Satisfying Ego Quotes

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself… Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant! When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

When we find ourselves in a midlife depression, suddenly hate our spouse, our jobs, our lives – we can be sure that the unlived life is seeking our attention. When we feel restless, bored, or empty despite an outer life filled with riches, the unlived life is asking for us to engage. To not do this work will leave us depleted and despondent, with a nagging sense of ennui or failure. As you may have already discovered, doing or acquiring more does not quell your unease or dissatisfaction. Neither will “meditating on the light” or attempting to rise above the sufferings of earthly existence. Only awareness of your shadow qualities can help you to find an appropriate place for your unredeemed darkness and thereby create a more satisfying experience. To not do this work is to remain trapped in the loneliness, anxiety, and dualistic limits of the ego instead of awakening to your higher calling.

The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow. Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it. When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.

There are intellectual vagabonds, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquility to thousands, they overlap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their imprudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds.

At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves. I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos. And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.

Maybe we have very high expectations from the people we love, we think they’ll never make a mistake, or they’re somewhat an angel. We start to praise them, consider them our possessions, and make them a reason that would satisfy our egos. There’s no room left for respecting them as humans or the differences we have. But when we see them leaving us into our unhealthy patterns, then we realize what we had been doing or treating them for a while. Sounds selfish, no? At the end of the day, we care about ourselves only. We care because we won’t be able to live without them. Humans are complicated, no doubt.

Too many decisions are made based on satisfying ego.

Revenge is counter-productive. Let them drown in the pool of their bad Karma. Going into their pool just to fight them satisfies your ego but harms your soul.

Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.

God cares only for what is his, busies himself with only himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes...He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--A purely egoistic cause.

Donald did have—as a savant of self-promotion, shameless liar, marketer, and builder of brands—to achieve the one thing that had always eluded him: a level of fame that matched his ego and satisfied his ambition in a way money alone never could.

You can easily recognize that something is coming from Ego because when you get it, it doesn't satisfy you.

Anyone can be a great negotiator, I told them, and in fact it often pays to be quiet and gracious, to listen more than talk, and to have an instinct for harmony rather than conflict. With this style, you can take aggressive positions without inflaming your counterpart’s ego. And by listening, you can learn what’s truly motivating the person you’re negotiating with and come up with creative solutions that satisfy both parties.

How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…

We all are living to satisfy someone's ego, and that ego is shaping us to run towards this mental slavery society. The day you stop satisfying someone's ego by dealing with wisdom is the day you are free from slavery.

Reading was credited not only with improving morale but easing adjustment and averting the onset of psychoneurotic breakdowns. According to one article: “When we read fiction or drama, we perceive in accordance with our needs, goals, defenses, and values,” and a reader will “introject meaning that will satisfy his needs and reject meaning that is threatening to his ego.

In what act or thought of his has there ever been self? What was his aim in life? Greatness - in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy - all which come from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that other believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from other in order to make an impression on others. It's his ego that he's betrayed and given up.

When you live through the ego, you always reduce the present moment to a means to an end. You live for the future, and when you achieve your goals, they don't satisfy you, at least not for long. When you give more attention to the doing than to the future result that you want to achieve through it, you break the old egoic conditioning. Your doing then becomes not only a great deal more effective, but infinitely more fulfilling and joyful.

When a natural instinct surfaces, the ego wants to have it satisfied, but the superego does not allow that. The ego submits to the “higher” superego, but is left with the problem. It begins a struggle with the impulse and, to reduce the pain of not satisfying it, engineers a defense that allows itself to make sense of its decision to submit.

The ego is never satisfied. So, if you're not satisfied with what you have right now, consider what is driving you.

While the number of friends may feed your ego, it will never satisfy your heart.

Men and women of principle do not lower their standards to satisfy their ego.

Ego is like cyanide. Instantly kills dialogue. Always needs to be kept satisfied.

Change directions to go wherever your heart desires to go; stay with a direction to satisfy your ego.

The question: ‘At what point is my ego finally satisfied?’ The answer: ‘At no point’. And that is the point.

All wars are without reason, Sita. Men fight to satisfy their egos, to secure their property, or to simply grab what belongs to others.

Almost all people mistake ego approval for love. Because it is not love, it is not satisfying. Consequently, one continuously needs and demands it. And, this produces only frustration.

author Martha Beck says of the ego, “Don’t leave home without it.” But do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it’s a terrible master—because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there’s never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call “a hungry ghost”—forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed. Some version of that hunger dwells within all of us. We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn’t care a whit about reward or failure.

Who am I? is not a question about your job or bank balance. Don’t be satisfied with rational or formal answers. Ask yourself seriously and honestly, again and again, and, sooner or later, you’ll hear the voice of your soul. The true answer will come to you, breaking through the thick curtain of your ego, which is made up of your name, job, personality, and similar things.

Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it’s a terrible master—because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there’s never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call “a hungry ghost”—forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need.'  - Dalai Lama

we would no longer call it an ego at all. The gift leaves all boundary and circles into mystery. The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The

If there is one ruler that can harmonize and unify the mob of characters [in our astral body], it is the Ego (the Higher Ego, or Self, or Spirit). The more the Ego shines like a sun at the center of gravity of the astral body, the more the different characters start orbiting around it. Instead of working only to satisfy their own selfish desires, the characters start manifesting the purposes of the light and of the Spirit. Instead of plotting for the success of their own ambitions, they start accomplishing the works of the Higher Self... The unveiling of the Self begins a process of unification--a new astral body slowly develops. In this new, or transformed, astral body, the different parts are penetrated by the light of the Self. Therefore they are not only united around the Self, but are also cemented to it... [Before this process], one is nothing more than an appearance: it is the illusion of being one person...

There really is no such thing as working for yourself. Every job - regardless of whether the employer is your own company or another company - exists in service to others. When people seek to be self employed, they approach business from an ego perspective and that results in poor business. Instead of seeking to be self employed, seek to create a platform of value creation in service to a specific group of people, and be satisfied with being able to put yourself first in line to serve in the creation of that value.

