Mystic Mantra: Much ego about everything

It is a travesty to approximate that one can be totally bereft of their ego — a part of our resident “self”. For most folks, the ego is nothing but the skin of their thought; a sheath that encases the soul. The question is not whether our ego is loftier than the spirit of our soul. Put simply, it is more than just the quintessential exemplar that dwells in each of us. While it is agreed that the ego may not necessarily correspond to balance, or symmetry, it represents our response to life’s myriad dilemmas. The fact also is our ego is ubiquitous and sagacious — more so, when we connect it to a divine framework, and not just supreme power, as it were.

Our ego has a plethora of roles to play — it warns us in the face of threat. It pulls the alarm bell when we are under stress. That our ego is “wired” to our neurons is not just passé. When our neurons “fire” in the wake of a distress signal, it helps us to brace up to meet challenges, or surmount them by way of tact, charm, or subtle finesse.

It was the philosopher Plato who first articulated the idea of the ego, long before Sigmund Freud got hooked to the snapshot that it is our ego that works relentlessly, also seamlessly, within the compass, or radar, of our mind, while handling, influencing, or fusing every facet of our conduct through disagreement, reasoning and other manoeuvres. While Freud understood the ego as a fragment that would be suitably altered by the proximity of the external world with its risk of peril, the philosopher Seneca believed that our ego could inhibit us from learning and progress, success and failure. Picture this — it is a norm in modern society to “inflate” everyone’s ego, or self-esteem, with plentiful superlatives. The more the praise, the merrier it is for everyone — to celebrate one’s own, or someone’s, celebrity status.

You’d call the ego your own dual image having the forte to reflect, or deflect, any given, or not given, context too. The ego may not always be your bespoke, or personalised entity; yet, it is your all-purpose tool to absorb, like the sponge, the theme of the moment; for instance, a powerful ideological issue. You’d think of it as your “collective” response aroused for a cause too. It’d, therefore, do us all a world of good if only each of us made an earnest attempt to regulate, if not control, the ego when we’ve made a gaffe. This is the best thing we’d all do to accept the fact we are all blessed — and that it is imprudent to think we are goofproof.