensitive he sees only himself and no one else matters. Such people have a tendency to clash with anything and any one. Their natural behavior is not very sensible with people around him.

How ego affects us

Research has shown that a person with inflated sense of ego develops many negative traits like to criticizing and judging others and acting to force his view point on others. Such a person develops his own rule book and becomes argumentative, inflexible and rigid. In some cases a person with huge ego will have severe mood swings. He possesses a constant need for praise and approval. The egoist person feels superior to everyone around and wants others to acknowledge this false superiority. Such a person feeling fearful, anxious, becomes offensive yet takes offense easily if people do not agree with him. The person with false sense of ego feels resentful towards others and is unable to live in the present moments. The worse thing is that such people spread a feeling of hopelessness. They have desperate need for power and control over others.

How does ego make us behave

In a social set up, false sense of ego is not sufficient to gain power and control. So the egoist person starts behaving in an ugly and offensive manner. At such stage of advanced ego problem the person’s ego starts consuming his personality.

The ego can lead you towards intolerance to harmony and happiness. An egoist person always tries to make people believe that they’re not responsible for their own actions, their surroundings and other people are responsible for all the perceived wrong doings. Such a person always blames “others”. An egoist person will have some or all of the following traits:-

• He always wants to prove that he is right and someone else is wrong.
• He keeps reliving the past in his mind.
• He makes a story in his mind and tells himself the story about what is happening around and how he feels about it. He wants other people to believe in his story. I you are not giving his conceptual drama a reality then the egoist person becomes angry and reacts in a confused and irrational manner.
• He feels offended and hurt if someone does not agree with him or if someone criticizes him.
• He always needs to defend himself in a discussion or argument.
• He feels very good and elated when someone praises him.
• The egoist person always tries to be someone else, which is not real him. He tries to project himself as “someone who matters”.
• He is easily sucked into his own drama and reuses to see distinction between reality and ego.

Last word on ego

Ego has been and will always be one of the main reasons for the downfall of egoist persons. The only thing that we can do is to try and control our respective egos so that our egos do not start ruling our heads. Nothing good has ever been achieved by having an inflated sense of ego.

Article by Col P Chandra (Retd)