What about physical pain? What about suffering? Hand over your existence to existence and keep quiet. All is grace. If you really had the free will and power to shape your destiny, to create your ideal life, you would most probably leave out all discomforts, all that challenges your ego, all that exposes feelings of guilt or shame or anything that threatens your attachments. You would exclude all these and replace them with chocolate-flavoured experiences. [Laughter] But however much you try to construct and secure a life that satisfies your projections, you would still fail to match, in quality and auspiciousness, the life that is unfolding without human intention. A man once said to Sri Nisargadatta, “Maharaj, your words resonate deep within my heart. I feel their power and know them to be true. But if I am to be honest in describing my experience, I would have to admit that throughout my life, I’m continuously experiencing suffering!” And Maharaj replied, “No, this is not true. You are not experiencing suffering, you are suffering your experiencing.

As you become successful in your own field, your responsibilities may begin to change. Days become less and less about doing and more and more about making decisions. Such is the nature of leadership. This transition requires reevaluating and updating your identity. It requires a certain humility to put aside some of the more enjoyable or satisfying parts of your previous job. It means accepting that others might be more qualified or specialized in areas in which you considered yourself competent—or at least their time is better spent on them than yours.

Hanna started to laugh uncontrollably. "Now," Bobby told her, "say, 'I'm a dying cockroach.'" Again Hanna stopped and rolled over. "Do what?" she asked. "You were doing good, Girl. Don't stop. Please don't stop. Quick, get back on your back." It was his patience with her that finally convinced her to go on with the foolishness. "That's it. Wiggle. Wiggle. Now, say, 'I'm a dying Cockroach.'" "I cant." "Yes you can. Say it. Say it." Hanna started laughing so hard she could not stop. "I'm a dying cockroach." she managed to say. "I'm a dying cockroach, " Bobby repeated. "Say it again. Say it over and over. I'm a dying cockroach, I'm a dying cockroach. Say it." "I'm a dying cockroach," Hanna began. "Keep wiggling. Wiggle. Wiggle. I'm a dying cockroach." "I'm a dying cockroach. I'm a dying fucking cockroach!" Bobby spent nearly half an hour putting Hanna through the exercise he had experienced in the Marine Corps. He was satisfied when finally she began to scream uncontrollably as she flailed about the floor hysterically in absolute absurdity. Tears were pouring over her face. It was then that Bobby fell over her and began to hug and hold her and kiss her cheeks. "You did it!" Girl, you did it. See?" After she came back to her senses and calmed down, Bobby explained why he put her through the ordeal. "How do you feel?" he asked her. Hanna smiled and said. "Weird. I made a fucking fool of myself." "Great," said Bobby. "That was the point. See, you got outside yourself. You lost your ego." Hanna was starting to understand. "I did, didn't I? I let go. I honestly let go of everything. I didn't care. I didn't give a shit for nothing. It felt great. Shiiiitttt!" she screamed into her hands. "I'm a fucking dying cockroach. And I don't give a shit about nothing." "Anything," Byron said from the kitchen.

For the ego to survive, it must make time -- past and future -- more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment, except briefly just after it got what it wanted. But nothing can satisfy the ego for long. As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.

A man of tao remains ordinary, absolutely ordinary. Nobody knows who he is, nobody knows what he carries within him, what treasure. He never advertises, he never tries to display. Why do we advertise? Because of the ego. You are not satisfied with yourself. You are satisfied only when others appreciate you. Kohinoor is not enough. You may have a valuable stone, but it is not enough; others must appreciate it.

Lone rangers, that's what we are. We see the world with our naked eyes, unabashed of the greed and ego. Our mind resides on our tongue and we stand for what's right. A little too much fun, and an exciting package. Raving for life and exploring possibilities is our goal. Travel far and wide and into the wild, we will go for it someday. Care so much that even gods would bow down. Love to the hilt and then let go, coz that's what this life is meant for. One life and we will live up to the hilt and leave no regrets. So, when we land into our graves with a satisfied smile, we big farewell to the meanness of this so-called universe. With every journey there is a new lesson learned, every place traveled, explored; makes us in fall in love with the earth. Care less about our whereabouts; we keep the expedition going because we want to go far beyond the civilized, beyond the living, beyond the world of predictability, beyond u and I & into the wild. Feasting the eyes, rejuvenating the senses, every breath we take is a sigh of relief and we make peace. Choosing the roads less traveled, our wandering souls makes our way towards the unknown destination not only to discover ourselves but to discover the wild, nature and the mother earth.

There is an aid for helping us to learn how to distinguish between the ego way and the higher way. It is pain. The ego way inevitably leads to pain, even if it seems to temporarily satisfy. The higher way does not. It works. And it works harmoniously. It brings the sort of success that has no bitter after-taste. It is not manipulative. It doesn’t play one person against another. It doesn’t feed anyone’s fantasies. It is honest and it protects the good.

The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, if fact, is the only religion which advocate the intensification or encouragement of the ego. Only if a person's own ego is sufficiently fulfilled, can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others, without robbing himself of his self-respect. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego; in reality, his bragging results from a need to satisfy his impoverished ego.

There is a minor difference between materialistic and spiritual desires. A person having spiritual desires is seeking peace. A person materialistic desires is seeking comfort and luxuries to satisfy his ego and lust. Both can get angry if their desires are not met, there are no exceptions. The only difference is that a spiritual person can use his spiritual intelligence to manage his anger, while the person in the materialistic clutches has no choice but to express it.

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!” Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles. The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him. “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade. Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek. “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face. “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths. Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away. “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly. “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.” “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?” “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!

Pleasure Principles What you pay attention to grows. This will be familiar to those who have read Emergent Strategy. Actually, all the emergent strategy principles also apply here! (Insert eggplant emoji). Tune into happiness, what satisfies you, what brings you joy. We become what we practice. I learned this through studying somatics! In his book The Leadership Dojo, Richard Strozzi-Heckler shares that “300 repetitions produce body memory … [and] 3,000 repetitions creates embodiment.”12 Yes is the way. When it was time to move to Detroit, when it was time to leave my last job, when it was time to pick up a meditation practice, time to swim, time to eat healthier, I knew because it gave me pleasure when I made and lived into the decision. Now I am letting that guide my choices for how I organize and for what I am aiming toward with my work—pleasure in the processes of my existence and states of my being. Yes is a future. When I feel pleasure, I know I am on the right track. Puerto Rican pleasure elder Idelisse Malave shared with me that her pleasure principle is “If it pleases me, I will.” When I am happy, it is good for the world.13 The deepest pleasure comes from riding the line between commitment and detachment.14 Commit yourself fully to the process, the journey, to bringing the best you can bring. Detach yourself from ego and outcomes. Make justice and liberation feel good. Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create the container within which your yes is authentic. Being able to say no makes yes a choice. Moderation is key.15 The idea is not to be in a heady state of ecstasy at all times, but rather to learn how to sense when something is good for you, to be able to feel what enough is. Related: pleasure is not money. Pleasure is not even related to money, at least not in a positive way. Having resources to buy unlimited amounts of pleasure leads to excess, and excess totally destroys the spiritual experience of pleasure.

