kriyayogamalaysia

Exercise 2 – Seeing how we develop our Egos

From our e-book “Filling our Life with Celebration”

This exercise is to see how nature put in place a simple mechanism to understand what the ego is. There are lessons all around us; we just need to slow down and observe, in order to learn from them.

This exercise must be done over a period of time but it is enjoyable and worth the effort. First we select a baby or a young toddler who we can observe over a period of time. Just observe how the child develops his ego over time. Observe how he picks up his personality from others. At first, he may walk like his father and talk like his mother. Observe how he spends just a few hours with another child and picks up some of the language that the other child uses. Observe how the child is conditioned to believe what is right or wrong by the elders and how his choices are already shaped even before he is capable of making choices.

When we observe this and apply that observation to ourselves, we can see how we are the sum total of the external inputs which we have accumulated over time to form our ego. Our ego is not tangible! Our ego is merely concepts, and the view that we are separate from each other is merely an illusion.