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I remember those old black and
white horror movies of the 30’s how it was all so plain to see who was the
villain/master of the story and their little plots or machinations to do harm on others. Everybody remembers
this so called villains but what slipped through the sideline though and hardly
no one remembers is that these villains had their sidekick. I particularly
remember being fond of their graphic sidekicks. You know that every villain
needed their helper, the person who does their bidding, the person who obeys
his lord/master blindly. The sidekicks who tell their master how great and
worthy they are and how they say what their masters want to hear. I also
recollect their gothic appearance, hatchback, crossed eyed and ugly. These
sidekicks of the villains in every story also had peculiar names. A common and popular name was Igor.
I have found this name rather to
the point and well picked out because Igor sounds like Ego. The sidekicks name
resembles a lot like the word Ego, Igor the Ego, a case of ‘if the shoes fits’
and in this case, the shoes fits perfectly. Igor obeys; Igor does what you tell
him to do. Igor, out of fear that his master won’t need him one day, tries to
do a very good job in being the sidekick. He succeeds. It comes to a point when
we start depending on Igor for various tasks and daily interactions. Like the
masters in the movies we get attached, we cannot live without our servant Igor.
We think that it is the master who
so cannily twists the plot but in reality and with a clear perspective it is
Igor the Ego who is the star of the show. It is Igor who pampers the master. Basically
the master’s reality is depended on Igor. In these old horror movies it is Igor
the puppeteer. In reality and far from the old movies Igor is still very much
present and very much real for all of us. Our dependence on our servant Igor
overpower us leaving us weak and unable to live in this world and the best part
of all, the best trick Igor plays on us is the illusion that we are still in
control.
This allegory came to mind
unintentionally while learning about the ego and the secretary in the yoga step
by step course.
According to yoga philosophy and
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, egoism is an obstacle for true realisation of self. “Asmita (egoism) is the identification of
the seer with the instrument of seing” ~ Yoga Sutra 11:6. In other words, ego
(ahamkara) is the false sense of self. We identify our self with the way we
perceive through or senses. We mistake the mind, the physical body and our
senses for who we truly are.
Who we truly are is constant. It
has never changed nor is it whimsical to changes. On the other hand, ego
consist of parts that are prone to change, like our appearance, our thoughts
and judgements, our work, our friendships, our ideologies and so on. Basically,
our ego is really what we identify with. We identify as the job we do and as
the name we carry, our associations and wealth. We become all of these so
deeply that when we come to a loss we grieve so fiercely as if we have lost our
self. What is my identity if I get to lose my job? What is my worth in society
without my associations? Who am I without my wealth? These identifications hit
deep in the core of us becoming strong attachments which already make way for
ego to thrive.
These attachments give the ability
to ego to be the ever-changing obstacle. Our servant Igor has learned to wear
masks and when we call out the mask to be a layer of the ego, Igor has quickly
slipped into another mask. What a vicious circle is created by the continuous
effort of unmasking the ego!
The hide and seek is an inevitable process
that comes to those who are aware of the existence of the ego but lack the
knowledge of how it can manifest in our daily lives. The constant self inquiring
should be so frequent that feelings of anxiety and frustration immerge. Yes, it
becomes tiresome and we get our self involve in the game of outsmarting the ego
but yet somehow it is one step ahead of us.
After all this playing around
brings weariness, the logical step seems to be to engage in a war with your ego
to completely abolish it. Can our ego be abolished? If we look at this
situation more deeply then we have to ask ourselves who is fighting with the
ego? If I am pure consciousness why do I perceive the ego as a threat? Who
fears the unmasking of ego other than ego itself? So who really wants to engage
in conflict with ego other than the egoistic mind? Fire cannot fight fire and an ego mind cannot
relieve itself from ego. In addition, if ego is merely the perception of the
outside world that means it doesn’t really exist by itself, does it? Like the
human body is to viruses, a virus needs the human body to exist, otherwise it
dies. So without us ego does not even exist, in other words ego is only a tool.
A tool of perception cannot be fought or abolished. So fighting ego is a
practise sure to fail now that the notion of the bad sidekick is rebuked.
So now we have established that ego
is not our evil twin send from the great beyond to torture us, we can relax and
see what ego truly is. Ego is a tool we can use to survey our surroundings.
Going back to our allegory, Igor is this wonderful sidekick who helps us
communicate with everything that is outside of our true self. Then if Igor is
such a good help then don’t fight the sidekick but retrain it to become a tool
for our enlightenment and this is the idea according to yoga doctrine.
To continue with this Igor
allegory, I now must start the retraining of my sidekick but how do you train
Igor? How do you train ego, a mere tool of perception?
In the quest on retraining Igor we
must first start paying attention to him, to see how our sidekick works. By
doing this an effort is consumed in uncovering his presence. Thus by doing so
the ego digs deeper and deeper and so we again try to look harder and harder.
To me, this sounds like a game that the ego will prevail because ego is the
only one in this equation that plays games. The true self isn’t into games. In
all respect to the idea of retraining ego, I feel it is faulty. First of all
somebody must exist other than the ego in order to retrain the ego. I don’t
feel that ego can train itself in any way. Who will train the ego? At the
present moment and with the knowledge in hand, I am not aware of anything that
can support this role. Second of all, why would I want to make a great sidekick
of Igor? Why do I want to make this tool so useful to me? It sounds to me that
I am setting myself up and trapping myself becoming in desperate need of Igor.