But we do neither: we never fail, and we never succeed. We are not the designers of our lives. Life is the designer of us. Life is vast and grand, intelligent, clever, and completely unknowable. It always has the last word. It is the last word. Life interrupts us when we are at our most self-assured. Life diverts us when we are hellbent on going elsewhere. Life arrives in a precise and yet unplanned sequence to deliver exactly what we need in order to realize our greatest potential. The delivery is not often what we would choose, and almost never how we intend to satisfy ourselves, because our potential is well beyond our limited, ego-bound choices and self serving intentions.

The underlying emotion that governs all the activity in the ego is fear. The fear of being nobody, the fear of nonexistence, the fear of death. All its activities are ultimately designed to eliminate this fear, but the most the ego can ever do is to cover it up temporarily with an intimate relationship, a new possession, or winning at this or that. Illusion will never satisfy you. Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free. Why fear? Because the ego arises by identification with form, and deep down it knows that no forms are permanent, that they are all fleeting. So there is always a sense of insecurity around the ego even if on the outside it appears confident.

The doctrine of justification by faith—a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.

Remember, please remember, you do not (you must not!) fear, attack, or hate the False Self. That would only continue a negative and arrogant death energy, and it is delusional and counterproductive anyway. It would be trying to “drive out the devil by the prince of devils,” as Jesus puts it. In the great economy of grace, all is used and transformed, and nothing is wasted. God uses your various False Selves to lead you beyond them. Note that Jesus' clear message to his beloved, Mary Magdalene, is not that she squelch, deny, or destroy her human love for him. He is much more subtle than that. He just says to her, “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17). He is saying, “Don't hold on to your needy False Self. We are all heading for something much bigger and much better, Mary.” This is the spiritual art of detachment, which is not taught much in capitalistic worldview where clinging and possessing are not just the norm but even the goal. You see how trapped we are. Great love is both very attached (“passionate”) and yet very detached at the same time. It is love but not addiction. The soul, the True Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things, you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go. The False Self cannot do this. The “do not cling to me” encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the most painted Easter scene, I am told. The artistic imagination knew that a seeming contradiction was playing out here: intense love and yet appropriate distance. The soul and the spirit tend to love and revel in paradoxes; they operate by resonance and reflection. The ego (False Self) wants to resolve all paradoxes in a most glib way and thinks that it can. It operates in a way that is mechanical and instrumental. This is not always bad, but it is surely limited. The ego would like Mary Magdalene and Jesus to be caught up in a passionate love affair. Of course they are, in the deepest sense of the term, but only the True Self knows how to enjoy and picture “a love of already satisfied desire.” The True Self and False Self see differently; both are necessary, but one is better, bigger, and even eternal.

The people who are made larger by suffering go on to stage two small rebellions. First, they rebel against their ego ideal. When they were on their first mountain, their ego had some vision of what it was shooting for—some vision of prominence, pleasure, and success. Down in the valley they lose interest in their ego ideal. Of course afterward they still feel and sometimes succumb to their selfish desires. But, overall, they realize the desires of the ego are never going to satisfy the deep regions they have discovered in themselves. They realize, as Henri Nouwen put it, that they are much better than their ego ideal. Second, they rebel against the mainstream culture. All their lives they’ve been taking economics classes or living in a culture that teaches that human beings pursue self-interest—money, power, fame. But suddenly they are not interested in what other people tell them to want. They want to want the things that are truly worth wanting. They elevate their desires. The world tells them to be a good consumer, but they want to be the one consumed—by a moral cause. The world tells them to want independence, but they want interdependence—to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships. The world tells them to want individual freedom, but they want intimacy, responsibility, and commitment. The world wants them to climb the ladder and pursue success, but they want to be a person for others. The magazines on the magazine rack want them to ask “What can I do to make myself happy?” but they glimpse something bigger than personal happiness.

Even if a person is no longer struggling under the burden of religiously-induced guilt (or thinks he isn't), modern man still feels shame if he yields to his masturbatory desires. A man may feel robbed of his masculinity if he satisfies himself auto-erotically rather than engaging in the competitive game of woman chasing. A woman may satisfy herself sexually but yearns for the ego-gratification that comes from the sport of seduction. Neither the quasi Casanova nor bogus vamp feels adequate when "reduced" to masturbation for sexual gratification; both would prefer even an inadequate partner. Satanically speaking, though, it is far better to engage in a perfect fantasy than to cooperate in an unrewarding experience with another person. With masturbation, you are in complete control of the situation.

To be a critical reader means for me: (1) to affirm the enduring power of the Bible in my culture and in my own life and yet (2) to remain open enough to dare to ask any question and to risk any critical judgement. Nothing less than both of these points, together, can suffice for me. I was a reader of the Bible before I was a critic of it, but I found becoming a critic to be liberating and satisfying, and therefore I judge criticism to be a high calling of inestimable value. Yet, I recognize the prior claim of the text and the preeminence of reading over criticism; accordingly, I see and occasionally am apprehended by moments in which the text wields its indubitable power. The critic's ego says this could be a taste of the cherished post-critical naivete; the reader's proper humility before the text says that a reader should not judge such things.

Strangely, we have come to a moment in human history when the message of the Sermon on the Mount could indeed save us, but it can no longer be heard above the din of dueling doctrines. Consider this: there is not a single word in that sermon about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe! Thus the most important question we can ask in the church today concerns the object of faith itself. The earliest metaphors of the gospel speak of discipleship as transformation through an alternative community and the reversal of conventional wisdom. In much of the church today, our metaphors speak of individual salvation and the specific promises that accompany it. The first followers of Jesus trusted him enough to become instruments of radical change. Today, worshipers of Christ agree to believe things about him in order to receive benefits promised by the institution, not by Jesus. This difference, between following and worshiping, is not insignificant. Worshiping is an inherently passive activity, since it involves the adoration of that to which the worshiper cannot aspire. It takes the form of praise, which can be both sentimental and self-satisfying, without any call to changed behavior or self-sacrifice. In fact, Christianity as a belief system requires nothing but acquiescence. Christianity as a way of life, as a path to follow, requires a second birth, the conquest of ego, and new eyes with which to see the world. It is no wonder that we have preferred to be saved.

