In our lives Ego is the "known world." It is the map of ourselves that we take for granted. It is safe, it is ours and its where we live.
But all good stories, all adventures and all heroes are brought to go beyond this safe map into the unknown.
And this is true for all our lives as well. It is by going beyond our self that we grow and develop. It is by challenging ourselves that we discover who we really are.
It involves facing the boundaries of our self and the fear and anxiety of what lies beyond the safe, familiar and tried and tested world.
We don't want to do it, and we habitually return to what is habitual and safe.
It's a trope well understood through childhood that the growing child challenges all sorts of boundaries like walking and talking and grows at each stage. I can still remember the decision to finally walk and "get on with it" being rather lazy and unwilling to take literal steps. And eventually the child is ready to leave their parents and fly the nest.
But while this is the greatest period of growth it is not the end. We are always growing and entering the Terra Incognita.
This is perhaps the most familiar image in the world. The image of the dying Christ entering the unknown. For Christians this is God made Man, born of a woman but with a Father in heaven who is never-the-less afraid of Death and feels abandoned, his last words being "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani?"
How much greater a step into the unknown was this. Yet one we must all take. In Christian belief this step by Jesus was made in full purity so that Death had no command over Jesus and He was able to walk the Earth again before his mission was finished and he returned to Heaven.
Regardless your beliefs this is the most famous Hero in history and the one that inspired countless martyrs to go beyond and ultimately collapse the Roman Empire that had oppressed the Jews and many others. Unable to defeat Christianity, the Roman Empire adopted it in 380AD when the emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, and made Christianity the official religion.
All religions lead their believers beyond and make Heroes of them. But not heroes like you find in may films. True heroes do not carry AR15s and sit in cockpits bombing people. They are the ones who step beyond in order to lead people to safety or encourage them to go beyond themselves. Killing someone is just a cowards way of ignoring them and protecting yourself so you do not need to go beyond. You ask them to go beyond and follow you, and if you resist you kill them. That is always cowardice and leads to retreat back into the Ego.
And the nature of Evil now starts to become more clear. Criminal and evil people do not really know they are evil. Well they do but they ignore it. They can do this because the map they have drawn paints them in a good way. It justifies their existence and what they do. This is the habitual map of the world in which they live. Its the world they wake up into and it contains all the comfortable tried and tested thing; the people who support them; the behaviours which make them feel okay; the coping mechanisms; the familiar. Its a common question when we see the news: how do people do what they do? What hope is there for the world when there are people like this? But evil people just suffer from the same condition as most people, an ego that blocks out the greater self. They are fundamentally cowards who will not listen to themselves and who then fall into the comfortable but false world of an Ego who tells them everything is alright. As cowards those comforting words of the nearby familiar Ego are easier to take than the True Self who needs them to go beyond and be brave. Its a strange irony that the people who need be the greatest Heroes are often the weakest cowards. But actually evil offers us all the greatest opportunity to grow. Someone in the middle of great evil has the opportunity to become the greatest hero. Listening to that far off voice in the middle of the seductions of familiar Ego is the greatest thing anyone can do.
But it is hard. Do I quit smoking? Its easy now with everyone reminding us of the harm it causes. But in the 1950s when every advert was telling us it was cool and women found it attractive the idea of filling our lungs with smoke, despite being obviously not a good thing to do (if we stop and think for 1 second about it), seemed like the thing to do. Authentic people can stop, listen to themselves and make these choices even when everyone else is saying the opposite. "If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs and blaming it upon you..."
In Buddhism there is this idea of the Buddha Nature. This is the True Self. The final self that looks down into our Ego lives from outside and tries to get us to step beyond to meet it. Even the most evil person knows deep down that they are evil, but they are unable to pull away from the familiar and habitual world they live in. They lack the courage and the strength to go beyond. In the hero story they are the person who closes the door to destiny and returns to smoking a cigarette in front of the TV.
In the picture above the Ego is the known world. It is what we see and what is coloured by our habitual beliefs and thought. We see the world in the form of our Ego selves, and without a bit of consciousness and thought we just approach the world the same way every time. People who think the world is against them, who find the same unlucky things happening to them again and again are trapped in an Ego. Without thinking they just default to the same known approaches and tried and testing things. This is "me" is what we think, I am unlucky, or victim of injustice, I have a right to do what I do, I will not accept anything from outside, why should I. Suppose we get angry, looking just for the inside we justify that anger and turn our hatred towards whatever has made us angry. It might be anything even a bird that has annoyed us by breaking the silence. Buddha's most deeply understanding disciple Subhuti was originally so angry with the world that Buddha found him in the forest throwing stones at the birds that were annoying him. Looking from the inside, and with no intention of going beyond, our mental states all makes sense and we get angry.
But the hero goes beyond, and challenges that anger and having done this before without success tries a new coat and a new approach. But to do this involves leaving the old nest, home, and ego and entering a new one.
The happy person is like a Hermit Crab always willing to try a new shell. Always willing to admit that the old things are not working and to go beyond.
This does not mean that we go crazy and just let it all go and run into the desert in search of enlightenment expecting to meet our True Self in a shimmering mirage. Our goal is our True Self our Buddha Nature, or Jesus Nature of Muhammad Nature. Each of the teachers says follow me, try my way. These Ways lead to the greater self that they are talking of. This Greater Self is looking down on us from the outside. Once we have grown we will come to know them.
Our true self looks like its on the outside, it breaks in on our habitual behaviour and says: hmmm perhaps that is wrong. Perhaps its time to lose weight, or stop smoking and be a bit more kind to yourself. Perhaps its time to have that discussion with a partner where I say what I really think. Perhaps its time to be a bit more kind to the people I know. Perhaps time to end an old hostility and open up to someone I have shut out. It is always like sunshine breaking from behind a cloud, even if we turn our back on it immediately afterwards and are not yet ready to listen.
This is because we are attached to Ego. We gravitate to the known. Like our eyes only see the inside of a room, when we know there is a huge world out there. Being attached to senses and our existences we look from the inside and the greater world appears far away and outside.
Little caveat. In meditation we attach to our senses! How contradictory apparently. But its different because we do it to stop the mind wandering onto other things. This focused attachment actually trains the mind to be focused and this ultimately leads to the mind being able to let go. Ironically focusing on the senses and the present moment leads to a free mind! But this is different from Ego which does not really focus, it attaches and sticks with what it wants to see rather than what is there. Ego filters things that it doesn't want out (like the True Self) and creates half truths and fictions to protect itself and stop us from getting out.
Its an extraordinary thing to witness that we are always bigger than who we think we are, and it often requires someone else to help show us this. It seems so obvious that we are who we are. But there is our greater self always looking in and guiding us if we just take a moment to listen.
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