The Ancient Truth About Ego That Changed My Life (Vedanta, gita Wisdom)

The Ancient Truth About Ego That Changed My Life (Vedanta, gita Wisdom)

Author Name:Atharva Is Living...

Youtube Channel Url:https://www.youtube.com/@AtharvaIsLiving

Youtube Video URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MPeOUMMTLo



Transcript:
(00:00) Ego, simple three-letter word, but make [music] no mistakes. It is the single most destructive and most powerful force in human history. If you look at the greatest [music] achievements in human history, you will find the ego driving them. The obsession [music] to build empires, to conquer poverty, to silence the doubters, and [music] to become the most successful person in your bloodline.
(00:27) That is the raw energy of ego. [music] But there is a dark side. A massive catch. If you don't master this mechanism, it turns inward, [music] and that exact force will quickly destroy your mental health, wraps you in a loop of overthinking, [music] destroy your closest relationships, and it will keep you running on a treadmill of achievements, where you never feel enough.
(00:50) It has the power to turn your mind into [music] absolute hell. To master life, you don't have to destroy this force, but you must completely decode [music] it. You have to understand exactly what it is, where it sits, and how to strip away its power, so it stops [music] controlling you.
(01:11) In this video, you will exactly see how ego turns everyday life of 99% of people into hell, and how awakening into awareness gently dissolve that suffering, helping you ascend into [music] heaven. So let's start at the very beginning. Ancient scriptures describes one thing before everything. They call it the Brahman, the ultimate base reality of everything.
(01:36) Brahman is infinite, pure cosmic consciousness. When the Brahman manifest itself [music] into infinite things, one of it is a human body. The moment Brahman [music] takes a body, it is called Atman. Atman is the silent witness inside you, the one watching your [music] thoughts, watching your feelings, watching your body do things.
(02:01) And here is Advaita Vedanta's core claim. Your personal consciousness is same as the universal [music] consciousness. The teaching "Aham Brahmasmi" means I am the Brahman. For example, imagine infinite space, just one continuous space [music] with no end. Now, put a clay pot in it. Suddenly, there is a pot space, space that [music] feels separate trapped inside clay walls.
(02:29) That pot creates the illusion that the space [music] inside it is different from the space outside it. Then, break the [music] pot and what's left? Just one space, undivided. There was never really two spaces. That is the ego. The ego or "Ahamkara" falsely identifying [music] the pure awareness with the physical body.
(02:51) So, let's trace it where it comes from. The Atman sits inside the body. Inside the body, there is a brain, a physical organ, and brain creates the mind, [music] which is metaphysical. And mind is divided into further parts, like your intellect or scriptures call it the Buddhi. Then, there is ego, and psychologist further divide mind into conscious and subconscious mind.
(03:15) But they are not part of this video. In scriptures, ego is [music] called "Ahamkara". "Aham" means "I", and "Kara" means "I-ness" or "I maker". And Vedanta calls it a illusory boundary created by Maya, the cosmic illusion of energy and matter. Ego, in this sense, is an false idea born from ignorance or Avidya about who you really are.
(03:42) The ego binds Atman, the infinite spirit to the mind and body, finite matter. So, how does the ego function in day-to-day life? Its one job is to say I am {dot} {dot} {dot}. It means I am a man, I am a doctor, I am this body, I am what I think because it has no light of its own. It just borrow the consciousness and start labeling things like I see, I hear, I think, I am this.
(04:10) And psychologically, ego is who you think you are, your identity, your story that you tell about yourself. It's your survival program. When someone is in ignorance of who they really are and start identifying with their ego, they become fearful. They start to operate from lack. They constantly live in their past or the future anxieties.
(04:30) They can never become present. And because the ego is based in survival mechanism, it constantly scan for threats even when there is none. Now, ego is not all bad. You can create a healthy ego, but that's not the scope of this video. If we want to understand ego neuroscientifically, there is a brain part called default mode network, which functions closely with the ego.
(04:56) Its entire job is to create a continuous sense of self. This body is me. I'm the same person yesterday. I go to this school. This is my father. I am a doctor or engineer. This matters because it is crucial for our survival. If we didn't have this part, daily we would like, "Who am I? Where am I? What is this? Why am living here?" The continuous sense of self is created by ego or this default mode network.
(05:24) But this survival tool can end up creating hell in people's lives. If we understood how ego affects every part of our life, we will be able to understand how to eliminate unnecessary suffering from almost all part of our lives. So, let's take mental health first. Imagine two people. One wakes up thinking, "I'm better than everyone around me.