If I train Igor to be the best sidekick ever and help me a great deal, it will
eventually become so essential to me that I will be depending from him. To put
it differently, if ego becomes such a great tool for my enlightenment will I
really get enlighten? How will someone get enlighten with the help of ego? By
the presences of ego automatically implies the existence of attachments. Is it
simply a case that when I train my ego I basically raised my ego to a level so
high that I cannot understand where ego ends and I begin? My sidekick became
such a necessity to me that in the end this trained servant has become the
master because in one form or another and as long I exist, ego will always be
there. Furthermore, with the training, I give it energy and attention and I
have noticed that every time I give these to my ego, it gets bigger and bigger.
To be fair, I understand that ego
has a positive aspect to it. It is at most perceived as something negative but
it can also be the driving force to positive actions. It is ego that gives us a
start up to the path of awakening and self discovery. It is ego that is behind a
promotion, a goal, a raise, a better job, a good body physique and so on. Yes,
I do understand the positive aspect but is it really a true positive? If being
antagonistic and competitive with others will it truly take me a step ahead?
Actually, this is what ego does. To be satisfied it must be ahead of others
instead of just being content for the effort to be the best you can be in the
present moment in correspondence to who you were a minute ago. So, again the
positive ego can be as destructive as the negative ego. What has been achieved
by the so called positive ego it is still due to ego and no truth can come from
a klesha that is a veil in front of our true nature.
Evidently, retrain of Igor the
sidekick is, as I see it, a trap, not because you want a lousy helper (the
negative ego) nor because an excellent sidekick and helper creates powerful
attachments (the positive ego) but because what the ego must become is neutral. Not good, not bad just neutral. This
neutrality provides the means of transporting the outer world with unfiltered
sensory free from interpretation. It becomes the clean white sheet which the
film projects on. How wonderful it is to acknowledge life around us without
infecting it with our vasanas, samskaras and our chitta vritis.
Considering the importance of
neutrality, one begins to wonder how this can be achieved. How do we obtain
neutrality? How do we obtain an egoless ego?
As it was mentioned in the previous
paragraphs, the ego loves attention, so when we train it and when we fight it
we simply give it attention. With the practise of pratipaksha bhavana we don’t
try to forget that ego exists but simply we just ignore it. Leave it somewhere
unattended, unacknowledged. Remember, ego can be a fragment of your
imagination, feeding it with bad food or good food, it is still being fed.
Ignore it, turn your back to it and at least let go of your relationship with
your ego and concentrate with building and establishing a relationship with your
inwards and what lies behind this tool, work around it. In other words, with
pratipaksha bhavana and working around the ego we are loosening our grip on the
ego, we weaken the attachments and we substitute our focus elsewhere like
strengthening the bond with our true nature.
At this very realisation comes Igor
and with a smile lets me know that even though I will ignore him, it won’t
solve anything. Leaving him alone without any supervision will grow bigger and
bigger. See, Igor through the years of me giving him so much attention it gave
him purpose of existence, it became very important sidekick indeed. Without
this attention there is simply no need for Igor to exist. But Igor is right, unattained
will gain reign over the path for truth. Through the study of ego, I have
noticed that Igor is a clever as I am and as foolish as I can be. I noticed he
is the child like reflection I see in the mirror of self inquiring. So how do I
ignore the ego and yet not letting it run around freely and does as it pleases?
If I God confined me in this body,
in this planet, in this universe to help me obtain the lesson my true self
needs then I must do the same with ego. Through a reckless, thoughtless and
egoistic way of living created a massive playground for my ego to exist and
move freely. This playground consists of chitta vrittis, of kleshas, of samskaras
and vasana that provide the ego the environment that he needs. An unethical way
of living creates the playground for ego to play and to thrive. When you
practise the Yamas then you start reducing the space and shrink the playground
of the ego. When you keep practising these ethical rules of yoga the playground
that the ego has will decrease and shrivel to the extent where it has little
room to manoeuvre in.
If the devil hides in the details
then God must be in simplicity. Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya and
Aparigraha provide the seeker of truth the simplicity required to follow the
path to enlightenment. Thus, by averting attention from the ego and diverting
to the Yamas, we stop continuously feeding the ego with attention and at the
same time preventing it from roaming around and causing trouble.
Another way or maybe in addition to
this method, there is also another road to be taken in order to neutralize the
ego. In the quote by Mahatma Gandhi “Lose yourself in the service of others”
lies the answer to my search. I think what Gandhi meant by this is not to
forget about ourselves by helping others and putting other people’s needs as a
priority. I believe he meant that with the practise of karma yoga, you again
make way for the union with the soul to flourish while in the same time weaken
the attachments to the ego. When you devote yourself to practise karma yoga and
you are release by the need to see results from your effort then you take way
the playground of the ego thus having no space to roam around and create its
usual smoke screens. While we put ourselves in the service of others with the
karma yoga practise we lose our egoistic self.
To conclude, there will always be
an Igor in our midst. This must become apparent and accepted as a prerequisite
in order to move forward in the path of enlightenment. We must forget the
notion of the good help or the bad help and concentrate on neutrality. In
neutrality lies the middle path and the middle path is manifestation of the
egoless ego.
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