How does Ego stop us Enlighten?

 So the problem description for Enlightenment is: how do we get free? 

What is the nature of Ego? Ego needs stuff to define itself with. It is like the cart above. As we get things we like we put them in the cart to keep them and define ourselves with. Completely instinctively we collect things that we feel we need to define us. These can be anything: I won a race at school, I am good at piano, My wife loves me or they can be negative: I am not good, I am a failure, I am too short.

The most dangerous thing we can put in the cart is: I am on the path to Enlightenment, or I have made spiritual progress.

The problem for the donkey of course is the more it puts in the cart the less free it is!!!!

What the donkey needs is to take things our of the cart, or even better take the harness off and not pull a cart at all.

But the cost of having no cart is we cannot carry anything any more and that is quite a commitment. Freedom and No Possessions or Possessions and no Freedom. It seems like there is no choice: always go for freedom. But when we come to do it, it is very hard to actually let go.

And because we have been collecting things in our cart since the moment we were born, or perhaps even before, its quite unnatural to set them aside and live without them.

The whole process is very unintuitive to start with. When we sit to meditate at the start and even deep into meditation we put it in our cart! I am meditation. I do meditation. I have made progress in meditation. I can see more clearly. I am improved. I am progressing to Enlightenment. All these thoughts are okay as long as we strictly put them down again. But like a drug addict we pick them up and chances are we will slip back into storing them in the cart. This is the danger of ego. Without constant mindfulness things get put in the cart and we start to own them. Guaranteed if we ever make any spiritual progress give it a few days and it will go in the cart and soon we won't be living the actual progress but instead go to carrying the award medal around our neck to prove we did it. This is actually attachment and being burdened again!

Its a very tricky path out of ego, like balancing a pin on its end, and take constant mindfulness, constant filling up of our cart and constant emptying it again. Even incredibly evolved practitioner, I hear, treat this problem of Ego with constant respect and wariness: it is incredibly hard to beat and guaranteed if we ever do beat it, it will just become more baggage! That is until we really do cut the harness that binds us to the cart.