(05:48) " The other wakes up and think I am worse than everybody else. One looks confident, the other looks depressed. But here is the fascinating thing, both are trapped by the same thing, the ego, because both are living inside a story. One story says that I am superior, the other says that I am inferior. Both are just stories, not facts.
(06:11) Neither has anything to do with reality. The ego doesn't care whether the story is positive or negative. It just wants you to believe it. When the person who thinks he is superior will do something badly or meet someone better than him, his ego will be destroyed. And for the person who is with the negative ego, he will have to let go of that ego if he wants to do anything in his life.
(06:34) Ego also cause depression, because it start to identify with the thoughts. When your default mode network, which is closer to ego, is overactive, you overthink. You start to tell yourself sad stories. You start to repeat the painful past, and that pattern strongly overlaps with depression. Psychologist call it the egoic thinking, being trapped in your own narrative.
(07:00) Ego also makes your present unbearable. It has a favorite sentence, "I will be happy when I will be happy when I will get that job. I will be happy when I will get that girlfriend." It projects happiness into the future on an object or a person, and it makes happiness unachievable because it is always in the future, never in the present moment.
(07:22) And as ego only creates its existence through comparison, it creates timelines. Imagine waking up and before even your feet touch the floor, your brain says, "You are behind. You are late. Others are ahead of you." Nobody insulted you. Nothing bad happened. Yet somehow today already feels heavy. Where did that suffering came from? Your ego is simply seeking its existence only in comparison to other people's lives.
(07:51) You literally cannot feel behind unless you compare your life with somebody else's. I bet ego also played part in your relationship. Imagine your partner normally replies in 1 or 2 minutes, but today they are replying after 30 minutes. You check WhatsApp, still on that gray tick. Now, the scared ego start to direct a movie.
(08:13) Maybe they are losing interest. Maybe they are cheating. Don't trust them. Control them, or this relationship will fail. Don't let them leave, or you will never be okay. But funny thing is, they are just taking a shower. The ego imagine things out of fear that never actually happened. It dragged your last heartbreak into your current relationship because it's so scared.
(08:35) It tells you things like, "If this relationship failed, that means you are never lovable." That's how ego takes things personally and connect events with yourself. Ego is afraid of repeating the past, and that's why also tries to desperately control the future. It can't just let things happen, so it does the only thing that it can do, over control, over attachments to a person or things.
(09:03) In reality, ego doesn't really care about that person or that relationship. It only care about its safety. "I should preserve my image. I am always right, and you are always wrong. I win, you lose. I am the better person." Now, also a important section, how ego affects your success. Whenever you try to do something, before even starting, the ego already predicts the future.
(09:29) "I will fail, or I am not capable. Nothing is going to work." And the big one, "If I don't succeed, my life is meaningless." Notice, you haven't even started yet. The suffering started before even taking any action. It created that fear because it wants to be safe. It attaches the outcomes with your worth.
(09:50) It doesn't take failure as a event. It take failure as evidence of your worth. The ego generates separate meaning about that failure. It does not just stay an event like I experienced a failure. It becomes I am a failure. One is an information, the other becomes your identity. And that's why many people never really start because they are protecting their ego.
(10:12) If you never try, you never really find out and you stay protected. I have literally got two detailed videos on exactly this topic. You can find them on my channel. The ego desperately want to control the outcome because it wants to take credit of the results. It wants to show people that I did this, but that's the illusion Krishna explains in chapter 3 verse 27.
(10:37) All actions are performed by the three modes of material nature, but the person who is deluded by false ego thinks, "I am the doer." Because, did you ever had absolute control over any outcome? Can you ever repeat exact same outcome? I don't think anyone can. You learned how to think by watching other people.
(10:59) You gained this knowledge by reading lot of books. You copied thoughts or actions of already achieved people. Is there anything that was really yours? Can you really take credit of anything? That's why this egoic thinking creates fear about the outcomes. But when you let go of the sense of I did this and just do the thing from the knowledge you have, the fear disappears.
(11:24) One more trait of the ego is that it can never enjoy success because it always measure success in comparison to others. Today I feel successful because I am ahead of someone else, but tomorrow someone else is ahead of me. So, by comparing before success, you are miserable, and after succeeding, you are again miserable. And when this type of ego identity takes over you, people become willing to destroy others.