Apple's approach to career development is yet another way it runs contrary to the norms at other companies. The prevalent attitude for workers in the corporate world is to consider their growth trajectory. What's my path up? How do I get to the next level? Companies, in turn, spend an inordinate amount of time and money grooming their people for new responsibilities. They labor to find just the right place for people. But what if it turns out all that thinking is wrong? What if companies encouraged employees to be satisfied where they are because they're good at what they do, not to mention because that might be what's best for shareholders? Instead of employees fretting that they were stuck in terminal jobs, what if they exalted in having found their perfect jobs? A certain amount of office politics might evaporate in a corporate culture where career growth is not considered tantamount to professional fulfilment. Shareholders, after all, don't care about fiefdoms and egos. There are many professionals who would find it liberating to work at what they are good at, receive competitive killer compensation, and not have to worry about supervising others or jockeying for higher rungs on an org chart.

August 8th START WITH WHERE THE WORLD IS “Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that’s in your power. Don’t look around to see if people will know about it. Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic, but be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.29.(4) Have you ever heard the expression “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”? The idea is not to settle or compromise your standards, but rather not to become trapped by idealism. The community organizer Saul Alinsky opens his book Rules for Radicals with a pragmatic but inspiring articulation of that idea: “As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.” There is plenty that you could do right now, today, that would make the world a better place. There are plenty of small steps that, were you to take them, would help move things forward. Don’t excuse yourself from doing them because the conditions aren’t right or because a better opportunity might come along soon. Do what you can, now. And when you’ve done it, keep it in perspective, don’t overblow the results. Shun both ego and excuse, before and after.

I counted my years and discovered that I have fewer years left to live compared to the time I have lived until now. I feel like a boy who won a package of treats. The first he eats with pleasure, but when he realizes that there are a few left, he then starts to contemplate upon them. I no longer have time for endless meetings that achieve nothing as statuses, rules, procedures and regulations are discussed. Neither do I have time to give encouragement to absurd people who, despite their age, have not grown up. I don't have time to deal with mediocrity. I don't want to be in meetings where egos parade. I won't tolerate manipulators and opportunists. I am bothered by envious people, seeking to discredit the able ones, to usurp their places, talents and accomplishments. I hate to witness the ill effects, generated by the struggle for a better job, among ambitious people. I detest people who do not argue about content but titles. My time is too precious to discuss titles. I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry. Not many treats are left in the packet. I want to live among human people, very human. People, who can laugh at their mistakes. Who do not become full of themselves because of their triumphs. Who do not consider themselves elite, before they have really become one. Who do not run away from their responsibilities. Who defend human dignity. Who do not want anything else but to walk along with truth, righteousness, honesty and integrity. The essential thing is what makes life worthwhile. I want to surround myself with people who can touch the hearts of others. People who despite the hard knockouts of life, grew up with a soft touch in their soul. Yes, I am in a hurry. So that I can live with the intensity, which only maturity can give me. I intend not to waste any of the treats I have left. I am sure they will be more exquisite compared to the ones I have eaten so far. My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience. I hope yours is the same, because the end will come anyway...

The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. Passion is divine fire: it enlivens and makes holy; it gives light and yields inspiration. Passion is generous because it’s not ego-driven; addiction is self-centred. Passion gives and enriches; addiction is a thief. Passion is a source of truth and enlightenment; addictive behaviours lead you into darkness. You’re more alive when you are passionate, and you triumph whether or not you attain your goal. But an addiction requires a specific outcome that feeds the ego; without that outcome, the ego feels empty and deprived. A consuming passion that you are helpless to resist, no matter what the consequences, is an addiction. You may even devote your entire life to a passion, but if it’s truly a passion and not an addiction, you’ll do so with freedom, joy and a full assertion of your truest self and values. In addiction, there’s no joy, freedom or assertion. The addict lurks shame-faced in the shadowy corners of her own existence. I glimpse shame in the eyes of my addicted patients in the Downtown Eastside and, in their shame, I see mirrored my own. Addiction is passion’s dark simulacrum and, to the naïve observer, its perfect mimic. It resembles passion in its urgency and in the promise of fulfillment, but its gifts are illusory. It’s a black hole. The more you offer it, the more it demands. Unlike passion, its alchemy does not create new elements from old. It only degrades what it touches and turns it into something less, something cheaper. Am I happier after one of my self-indulgent sprees? Like a miser, in my mind I recount and catalogue my recent purchases — a furtive Scrooge, hunched over and rubbing his hands together with acquisitive glee, his heart growing ever colder. In the wake of a buying binge, I am not a satisfied man. Addiction is centrifugal. It sucks energy from you, creating a vacuum of inertia. A passion energizes you and enriches your relationships. It empowers you and gives strength to others. Passion creates; addiction consumes — first the self and then the others within its orbit.

Sharon passed around a handout: "Triangle of Self-Actualization" by Abraham Maslow. The levels of human motivation. It resembled the nutrition triangle put out by the FDA, with five horizontal levels of multiple colors. I vaguely remembered it from my one college psychology course in the 1970's. "Very applicable with refugees," Sharon said. "Maslow theorized that one could not move to a higher level until the prior level was satisfied. The first level, the triangle base, is physiological needs. Like food and water. Until a person has enough to eat and drink, that's all one would be concerned with." I'd never experienced not being able to satisfy my thirst or hunger, but it sounded logical that that would be my only concern in such a situation. For the Lost Boys, just getting enough food and water had been a daily struggle. I wondered what kind of impact being stuck at the bottom level for the last fourteen years would have on a person, especially a child and teen. "The second level is safety and security. Home. A sanctuary. A safe place." Like not being shot at or having lions attack you. They hadn't had much of level two, either. Even Kakuma hadn't been safe. A refugee camp couldn't feel like home. "The third level is social. A sense of belonging." Since they'd been together, they must have felt like they belonged, but perhaps not on a larger scale, having been displaced from home and living in someone else's country. "Once a person has food, shelter, family and friends, they can advance to the fourth level, which is ego. Self-esteem." I'd never thought of those things occurring sequentially, but rather simultaneously, as they did in my life. If I understood correctly, working on their self-esteem had not been a large concern to them, if one at all. That was bound to affect them eventually. In what way remained to be seen. They'd been so preoccupied with survival that issues of self-worth might overwhelm them at first. A sure risk for insecurity and depression. The information was fascinating and insightful, although worrisome in terms of Benson, Lino, and Alepho. It also made me wonder about us middle-and upper-class Americans. We seldom worried about food, except for eating too much, and that was not what Maslow had been referring to. Most of us had homes and safety and friends and family. That could mean we were entirely focused on that fourth level: ego. Our efforts to make ourselves seem strong, smart, rich, and beautiful, or young were our own kind of survival skill. Perhaps advancing directly to the fourth level, when the mind was originally engineered for the challenges of basic survival, was why Prozac and Zoloft, both antidepressants, were two of the biggest-selling drugs in America. "The pinnacle of the triangle," Sharon said, "is the fifth level. Self-actualization. A strong and deeply felt belief that as a person one has value in the world. Contentment with who one is rather than what one has. Secure in ones beliefs. Not needing ego boosts from external factors. Having that sense of well-being that does not depend on the approval of others is commonly called happiness." Happiness, hard to define, yet obvious when present. Most of us struggled our entire lives to achieve it, perhaps what had brought some of us to a mentoring class that night.

