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What Power Does the Ego Have?

Friday, 29 January 2010 19:12 Written by Nirmala

In response to yesterday's post, Half the Truth, I received a follow-up question:

Thanks for your answer. It is an honor that you put this conversation on your blog, but, please don't put my name and my e-mail eddress on there.

Now, you said "The ego wants to create what it wants regardless of what Being wants".

But my questions are: Does the ego have the power to create what it wants to be, have and do ? Does the ego have the power to block the natual flowing of life through me ? Or can the ego only create psychological suffering or happiness, but it does not have the power to block the flow of life or to create what it wants ?

Here is my response:

As a rule, I will not include anyone's name or email on here without their permission.

And as for your follow up questions, it is not a matter of yes or no. It is more a matter of degree. The ego has a small degree of power to create what it wants, and at times to block the flow of life temporarily. However in a sense it does have a lot of power to cause you to suffer, although ultimately suffering itself is just a thought or belief. There is no actual thing called suffering. It only exists as a thought.

For example, there is probably some furniture in the room where you are right now. You can think about the furniture but it also has a bigger reality as physical objects. Compare that to an imaginary baby elephant in the room where you are right now. You can think about it and even imagine it in great detail, but it is still not really there.

So suffering is all imagined like the baby elephant. That is why the ego has so much power to cause us to suffer.....because it does not take much power to imagine something. It is the gap between our idea and the reality that causes all of our suffering. You can read more about this here.