Getting to Know Your Enemy

The word ‘ego’ is defined by the Webster’s dictionary as:

The first acception or generally accepted meaning of the word ‘ego’ is precisely what defines the main problem with it: It separates us one from another.

By confusing individuality with the ego, and by following the traditionally wrongful psychological assumption (now under fire by advanced pyschologists) that it is the ego the one that gives us our identity, there has been an immense brain-washing in the media giving a monstruous importance to the selfish personality, opposed to altruism, which is the one prerequisite to manifesting the wonderful spiritual virtue of charity.

The present chaos is the result of that massive brain-washing… as prophesied by our Lord since the first Israel prophets up to John’s vision as narrated in the Book of Apocalypse also known as the Book of Revelation.

It were mainly two prophets that anticipated the rising of the ego as the major enemy of mankind. The first was Daniel, in ancient Babylon, and the second, John, in the island of Patmos.

And both identified that mortal enemy as the beast.

Sure, that description is a metaphor, but, wow! How precise and self-explanatory that metaphor is.

The Drop of Water and the Ocean

So, how are we going to deal with our own existence, our own identity?

Well, take for example a humble drop of water in the ocean. Of course, it has most of the ocean attributes, not all of them, of course: A single drop of water cannot make a tidal wave by itself, isn’t it?

That single drop of water is, by itself, an individual, and it has an identity with which you can distinguish it from another quite similar to it. But it ocuppies a diferent space and position in that ocean.

Now, suppose that drop of water has a mind, and discovers that it exists; in other words, it has a self-awareness.

Is that an ego?

Not at all, because along with its own self-awareness, comes the awareness of belonging to something greater than itself, starting with its neighbouring drops of water.

And when its awareness expands and becomes a full awareness, it tells that humble drop of water that it is not “I” or “Me”, but that it is “Us”, and furthermore, it is “The Ocean”, giving that drop of water the sense of belonging, of being a part of something greater than itself.