The Modern view point———————–
.It — is our Ego—- Our sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
Our ego gets us through the day, successfully creating confidence where uncertainty lurks, setting us higher on our own pedestal of success and cementing our importance in daily life.
Our ego convinces us that we are important, needed and great at whatever we do.
Getting your ego in check, can possibly be the most beneficial when you can find more balance in your life.
So, I’m going to do you a favor and tell you some truths about yourself in relation to your work. Put your ego aside for a moment and read these as universal truths — truths that transforms our interpretation of reality.
- You are not as important as you think you are at work. While people need you, rely on you and think you do great work, remember that if you were not at work, someone else would be doing your job. Infoyses is still a great company despite of the exit of Narayan Murthy and Nandan Nilkeni from the organisation.
- Other people are just as smart, if not smarter, than you.
- Your boss/client doesn’t always need you to answer their queries — they just need someone who can answer their Questions.
- Asking others to complete work that you cannot do is not a sign of weakness, rather seeking assistance of associates and even juniors shows your magnanimity .
- You will be remembered for the impact that you made, in this world, to your family, friends and environment,and, not by how much work you got done.
- Being too busy does not make you important. In fact, being too busy makes you annoying and useless to those who really want or need your time.
- Set your ego aside.
- Stop defining yourself by how much work you complete in a day.
Start paying more attention to your teammates and peers to understand how you can rely on each other to work and produce more as a TEAM. Put aside the notion that you are indispensable and see what happens when you take a day off and let others answer questions, Delegate work to others, allowing them to learn and grow under your guidance.
The more you control your ego, LIFE will become more balanced —meaningful.
The Ego and the Self——- A Spritual out look.
The ego and the Self stand at two opposite ends of our spiritual journey.
Our inquiry begins with the ego and culminates (ends ) in the realization of the Self.
Broadly speaking,Ego can be taken as that part of the mind which expresses individuality.
It is the ego that gives us the sense of Vitamin- “I” And—–Me–Mine–Myself.”
Ego is the mouthpiece of the personality.——– . .
When we think or speak or do anything, we know that the ego, our I-sense, is present. Its role is very important in our everyday lives. As a rule, there cannot be any activity, mental or physical, any understanding, feeling, or desire, without the sense of individuality in the background. The ego is the master player of our Mental make-up.
There are, of course, certain exceptional situations when the ego might not be involved. For example, when we are deeply engrossed in some artistic object or while listening to loving music, our I-sense becomes involved In common language, we say that we were so absorbed that we forgot ourselves. This is also the case in certain types of religious experience Meditation– where the devotee is so moved by divine love that the ego drops to its minimum level.
. The ego, by itself, is a neutral entity——–.
But this neutrality ends in the field of operation. The ego has to identify with something, or else it cannot express itself. For example, the ego has to identify itself with the body. Then I say “I am healthy,” or “My height is 150 cm .” When I say, “I am thinking,” my ego has associated itself with the mind. When I say, “I am angry,” the emotion of anger is the object of association.
The ego in action changes from moment to moment–——–
Ego is the “mouthpiece” of the personality
Spirituality– the Self is the core of the mind and personality. It is also the core of the external world we perceive. When we probe deeply enough, we and our universe become one. The Self is that Unity: . We can never escape our own nature. We are generally satisfied with the superficial manifestations of our personalities, but there is always an unknown element of our existence upon which the ego occasionally stumbles. In some moments of our lives we feel its presence as immortality, as infinite calmness , . Just as in our daily life the ego is the “mouthpiece” of the personality—the instrument by which the personality can work and manifest itself—so also in the field of Self-inquiry the ego serves as a “pointer” to the true basis of the personality, the Self—–.
The first role of the ego is that everybody understands it.
The second role of the ego has to be recognized by analysis and discrimination;———-
Many people never have a clue that there is a vast Reality in the background of their lives. Perhaps these people have had no opportunity for introspection. For such people, the Self remains unrecognized and undiscovered, perhaps for many lives. The desire to look deeply into life depends on a person’s temperament..
Ego seeks relationships—–——-
. It becomes restless if it is left alone. The object of spiritual training is to give the ego spiritual relationships.Great Saint Sri Ramakrishna used to speak of two kinds of ego—the ripe and the unripe.
The ego that says, “I am the child of God, I am the servant of God” is the ripe ego.
The unripe ego is that which attaches itself to different ideas and objects of worldly enjoyment. It says, “I am beautiful”; “I am powerful”; “I am wealthy.”
For that reason Sri Ramakrishna said that the point of spiritual practice is to gradually transform the unripe ego in to ripe ego
When a person does some work, he or she may say, “I am doing this.” This is an xpression of the unripe ego. The same activity can be taken up by shifting the ego’s outlook. The person can say, “This body which does the work is God’s tool. God is the agent.” (जो हो रहा है वह भगवान् के आदेश से हो रहा है , मैं सिर्फ निमित मात्र हू.)
As our spiritual comprehension matures and as the experience of the Self becomes more explicit, we find that this experience has nothing to do with any kind of objective association. That is why in higher Vedanta practices, the method often used is that of negation. Positive identification is necessary up to a certain stage of our spiritual life. After that, the ego has to be taught to forget its old habit of identification and instead to practice saying, “I am not this body. I am not this mind. I am not these five elements.
The ego has to be trained to dissociate itself from whatever ideas of attachment come into the mind. This is a very difficult task, but if we gradually train the ego through spiritual identification, the ego can then be detached enough to take up these negating practices.
. What happens when Self-knowledge comes? What is its gain? Self-knowledge is the highest conceivable perfection. It is true that when a person realizes his or her true nature, that person finds that the Self is not confined within one single body. “The Self is in front and also behind, the Self is above as also below, the Self is in the south and also in the north, all that is the Self.” Now we are in a position to tell Ego: “You are a natural companion of the Infinite. You need not seek association of anything, anymore.
Compiled by J.K. Garg