Q. 226: Gurudev, could you please describe what ego is? How can one resolve ego? How does ego and love go together, or don’t they?

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Ego is a sense of separateness, a sense of identity. There are three ways to see ego. 1. Ego is identity. I am this. This is one ego. 2. Ego is also I am not this. 3. Ego is also I am separate from others. How to dissolve this ego? Either you expand your ego. I am this, I am that, I am that too. For instance, one ego is that you think you are an officer. But if you are stuck with only being an officer, and you come home and be officer to your kids and wife, you create a problem. Suppose you are a major or colonel in the military, and if you behave with your family in the same role, then you are stuck in your ego of being an army officer. Your one identity is that you are a colonel, but you are a father/mother with your children, you are a husband/wife with your spouse, you are a son/daughter with your parents and so many.

When you balance all these identities in your life giving equal importance to all these, that is the way you dissolve your ego. Ego is getting stuck with any one identity. From that limited identity to identify with the unlimited divinity is the path of expanding, or you can call it dissolving identity. So you move from me to Aham Brahma, I am somebody to become I am nobody, and I am nobody to I am everybody.

Now this looks very philosophical. You can’t go to your office and say that you are nobody, nor can you say at your home that you are everybody. It is not going to work. So, I would say that the simple way to counter your ego is to be natural. Ego makes you feel uncomfortable, unnatural and separate. Egolessness or expanded ego or transformed ego is being at home, being natural with everyone in every circumstances. Rather, it is being like a child. I would say just be like a child. One last thing I would like to say about ego is that if you find you have any ego, then don’t try to dissolve it. You can keep it in your pocket. Don’t meddle with it, and don’t bother about it. Let it be there. Okay?

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