Quotes About Ego

"Understand the process of the ego. How does the ego live? The ego lives in the tension between what you are and what you want to be. A wants to be B - the ego is created out of this very tension. How does the ego die? The ego dies by you accepting what you are. That you say, "I am fine as I am, where I am is good. I will remain just as existence keeps me. Its will is my will."

The child is born with a Self but not with an ego. The child develops the ego. As he becomes more and more social and related, ego develops. This ego is just on your periphery where you are related with others - just on the boundary of your being. So ego is the periphery of your being, and Self is the center. The child is born with a Self, but unaware. He is a Self, but he is not conscious of the Self.

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable.

As the ego becomes strong it starts surrounding intelligence like a thick layer of darkness. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is very delicate, ego is very hard. Intelligence is like a roseflower, ego is like a rock. And if you want to survive, they say - the so-called knowers - then you have to become rock-like, you have to be strong, invulnerable. You have to become a citadel, a closed citadel, so you cannot be attacked from outside. You have to become impenetrable.

'I am' is nothing but another name for the ego. Now you will be getting into trouble. If the ego is convinced that the only way is to drop the ego, then who is going to drop whom? And how? It will be like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings. You will look just silly. Watch each word that you use. 'I am' is nothing but the ego.

Pathology has made us acquainted with a great number of states in which the boundary lines between the ego and the external world become uncertain or in which they are actually drawn incorrectly. There are cases in which parts of a person's own body, even portions of his own mental life - his perceptions, thoughts and feelings -, appear alien to him and as not belonging to his ego; there are other cases in which he ascribes to the external world things that clearly originate in his own ego and that ought to be acknowledged by it.

Ego is something that everybody, creative especially, has to grapple with. You need enough ego to keep going but not so much ego that you're deaf or blind, that you're making a mistake and can't fix the course.

The ego is a very bad quality. Ego sees everything as sep­arate; it sees everything as dual. You must remove this ego and see only the Unity. Think only of Unity; think only of the basis of everything.

True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality... and through this death a rebirth and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.

Ego is an immature stage of development for humans, and that's what it will be recognized as when the consciousness changes on the planet. Children will develop an ego and quickly outgrow it. That's very different from developing an ego and being stuck with it for the rest of your life.

The man of genius is he whose ego has acquired consciousness. He is enabled by it to distinguish the fact that others are different, to perceive the "ego" of other men, even when it is not pronounced enough for them to be conscious of it themselves. But it is only he who feels that every other man is also an ego, a monad, an individual centre of the universe, with specific manner of feeling and thinking and a distinct past, he alone is in a position to avoid making use of his neighbours as means to an end.

If the only teacher you have is your suffering, you will need a substantial dose of it for the ego to dissolve. But if the power of spiritual teaching is already at work, then a minor event can dissolve the ego.

The thing is that the ego cannot cure itself of its own malady of egoism; it's already infected by the disease itself. And that is why it is necessary to go to a guru who knows God and by absorbing his consciousness into yourself, you discover that you aren't this ego. You cross that abyss and you find that you are infinite.

Doing brings ego. Ego is the shadow of action. And there is only one thing that is not doing and that is awareness, watchfulness. The only thing that is not part of the world of action is pure awareness. No shadow is created by pure awareness. It is so pure that light can pass through it - it is transparent and no shadow is created.

As I've gone into soul and soul-land, and I connect with my soul and my ego, and my life is colored by my soul - people can identify from their ego, which is who they thought they are. The soul, which is who they really are, if they choose that transfer to the soul, then you live in an ocean of love.

Happiness is the death of the ego. If you want to remain a separate entity from existence as almost everybody is trying to do, you will be afraid of being blissful, cheerful. You will feel guilty in being blissful. You will feel suicidal because you are committing suicide on the psychological level, on the level of the ego.

Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies

The Christian, the Mohammedan, the Jew - their emphasis is on the second: to die as soon as possible, to surrender to God. Prayer is their way. Prayer means dying, dying and disappearing as a person, becoming part of the universal, a surrender, a trust in God. The whole emphasis is on how to surrender your ego, sacrifice your ego, at the altar of the divine.