(11:52) In Bhagavad Gita, Krishna explains that inflated ego given over to ahumkara leads to seeking power, which leads to pride, leads to desire of keeping it, and that desire creates anger, and that anger creates violence, and those are the exact same ingredients behind all the worst decisions humans have ever made against each other or even on all other species.
(12:18) The ego also affects your social life. It has a favorite equation. If people approve me, then I have value. If I get that job, then only my parents love me, and then only my life has value. So, any failure or criticism doesn't just hurt, it becomes proof that you are not enough. That's why failing or saying I was wrong feels almost painful to a egoic person, because ego believes that if I make a mistake, I am a bad person.
(12:49) So, instead, it argues, defends, or blames others, anything except saying that, "Yes, you are right. Maybe I am wrong." Notice how it takes things personally. It is always trying to be safe because it believes that external things will provide its safety, safety from uncertainty, but that safety and certainty never arrives.
(13:10) Every time you reach somewhere, it pushes the finish line further. That's why Krishna calls identification with the ego the beginning of suffering. Imagine how much unnecessary suffering will be eliminated if we just become aware of our ego. So, how do you take the power away from something that's been running your whole life? How do you ascend from egoic hell to the higher self heaven? It's actually simple.
(13:37) You should never fight with your ego. You should never try to convince it anything. You just observe it. Ancient texts mention something very simple, yet extraordinary. They said, "Your suffering is not created by the world. It is created by the identification with the ego." And the moment you stop identifying with it, something incredible happen.
(14:01) The same life becomes peaceful. The same world feels like heaven. Because every time you identify with your ego instead of witnessing it, you become fearful. You start to scan for threats that aren't there. You start to replay the past that is already happened and dreading a future that never even happened. Now, flip it. The moment you observe your ego instead of becoming it, the scary past stops bleeding into your present.
(14:29) The comparisons that you currently make start to lose their meaning. The lack that you have been taught disappears. And what's left is peace, presence, and trust. Trust in life itself. Let's go back to the scriptures to understand this correctly. Advaita Vedanta's greatest teacher, Adi Shankara Acharya, taught the Upanishadic practice of neti neti.
(14:56) Neti neti means not this, not that. The process of negating everything that is not you. Have you ever looked at an old photograph and thought, "That doesn't even feel like me anymore." That's strange, isn't it? Because your body changed cell by cell, decade by decade. Your personality changed. Your beliefs changed. Even your mind and thoughts changed.
(15:18) And yet somehow, the you that experienced all of this is still you. It is still constant. The Upanishad explained this in one line, you are the seer, never the seen. Which means whatever you can observe is not you, which includes your identity, your ego. Because ego is also a mental construct that you can observe in your mind.
(15:43) But question is, who is doing the observing? And the answer remains awareness. Awareness is not an object that you can observe. Awareness is the subject that's doing the observing. The pure awareness, the Brahman we talked about in the start. So, the truth is you're already whole, already complete, already enough. But then when you come into human body, body that grows and die.
(16:09) And while growing, someone like your parent or the world teaches you that you are not enough. You can't be happy just yet. The wholeness has a price. You need money, status to be happy. You need praise from others. You need to show the proof of your worth. And because children are like clean slates, they believe it. You believe it. And you start to run in your life for no reason.
(16:33) That is the exact moment the program of lack is installed in you. I plus achievement equal to enough. Whose equation was that really? Why are you still carrying that programming? Because look at the millionaires, even after having so much money, do they really stop and say, "Okay, now I am enough." No, because enough was never a number.
(16:53) If it was a number, someone would have reached it by now. So, what is really enoughness or we should call it abundance. Do we really understand abundance? Because most people think that abundance means having enough money, having enough things. But like I mentioned, there are unhappy millionaires thinking, "Only when I will able to afford three more cars, I will feel enough.
(17:19) " That's not what abundance is. That's actually we call it lack, and that lack doesn't go away by acquiring more things. Abundance that we are talking here is the felt sense of being enough, feeling enough, feeling content and enough wherever you are. And that is exact opposite of ego. Abundance from the inside feels like I am enough.
(17:42) I trust myself, and I don't need any outside object to feel whole. And just to be clear, I'm not saying don't earn money, don't build that empire, but build it because you want it, not because somebody told you that it will make you whole. Do it for the love of the game, not for the game of love. What I mean is stop performing for the wholeness that you are already born with, because that is the paradox of being human.
(18:09) We are underneath everything, the highest level of consciousness, joy, love, and pure awareness. But we get programmed into lower state, and the lower state is called our ego, the programmed concept that you live by. And before I go any further, I want to clarify awareness does not erase your childhood trauma. It still needs therapy and inner work.