How much should the women sacrifice for satisfying the egos of men? The question grew in her heart and became an unbearable burden. It suffocated her. We are toys in the hands of men; they play with us to soothe their tired bodies and minds.

It is the Ego that is always in need of approval or recognition. It depends on it. It lives for it. And it never gets enough. The more you give, the more it wants. The Ego is what makes you feel less than and keeps you trying to get approval from others. It feeds off of you not being worthy. It tells you things are what you need to feel like you’ve made it. The Ego is never satisfied with who you are.

your best interests and the company’s best interests in mind.” Grant adds: “The hardest thing that I struggle to explain to people is that being a giver is not the same as being nice.” When I thought back to some of the most compelling people I’ve interviewed in business, Grant’s words rang true. Intel’s Andy Grove immediately came to mind. Ask Grove a dumb question, I once learned, and he’ll tell you it’s not the right question. He’s the one who largely built Intel’s culture of what the company calls “constructive confrontation,” in which you challenge ideas, but not the people who expound them. It’s not personal. He just wants his point to be understood. The result is that you do your homework. You come prepared. The distinction that needs to be made is this: Jerks, narcissists, and takers engage in behaviors to satisfy their own ego, not to benefit the group. Disagreeable givers aren’t getting off on being tough; they’re doing it to further a purpose. So here’s what we know works. Photograph by Peter Yang Smile at the customer. Take the initiative. Tweak a few rules. Steal cookies for your colleagues. Don’t puncture the impression that you know what you’re doing. Let the other person fill the silence. Get comfortable with discomfort. Don’t privilege your own feelings. Ask who you’re really protecting. Be tough and humane. Challenge ideas, not the people who hold them. Don’t be a slave to type. And above all, don’t affix nasty, scatological labels to people. It’s a jerk move. Jerry Useem has covered business

We attempt to plug our aching insecurity with “self-esteem,” but in our hearts we know that it simply will not do. There is something broken at the core of human experience and we need something better, deeper, and more coherent to satisfy our spiritual yearning.

The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the spirit of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry or thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.

Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.

You know what it’s like to ride fire in battle,” said Roston. “You’ve watched good men fall around you for causes they don’t believe in. You know, Captain, as I do, that many of the things we’re ordered to do are done solely to fulfill the self-satisfying agendas or stroke the egos of men who’ve never risked blood on a battlefield.

K talked every Saturday evening and Sunday morning in the Oak Grove throughout August. He was asked two pertinent questions during these talks. The first was: ‘Great minds have never been able to agree as to what is the ultimate reality. What do you say? Does it exist at all?’ Part of K’s answer to this was: ‘What do you say? Is not that much more important: what you think. You say that great minds have said there is and there is not. Of what value is that?’ He went on to explain that only one’s own mind was capable of finding out, ‘But your mind is crammed with knowledge, with information, with experience, with memories; and with that mind you try to find out. Surely, it is only when the mind is creatively empty that it is capable of finding out whether there is an ultimate reality or not.’ The second question was: ‘Does not the process of constant self-awareness lead to self-centredness?’ It does, K replied in effect, as long as you are consciously or unconsciously concerned with a result, with success; you are miserable, frustrated, and feel there is a state in which you can be happy, fulfilled, complete, so you use awareness to get what you want. Through awareness, self-analysis, reading, studying, you hope to dissolve the ego and thereby become happy, enlightened, liberated—one of the elite. So the more you are concerned with gaining an end, the greater the self-centredness. But in understanding why the mind seeks a reward, a satisfying result, there is a possibility of going beyond the self-enclosing activities of thought.

like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody’s time. “If you can’t it get done in eight hours a day,” he said, “it’s not worth doing.” That’s been my philosophy ever since. Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification. To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid. In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization: experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.

Instead of being happy by satisfying our ego through saying that there is only life in our world in this universe, we should be happy by getting rid of our fear of being alone in the universe through saying that there is life in many places in this universe!

If satisfying the ego was the thing to forget your flaws, Not getting the respect will make you to remember those.

Searching outside for fragments of happiness, fulfillment, acceptance, shelter, or love will never truly satisfy you. You have a treasure within that not only holds all those elements, but is infinitely vaster than anything the universe can give you. Once you "know" the pure bliss of Being, all external happiness becomes meaningless. This treasure has been given many times. Nowadays, many people call it "enlightenment." This subconsciously creates the idea of something far away, something impossible for the common human, something that is not present in ourselves already. This is the ego's game, trying to hide and elude us of our peaceful natural state of Beingness. This inherent state is a state of oneness with "something" unfathomable and deathless, which is what we really are in our deepest core, beyond all forms.

If they were so fond of the old system, how come they were so cantankerous about their jobs when they had them?" said Paul. "Oh, this business we've got now - it's been going on for a long time now, not just since the last war. Maybe the actual jobs weren't being taken from the people, but the sense of participation, the sense of importance was. Go to the library sometime and take a look at magazines and newspapers clear back as far as World War ll. Even then there was a lot of talk about know-how winning the war of production - know-how, not people, not the mediocre people running most of the machines. And the hell of it was that it was pretty much true. Even then, half the people or more didn't understand much about the machines they worked at or the things they were making. They were participating in the economy all right, but not in a way that was very satisfying to the ego.

humanity loves knowledge, information. It is very ego-satisfying. Whenever you can say that you know, whenever you can give some advice to somebody else, you feel very high. Not knowing who you are, not knowing where you are, you go on playing the role of a teacher.

