Ego Identification Quotes

He who thinks he is the doer is also the sufferer.

Modern culture is in so much trouble, where people don't have a deep inner life, or any deep experience of their true self in God, who they were before anyone said anything about them, before they received their first medal or ego identification. That's why suffering is so important, because suffering is when those little rewards are taken away from you.

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

Yet while nature is in constant flux, we always go against the grain and try to freeze our ideas and experiences and make them absolute. It is egotism that makes us identify with one opinion rather than another, become quarrelsome and unkind, say *this* could not mean *that*, and think we have a duty to change others to suit ourselves.

Genuine mental health would involve a balanced interplay of both modes of experience, a way of life in which one's identification with the ego is playful and tentative rather than absolute and mandatory, while the concern with material possessions is pragmatic rather than obsessive.

When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice - the thinker - but the one who is aware of it.

The excitement that you were feeling about a special, unique path for yourself as a woman is all part of your identification with and attachment to being female. And that's ultimately all ego.

Ironically, it is when we identify with our spirits rather than our bodies that we are most powerful on the material plane. Our overidentification with the world does not give us power within the world so much as it diminishes our power here. It makes us frightened and nervous and full of anxiety.

The ego is just waiting to identify with anything. Whether it's your misery or being a great meditator, it seeks some identification.

All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you.

Whenever there is negativity in you, if you can be aware in that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose, you are becoming aware of the ego directly. The moment this happens your identity has shifted from ego to awareness. This means the ego is shrinking and awareness is growing.