When your senses deliver information to the brain, our ego steps in and tells us that we want something.
A conventional definition of ego is the consciousness of one’s own identity or personality.
Through the ego we focus on our outer surfaces and not on our inner selves.
- This part of the psyche mediates between our personalities and the realities around us
- it shapes how we identify ourselves in response to the information coming through our senses.
Re-source: Reveal
We can think of the ego as an ever-present mirage that seems real but that once we have a spiritual practice, starts to fade so that the real self is revealed.
Ego-based thought creates an identity based on status, control, and indulgence at the expense of finding real joy.
- It is the ego-based mentality that lies in the way of true happiness.
It is the part of our minds focused on the outer world instead of the inner. Whether or not we choose to indulge the ego on its mission to indulge our senses becomes the center of our practice.
craving and resource from “The Guru in You” by Yogi Cameron Alborzian