Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.
Not to identify oneself with something, or to associate things with the 'me,' and to see that the idea that there is a 'me,' which is distinct from things, is a delusion.
...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.
There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.
The ego is terrified of the truth. And the truth is that the ego doesn't exist.
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
Trying to catch hold of yourself is a fool's errand. There is no you, only a series of former yous, created in one instant, deleted in the next.
Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work.
Man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a will-of-the-wisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland.
Out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.