Not all resurrections of Kundalini exhibit events that can be considered divine experience. In addition, certain unfinished risings can be quite complicated because the actions of Kundalini Shakti to enhance her standing may influence subtle processes of the body, creating a variety of experiences, including subtle physical activity that may be painful and emotional. Blocked risings or risings through cul-de-sac routes can give rise to some distressing and unusual symptoms, and thwart further spiritual development until the block or misdirection is corrected. The strain on the subtle body can ultra-sensitive and urgent distress the experiencer, especially if they don't know how to properly support their rising. Individuals may also use or misuse any special abilities that their risings provide for their own worldly purposes, and this may eventuate in some uncomfortable side effects. If the gifts offered by an arisen Kundalini Shakti are harnessed for non-spiritual purposes, the resulting dissipation or misdirection of vital energy and likely ego inflation may postpone further spiritual progress until the diffusion is contained and the inauspicious focus is corrected. Other factors that complicate an upturn are sometimes present. An uncomfortable upsurge can result when Kundalini Shakti emerges spontaneously through non-spiritual catalysts (such as life shock or incorrect intervention) in an unprepared person whose subtle body is weak, toxic, or unbalanced and who may not have a frame of reference for interpreting and responding to the experience as potentially spiritual. The emotional reaction to the rising itself can disrupt the delicate body even further. Kundalini Shakti will work to resolve limitations in the system of the individual, and the experiences produced by her effort may be felt as uncomfortable, and thus the experiencer considers them problematic. Even a "spiritual disaster" or "kundalini syndrome" may be branded. It may be mistakenly pathologized by others who do not recognize spiritual experiences because the phenomenon must satisfy appropriate requirements to be considered a diagnosable disorder or disease. However, the Kundalini process is not a pathology, and it is considered a blessing that spiritual aspirants should seek for. A blocked rising may result in distressing discomforts, and some discomfort may also be associated with the purification and restoration, which follows an improvement in a rising. Yet essentially, these challenges can be changed. A healthy, balanced lifestyle promotes a successful cycle of Kundalini. With the seeker's spiritual understanding and committed right commitment to co-operate with the intent of Kundalini Shakti, grace is conferred by the divine right to promote the spiritual development of the soul. Practicing appropriate spiritual methods allows Kundalini Shakti to fix (divert, unblock, elevate) a stuck rising so that rising problems can be improved over time. Unimpeded risings can eventually impart a gentle process, culminating in full spiritual attainment through a direct route.

The ego is a demanding force that’s never satisfied: It constantly requires that we seek more money, power, acquisitions, glory, and prestige to provide the fuel it thinks it must have. Living a Tao-centered life rather than an ego-centered one removes us from that rat race, as it offers inner peace and satisfying fulfillment.

In fantasy, everything’s possible; you can slip out of reality into a fantasy. ‘It’s a satisfying feeling to withdraw, what can I say? I live inside my own head, so my head contains a lot of memories and a lot of ingeniousness. I consider myself to be a creative genius and the child in me, of course, tries to get away though the world around me keeps me from going too far. But the child is basically the expression of the ego, and I think this is why I want to be a child; because you can express ego, but, at the same time, you can be innocent …

We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn’t care a whit about reward or failure. My soul is not guided by dreams of praise or fears of criticism. My soul doesn’t even have language for such notions. My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.

The awakening man leads a purpose-full existence. He has heard the call to a deeper life. Not satisfied with survival alone, his ambitions are rooted in higher considerations- the excavation and actualization of his sacred purpose. He is energized by his purpose, not by the machinations of the unhealthy ego. He is coated in an authenticity of purpose that sees through the veils to what really matters. His purpose is his path.

True happiness is lasting and ever-present. Not to be confused with the temporary hits of pleasure that come from external ego gratifications. We get tastes of pleasure when we are able to successfully manipulate conditions and people to meet our ego’s expectations. It makes us feel like we are in control of our circumstances and this is satisfying to the ego’s sense of mineness. My life, my circumstances, my desires met. While this may be temporarily satisfying, inevitably, circumstances will shift out of our control. When this is revealed, the ego-mind becomes terrified of its lack of control. In order to cope with this fear of the unknown, it creates mental delusions through judgment, opinion, inner commentary, and constant evaluations of how life “should be” to mask its existential insecurity. In reality, the ego mind knows nothing but has the audacity to claim it “knows it all.

The temptation is always to compete to satisfy our ego that we are the best, but we could as well collaborate and get to achieve more together

Regardless of another person’s intent, when we are hurt, we respond by embodying one of the three roles. When we respond by playing the victim, we consciously or unconsciously want sympathy, and hope that someone will take care of us. Alternatively, we may respond by becoming angry and aggressive, striking preemptively before anyone can hurt us again. This is what happens when the role of bully or persecutor is taken. The third possibility is that we feel hurt or stressed, and respond by taking care of others, rescuing them from the difficulty, and in so doing, feed our own ego.

Because you constantly seek to satisfy your ego's every wish, you live in constant anticipation. Because you seek to wipe away its sorrows, you seek desperately for its happiness. Because you seek to maintain its reputation, you are acutely sensitive to the sharp opinions of others. Everything that you do is done in the interest of its welfare. It has made you a slave. Even the need for happiness is a great burden. You would not have this need if you had no manufactured self.

The ego tends to equate ‘having’ with ‘being,’ which is why the ego likes to identify with objects. The ego lives through comparison. Your ego likes to compare itself with other egos. The ego is never satisfied. Your ego always wants more. More fame, more stuff, more recognition, and so on.

I recognized that in running for Congress I’d been driven not by some selfless dream of changing the world, but rather by the need to justify the choices I had already made, or to satisfy my ego, or to quell my envy of those who had achieved what I had not.

Finally, after an awkward episode later that evening in which my friend couldn’t get me into a party he was attending, I took a cab back to the hotel, slept on the couch in his suite, and flew back to Chicago just as Al Gore was accepting the nomination. It’s a funny story, especially in light of where I ultimately ended up. It speaks, I tell my audience, to the unpredictable nature of politics, and the necessity for resilience. What I don’t mention is my dark mood on that flight back. I was almost forty, broke, coming off a humiliating defeat and with my marriage strained. I felt for perhaps the first time in my life that I had taken a wrong turn; that whatever reservoirs of energy and optimism I thought I had, whatever potential I’d always banked on, had been used up on a fool’s errand. Worse, I recognized that in running for Congress I’d been driven not by some selfless dream of changing the world, but rather by the need to justify the choices I had already made, or to satisfy my ego, or to quell my envy of those who had achieved what I had not.