Every problem is an ego problem. In order to have a problem there has to be an ego-frustration.

The ego's form of happiness can't exist without unhappiness. The ego will be happy when something good happens but unhappy when it ends.

Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm ; the God on earth is built on the pattern of the God in nature. But the universal consciousness of the real Ego transcends a million fold the self-consciousness of the personal for false ego.

Ego is my career. Rap music is all ego.

I think that in fact by taking on the persona of a human being, you begin to realise that it is all ego, and that beneath that ego is something else, and that something else is a tranquil, nonentity, that we are simply drops of the sea, that we belong to each other.

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.

Normally we will say we are happy or we are unhappy. I have met some people who told Me, "Oh we went to that Guru we were very happy." I said, "You could be happy in the pub also. What is happiness?" Happiness is not the way to judge any one, neither unhappiness. Unhappiness comes to you through this super ego and happiness through this ego. But joy has no double face, joy is joy. In joy, you witness, you witness the whole thing. And when you are joyous you feel the whole thing, the joy itself coming on you like grace falling on to you. It's so beautiful that you just get lost into it.

This new meta-system is very much in favor of the self, but a self that is based on a proper sense of dignity, not on an inflated ego. A person who dare not admit he is wrong inflates his ego but weakens his self.

You have to put your ego aside as an actor. Or you're using your ego to tell the story. Your body is a part of a tool to tell the story. So if you feel something, it's wrong. It means you're not inside of the character.

Our ego seeks to understand everything. It wants all the answers. Part of what destroys the ego and connects us with the light is doing things that absolutely don't make any sense. If we want something beyond logic, like a miracle, we have to do something that is beyond logic.

Well-being is possible to the degree to which one has overcome one's narcissism; to the degree to which one is open, responsive, sensitive, awake, empty.... Well-being means, finally, to drop one's Ego, to give up greed, to cease chasing after preservation and the aggrandizement of the Ego, to be and to experience one's self in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, using.

Self-confidence is not the same thing as ego. This is not to say that the two don’t (frequently) dance hand in hand down the street, pushing over old ladies in crosswalks and kicking baby kittens. But they are definitely not the same entity. Ego is thinking you have all the answers. Self-confidence is knowing you don’t have the answers, but being pretty sure that you will be able to find them.

The most important thing is being genuine, and real, and not getting caught up in the "Star-Ness" of it. You don't want to act like a star around other people. You have to watch it, and you want to stay grounded, it's very important, and that's probably what I have learned most because you definitely have opportunities to let your ego run wild and you have to keep your ego in check.

More the knowledge lesser the Ego, lesser the knowledge, more the Ego.

Knowledge and ego are directly related. the less knowledge, the greater the ego

For me, the only ego that needs serving in putting together a film is the story's, the ego of the story and it's the piece itself that you want to bring out the voice of the piece. You're really serving that and that's the thing that you have a basic understanding of.

Try to understand the ego. Analyze it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don't be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego.

Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.

Ego is the great enemy. Ego will hold you back every single time.

When I am out and about I feel watched. It's become second nature. The only time I get to be private is in my work. That is when I liberate the ego. The blessed-out sensation of liberating the ego.

It’s interesting that most gadgets are called ‘iPhone’ and ‘iPod,’ with that ‘i’ prefix, which is ego. But most creativity is not ego-led – a lot of it comes from the unconscious. So if you’re always checking your email or updating your Instagram profile, you’re not just looking out the window, daydreaming. You’ve got to let the subconscious in – that’s my main message to the world.

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness.

But I think Barry Sonnenfeld let his ego go out of control. He told me in a meeting that he had to do something to make it his film.

Spirituality is the intersection of three paths: letting go of ego, an unconditional yes to the conditions of human existence, and an immeasurable compassion.

one of the greatest deterrents to successful investing is the three-letter word ego.

In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be a possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.

Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers--if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes.

I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.

When it comes to doing my job, I keep my ego in my handbag.