I assume that you see things as I do because it is convenient for me to do so. But maybe you don’t. For example, if you are color-blind, you certainly don’t see things the way I do. I won’t know that unless you tell me or unless our difference becomes obvious in some way. If you are color-blind, I will think that you see things differently than I do, but some will think that there is something wrong with you.

Now imagine that this is how I see things:

How might my life be different then? And imagine that I was the only one, or one of a just a few, who saw things that way. Would you think that there is something wrong with me because I see things differently than most people do? Would I think that there is something wrong with me? Would you think that there was something dangerous about me? Might I be dangerous?

I have learned a lot from people who see things differently than I do, but sometimes I think that those people are just a pain in the ass. And sometimes I think that they are dangerous; and sometimes they are.

Now imagine that the first picture is the way things truly are, and that the second is the way I see things, and that this is how you see things:

This is how it is. I see things the way I see things, and you see things the way you see things, but neither of us sees things the way that they truly are. That is fine, and it might even be great, unless one or both of us insists that the way we see things is the way they truly are.

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Ego is all about discriminating between self and the rest of creation, about forging a distinct individual identity. Ego is a separatist. It often does its work by convincing us that we are somehow better than others: we know better, we have the answers, my way or the highway, and my religion is better than yours because God said so and, by the way, my conception of God is true and yours is bogus. When ego seizes a person’s religion, there is grave danger to anyone in the vicinity.

A repressive regime executes protesters as, “enemies of God.” A jihadist beheads an “infidel.” A Christian sniper guns down a Muslim in the streets of Sarajevo; the examples are plentiful. When compared to atrocities such as those, Hume’s foolishness seems trivial, but it is cut from the same cloth; a fabric in which religious beliefs are woven into a pattern attractive to ego, and then acted on and passed along as if representing absolute truth.

Please God, deliver us from all who abduct Your name in the service of ego.

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Never mind if any of those things are true. The point is that at various times in my life I tried to prove that one or another among them was true, acting the part instead of being who I was at the moment. It can be argued, of course, that who I was at the moment was someone trying to prove something, but that is not who I wish to be.

That birthday was sixteen years ago and since then I have learned two important things about myself:

1. I enjoy and feel rewarded more by working on myself than on my reputation;
2. Working on myself makes it much easier to let go of trying to prove anything, allow myself be who I am at any moment, and accept the consequences.

But it isn’t over. A few weeks ago, while driving a city street, I held a mental conversation with someone whom I thought could benefit from my obviously superior wisdom (please hear the echo of ego in that statement). I caught myself. “What am I doing?” I was trying to prove that I knew the answer, that I was wise and knowledgeable, and articulate. And to whom was I trying to prove all that?

Well, there was no one else in the car. I was trying to prove it to myself!

Which raises the question, “Have I always been trying to prove all of the things I listed above to myself and not to other people?” Probably, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is continuing to spot and extinguish the urge.

Even after sixteen years.
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Inspired by a post from Isabel Joely Black.
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