Excerpt from chapter 4, What the Hell is Hell?
How do you define ego?
Not so easy, is it?
Dictionaries commonly define ego as the self, as distinct from other selves in the world. Sometimes ego is defined as a sense of self-importance. One with a big ego has a strong sense of self. When one has an overdeveloped sense of self-importance, we call them egotistical, which is considered an insult to most people.
These characteristics do not, however, fully define the meaning of the word.
There is an underlying spiritual definition created by the belief that you are separate from God. Ego is the part of you that perceives yourself as outside of God.
Take the case we discussed at the end of the last chapter of those of us who are so in awe of the light emanating from Jesus that we fall to our knees in worship and stop hearing what he has to tell us. The ego is the shadow created by the separation from that light, and that separation is a belief. Whether we say God, the Lord, or Yahweh, these words describe a supreme deity we look up to and worship as existing somewhere else.
The traditional understanding of ego we began this chapter with has common ground with the spiritual understanding of ego. If you don’t believe in God, you perceive yourself as being alone, there is nothing more to you, and your ego is simply who you are, your self. The psychological implications of this belief, as pertains to your ego, are no different from believing in a God that is separate from you—in your thoughts or mental state you perceive yourself as alone.
This sense of being separate has nothing to do with whether you’re surrounded by others, in love, in a relationship, or if you have family and friends you love and who love you, nor does it have anything to do with being lonely. It’s a deeply internal belief, hidden from consciousness. Even if you have great faith in God, you might accept the fact that this life is not the time or place for you to be united with him. For now, you are an individual—“on your own”—and most of us identify ourselves this way. Together, we constitute an ego-dominated world.
A sense of one’s own self-importance is not something we commonly associate with spirituality; the ego is not commonly defined in relation to God.
In an ego-dominated world, instead of saying, “That guy has a big ego,” it may sound silly to say, “That guy has a powerfully fortified illusion of being separate,” yet it is the more precise truth.
To be continued in the next blog