The many ways we have felt angry or cheated, rejected or misunderstood, isolated or forgotten, used or abused, only drive us deeper into victimhood, self-pity, and sadness. Our ego is expensive to keep fed, and makes extraordinary demands without ever being satisfied. When the ego becomes more and more inflated, the self is always imploding.

I believe this is one of the oldest and most generous tricks the universe plays on us human beings, both for its own amusement and for ours: The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all and then stands back to see if we can find them. Bravery means doing something scary. Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word scary means. If you can't travel comfortably along your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting. Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. As a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds. The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust and those elements are universally accessible. I think perfectionism is just a high-end, haute couture version of fear. We must understand that the drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. Far too many creative people have been taught to distrust pleasure and to put their faith in struggle alone. Too many artists still believe that anguish is the only truly authentic emotional experience. Don't rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it's a terrible master - because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward and more reward. And since there's never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call a "hungry ghost" - forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed.

You can satisfy your ego by calling their hardship as luck, but that won't change a thing about them or about you.

In learning to satisfy your partner, however, the first thing you must do is remove your ego. You are not “giving” her an orgasm. You are not trying to be the best lover she has ever had. Too many men get caught up with sexual performance. If you are able to replace performance with pleasure – hers and yours – you will be able to satisfy even the lustiest of lovers. Remember, the best lovers are men who are completely relaxed and aware of what is going on in both their own and their partner’s bodies.

Nonviolence is nonsense – or to be more accurate – bookish nonviolence is nonsense. Nonviolence is to injustice, what homeopathy is to illness – it claims all the credit without any of the responsibility. Placebo brings comfort, not change. Does that mean, violence is the solution? That’s the problem, you see. This prehistoric world has an instinctual affinity to black and white concepts – to binary concepts – and a gigantic blind spot for grey areas. Justice is too grand an exercise to be contained by the primitive dualistic nonsense of violence and nonviolence. Let me put this into perspective with an example. Bullets are an act of violence, silence is an act of nonviolence – but there is a third option – the option of the slipper. Slippers are more effective in fighting bugs, than bullets – bullets make martyr of the bugs, slippers put them in their place. When the slippers of a nation’s civilians combine, even the mightiest of tyrant is bound to fall – be it a state head, court judge or law enforcement officer. Whenever a bunch of bugs turn the courts into a cradle of animal masculinity – whenever a bunch of bugs turn the parliament into a cradle of fundamentalism and bigotry – whenever a bunch of bugs turn the police stations into a cradle of badge-bearing barbarism – grab hold of that household bug-repellent you wear on your feet, and put them to some good, wholesome use. Treat the corrupt and bigoted like your children, and do with them as you would your own child when they go astray. When your child starts to bully other kids, if you adopt pacifism and pamper them further in the name of nonviolence, instead of taking stringent steps to nip their megalomania in the bud, it’s very much possible, they might grow up to be the next orange-haired terrorist to roam the oval office or the next musky moron who takes pleasure in destroying people’s livelihoods and providing safe haven to hate speech and disinformation to satisfy their giant ego and puny mind. So, I repeat – pick up the democratic superweapon from under your feet and put it to good use – treat the privileged orangutans like your children and put them in their rightful place, without actually harming them. Your world, your rules – remember that. Slippers are democracy’s first line of defense, bullets it’s last.

She turned, and her eyes met Hunt’s again—a new sort of vulnerability shining beneath the self-satisfied narrowing. A challenge thrown down. Waiting to see how he’d react. How many males had run from this part of her, their alphahole egos threatened by it? Hunt hated them all merely for putting the question in her eyes.

...even when the pragmatist knows what conditions must be met in order to accept a belief as true, he still has no protection from error and wishful thinking. One need only believe that he is in Australia, and he wants to confirm it. He establishes this verification condition: if one is in Australia, then he can find kangaroos running wild. He then goes outside, and being in the Rocky Mountains, he comes across bears roaming wild. However, he believes they are kangaroos. Thus, the verification condition is (albeit erroneously!) satisfied. What this indicates is that Dewey's pragmatism does not escape the traditional epistemological question known as the ego-centric predicament.

Do you always…make that ‘I don’t give a damn about myself’ face?” “…I don’t.” “You do.” “I said I don’t!” “I’m tellin’ you that you do! You looked calm even when you were surrounded by those guys. We rescued you, yet you tell us ‘not to get involved’!?” “‘Cos…it’s really none of your business, right? Whether I get kidnapped…or killed…so…” “How many people have you hurt by acting that way…you suicidal idiot!!?” “Suicidal? Stop it. Don’t go treating me like I have a death wish…” “But you do! Don’t you!? When you sacrifice yourself like that…do you really believe you’ve saved someone!? You’re only trying to protect your own feelings!! You’re sacrificing yourself just to satisfy your own ego!! You don’t even know how much those left behind are hurt…yet you dare say ‘hurting others is too heavy a burden’!? You can afford to say something soft like that…’cos you’re pushing that ‘burden’ onto other people!! The people who care for you…the people who try to protect you…they’re the ones shouldering your burden…so they don’t lose you, because you don’t even try to protect yourself.” “Stop. Enough…let me go—” “I’m not finished yet!! Listen…you’re not going to be able to protect anybody like this. If you treat your own life so lightly…you don’t deserve to protect anybody else’s life!!” “Shut up.” “You’ve given up on yourself. You go around pretending you’re some tragic hero.” “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” “Are you going to keep living your life…hurting yourself and the people around you!!?” “SHUT UP!!! You don’t know anything…! Yet you suddenly barge in…and say whatever you want…what do you know about me…!? Yeah, fine! I’m stupid! I’m lower than dirt!! I’m a powerless fool who tries to help people to satisfy my own ego!! So…what’s so bad about that!? I was denied. I wasn’t wanted. So the least I can do…is not inconvenience anybody…so the only one who gets hurt is me…!” I’ll accept…all my sufferings and sorrows. There’s nothing absolute in this world…so I’ll be fine…if I believe that’s the way things are. Even if…everyone abandons me in the future…I’ll be fine. I’m sure I won’t be hurt then— “No one will be hurt, even if I die.” “That’s just your ego.” “I don’t believe…I deserve the same rights as everyone else…