(18:31) Awareness just reveal that programming, and the healing itself is whole another journey. The Indian scriptures actually talked about this, but if I mention that in this video, the video will be 3 hours long. So, let's move on. Raising up into the higher consciousness needs one thing, stillness and witnessing.
(18:51) Witnessing your ego and your programming gives you space to change it. And when you meditate and go into the state of dhyan, you leave behind your mind and your body, and that's when you are simply pure awareness, observing, aware of everything. And that also create distance between you and the egoic narrative that you live by.
(19:13) And even science back this up. When you meditate, your default mode network, which is hyperactive in depression, starts to dim down. The obsessive overthinking about your life and yourself starts to reduce. You start to move from identification to observation and to presence. But when I say observe your ego, what does that really mean? What are we really observing? Let me make it very simple.
(19:38) Observing ego means observing these very specific patterns. Number one, comparison. Measuring yourself or your life against others. Defining your happiness based on how much you are ahead or behind someone instead of creating your own definition of happiness. Pattern number two, self narratives.
(20:00) The mental idea of who you are. The stories that you keep telling yourself about yourself. So, be aware when you start to create a concept about yourself. Example would be, I am a failure because I failed. I don't deserve love because my last relationship failed. I'm useless because I make mistakes. Or even I am the greatest because I win this time.
(20:21) Pattern number three, taking things personally. Looking at events as attack on you, which means when you create meanings about events or other people's behavior and what that say about me, that is ego. Fourth pattern is identity attachments. Attaching to any roles or labels.
(20:44) Labels like I am really smart or I am really dumb. I am really shy or I am an introvert. These are just ego labels. Pattern number five, psychological self-protection. Defending your ego against imagined threats. For example, if I take action and fail, it will expose me as I'm not smart. Or if I don't date, I will never fail. This is ego protecting itself, keeping your life small.
(21:11) Ego pattern number six, I think, repeating past and fearing future. Ego can't survive without control, so it constantly brings past into present and try to control the future. But more you control, the more anxious you feel. And lastly, identifying with the observables, mistaking your body or possessions or achievements or even thoughts as you.
(21:36) Don't just take my word. Even Krishna says this in Gita, chapter 18, verse 58. "Fix your mind on me. By my grace, you shall overcome every obstacle. But if, out of false ego, you do not listen, you will perish." Meaning, instead of relying on your pride or ego, you should follow the path provided by your higher self, your inner wisdom.
(22:01) Because when you let go of your pride and do the right thing, the storms in your life becomes much easier to handle. Ego only seeks fulfillment through outside objects, success, possessions, praise, or validation. Yet, it never feels satisfied. But the wise person is fulfilled in the self. "When a person completely abandons all desires arising in the mind and it is satisfied in the self alone, then he is said to be the sthita-prajna.
(22:30) " So, here is the full picture of someone who is operating from their higher self. They are calm and content wherever they are in their life because they have removed the programming that make themselves unhappy. They are open to all experiences in life without getting attached to a certain reality. They have sense of inner knowing, a trust in life, and that is why they act from purpose and embody right action.
(22:56) And because they feel fulfilled in themselves, they don't chase validation. They never compare their lives. They accept their unique path. They feel abundant, not desperate. So, they never really over attached to any goal or any person. They carry a inner stability that doesn't need any outside proof. So, the literal difference between being aware of your ego and being your ego is heaven and hell.
(23:24) And even better, here is my favorite part. When you shift into your awareness instead of your egoic thinking, you automatically feel abundant, less needy, less desperate. And that's exactly how things or people start to get attracted towards you. Manifestation. But keep in mind, this is not one-time process. You have to practice awareness consistently.
(23:46) Many times you will raise your consciousness and feel the difference. And many times, maybe something will happen, a emotional event, and it will pull you back into the ego. That's just part of the process. Real obstacle is not the ego. It is other people. Because when you raise your consciousness, you see how other people are creating their mental suffering.
(24:09) And the worst thing is, those people will pull you down to their level. They will project their programming onto you. I have experienced this. I have met people and they ask me, "Why aren't you suffering? How are you so okay and not chasing success or material things?" I said, "I want them." But in my mind, I said, "I am not suffering because I'm not feeding my ego. I'm staying above it.
(24:32) " So, I will end this by saying, "Observing and dissolving your ego is not about becoming nobody or wanting nothing. It's about becoming no particular thing, so you can become anything." >> [music]