ego

The ego is a neutral entity—it has no preferences of its own. It’s simply a database of memories and associations. Through this database, we inform and shape our entire chemistry. Once that chemistry is activated, we’re no longer making conscious choices; the brain is reacting to stimuli based on past conditioning. In this way, the ego reflects what the chemistry wants. True free will can only begin when we mentally relax—only then do we gain enough awareness to respond instead of react.

I never really questioned what this thing called “ego” actually is—until I started digging. In modern psychology, ego is defined as our conscious sense of self, the part of the mind that mediates between instinct, morality, and reality. But in everyday language, it’s often confused with arrogance or inflated self-importance. 

In the Yoga tradition, ego (ahamkara) is the false identity we form when we mistake the body and mind for the true self—it’s a necessary function, but also the root of separation and anxiety which is experienced as suffering. 

Meanwhile, early Buddhism teaches that the ego doesn’t truly exist at all; what we call “self” is just a fleeting bundle of processes—form, sensation, perception, thought, and consciousness—held together by craving and illusion. Across all three views, one thing becomes clear: the ego is not a solid, fixed entity. It’s a temporary mask we wear, shaped by memory, chemistry, and conditioning. And perhaps the goal—whether through therapy, yoga, or meditation—is to loosen its grip, not to destroy it, but to see through it and return to something deeper, quieter, and far more real.

People often think egoism is a conscious, controlled behavior—but it’s not. The ego is a slave to the subconscious mind until we learn how to free it. And that kind of training takes a long time.

But then something deeper struck me. What if the ego—this annoying self-structure with my name, my face, my story—is only the shallowest layer? What if the ego isn’t just a mental concept tied to identity, but a real-time, full-body phenomenon—linked to every nerve center, every cell, every flicker of sensation in the body? Imagine the ego as something constantly shifting, moment to moment, shaped by every breath, every feeling, every subtle stimulus processed by the brain. The mind, in an instant, scans the entire body and recalibrates: This is who I am now. And that fleeting snapshot collapses into the next, creating the illusion of a continuous self—even though nothing stays the same.

So maybe ego isn’t this fixed “thing” we carry. Maybe it’s just awareness—of all the memories, patterns, beliefs, traumas, habits, cravings, and impressions wired into the system. A living archive made of analog instincts, digital programming, and biological chemistry. Self-esteem, rejection, praise, childhood scripts, heartbreaks, victories—all of it gets compressed into a single interface we call “I.”

In that light, ego becomes less of a villain and more of a puppy—wild, reactive, but trainable. At first, it pees on the rug and barks at shadows. But with time, it learns. Who’s doing the training? Ideally, the higher self—the calm witness, the loving observer. But often, it’s the external world doing the conditioning. Messages from others. Interpretations of pain. The way our nervous system parses chaos and emotion.

And here’s where the big misconception comes in. When people say “ego,” they usually mean the inflated ego—the show-off, the braggart, the person chasing approval, validation, love, redemption. But that’s not the ego. That’s the sympathetic nervous system hijacked by anxiety, flooding the mind with noise and pushing us into automatic, unconscious reactivity.

In that state, we’re not choosing—we’re just running code. Karma in motion. Conditioning on autopilot. The work, then, isn’t to destroy the ego. It’s to reframe it. To see it clearly. To train it like we’d train that puppy—with patience, presence, and compassion.