Do you like this series?” “Eh…yeah. I love it…” “Do you? So what are your feelings on the holy knight’s valet?” “You mean Edgar? Eh…well, I totally love him?!? ‘To put others before oneself.’ He’s a fine man who’s not afraid of getting hurt while protecting others! Gosh, I mean I completely understand why the readers would love him, he’s my favo—” “Tch…!” “Tch…!?” “…Ohh, I see. Hate to tell you…but I…utterly despise that piece of shit known as Edgar…!! He talks so self righteously, it pisses me off.” “Eh…” “Self-sacrifice makes me wanna puke.” “No way…!” “Why the hell’s a guy like him so popular? I mean, it’s obnoxious that even in the story, the other characters love him so blindly!” “Hey…how could you!? After I told you I liked him..!” “This is how I feel, so I can’t help it. Most of all, I can’t stomach his final moments. He laid down his life to protect his master…and went and died alone while praying for the happiness of those dear to him…just what part of a guy like that’s so great-!!?” “EH!? Edgar…dies…” “? He did…right? Around the middle of volume sixteen, I think it was…” “Uwaaaaaaah!! That is such a spoiler—!!” “Huuh!? Not my problem!! Any real fan would have read it already! Hey don’t get all up in my face!!” “Shut you’re trap! I got ten years o’catching up ta do, darnit! Ahhhh, all the motivation I had to read it is gone! Gonnne just like that—! Anyway the point is…protecting his master to the death is just wonderful. It’s just like Edgar!” “Hah!? All that amounts to is satisfying his own ego, you idiot!!” “This guy..” “This jerk…” “Really pisses me off…!!” “Ahh, you two there. Would you mind keeping it down a little?” “Leo!” “Josephine is in trouble right now. Nnn…I never would have thought Jackie would be the culprit. What a surprise. Besides, I’d say Elliot was at fault just now.” “Huuuh!? What did I do—” “You asked someone for his own opinion…but tried to force your opinions on him when you didn’t like what you heard.

You mean our most important ideas about life are ones we are not even aware of, and we’ve been carrying them around since childhood? Yes, and their impact can be very powerful. Often when we think we’re responding to actual people and events, we’re merely assigning them parts in the inner novel we’ve been writing all our lives. For example, if someone has felt deserted as a child by an important adult, and this becomes a key experience in his way of seeing the world, there are several ways he can continue to have that experience. One way is to seek out the kind of people who are likely to desert him as an adult—and we are all very clever about that. Another is to drive people away by his own behavior. Or he can imagine he is deserted by people who really haven’t mistreated him at all. Whatever way he chooses, he confirms his theory about what to expect from others, and this is very gratifying. Come on! That certainly doesn’t sound like any way to have fun. You’d be surprised. Being right is one of the most satisfying experiences in the world. Or let’s say, rather, that being wrong is one of the most unsettling experiences that can happen to anyone. It’s an awful blow to the ego to feel you’ve made a mistake. That’s why people don’t want to change. It would mean admitting they were wrong. A patient once burst out at me indignantly, “But that would mean I wasted the first forty years of my life!” Some people would rather go on making the same mistake for another forty years than admit it and cut their losses. People are very stubborn. Sometimes they secretly believe that if they keep on long enough with their misconceived behavior, they’ll make it right. That reality will give in to their views, rather than vice versa. They’re still trying to get their parents to give in. They haven’t given up their anger over what they didn’t get when they were five years old.

the point of being a manager is not to satisfy your own ego; it’s to improve the outcomes of your team.

At this point I reveal myself in my true colors, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves. I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings by satisfying our own egos. And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.

Narcissistic Disorder The basic premise of this personality disorder is an inflated sense of self worth. This trait is often emphasized by a need to be appreciated and admired although someone with this disorder usually is unable to have any empathy for others; no matter what their situation. People with this disorder will often be fond of overly grand gestures and will assume they are the most important part of anyone’s life; even if you met them just five minutes ago. There are very few scenarios where this inflated sense of self worth is appropriate in modern society. Surprisingly, under this façade there is usually a very fragile self esteem which needs the consistent bolstering of ego that their behavior attracts. People with this disorder will often appear to be snobbish, disdainful or simply patronizing and condescending. They are likely to give out opinions on the failings of others at the drop of a hat without acknowledging their own shortcomings. The belief that they should be the most important person in any room can lead to issues when dealing with relationships at home or at work; this will be particularly noticeable if someone else is praised and you are not. In situations such as these, it is common for someone with this disorder to react angrily or impatiently; making it very difficult to build a long term relationship. The Symptoms Again, in order for someone to be diagnosed with this condition they will need to display at least five of the following symptoms and to have had these issues for at least one year. •   A sufferer has a hugely inflated opinion of their own self worth. They will usually inflate their achievements and skills to ensure they are the best in the room. They are unlikely to be able to substantiate any of these claims. •   They often indulge in a fantasy world where they have unlimited success, power, money and love. This indulgence can occur at any time. •   They will have a belief that they are very special and that there are only a few other people in the world which are on the same level as them. This belief means they will often try to associate with these people and no one else; as these are the only people who will understand them. •   The belief that they are special necessitates them to expect and demand your praise and adulation at all times of the day. They expect to be admired simply for being who they are. This belief extends to expecting others to provide them with favorable treatment and to know their expectations without being told them. •   This feeling of their own self worth will cause many people with this disorder to take advantage of others in order to achieve their own goal. They are unlikely to see this as exploitation; instead, it is just others doing what they should to satisfy their needs. •   It is usual for someone with this personality disorder to lack empathy towards others, particularly those who they feel are beneath them; which is almost everyone. •   Envy is a common trait in people with this disorder. They are liable to be envious of anyone who has something they do not and they will believe others are envious of them; because of their importance. •   People who suffer from this illness will often come across as arrogant, haughty or even rude. This disorder occurs in more men than women and current estimates suggest that the disorder is present in approximately six percent of the population. Symptoms associated with this disorder will always be present, even when a child; but the constantly evolving personality is likely to mask this and it is not usually possible to diagnose the condition until the late teens or early twenties.

Our egos are such that we’ll “stand up to city hall,” but not stand up to the marital relationship we’re in that doesn’t satisfy our needs or make us feel proud of ourselves. Many people have such low self-esteem that they’ll labor to attain extremely high-profile positions and manipulate their relationships just to have others think well of them. But what has really been achieved?