We first need to understand what our ego is, that it is our innate desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature. Since it is given to us by nature, we should not eliminate it, but we should rather invert it so that instead of destroying our relations by each of us trying to step on each other, we instead learn how to enjoy by serving each other.
Our ego naturally makes us wish to suppress others, to position them in ways that we derive self-benefit from them and that we control them. We can thus also do the opposite—to use this lever in order to serve and fulfill them.
Nature gives us a key example on how we can enjoy by serving others: a mother toward her children. A mother is willing to work around the clock to serve her children in order to see them grow up happily. However, if we share no familial relations, then we have no such relationships with each other. We are not connected to others in such ways, so other people detach from our cost-benefit calculation.
We thus need to bring ourselves to a state where we feel that humanity is our family. We then have to relate to everyone similarly to how we relate to our families. In such a way, we will gradually be able to come closer to understanding why nature created an ego in us and how we should work on ourselves in order to invert it from a negative into a positive form.
It might seem far fetched because most people cannot even deal with the weight of their own problems in their personal and family lives, so how are we expected to deal with the problems of the whole world? Yet the moment we start relating to humanity as to one family, we will suddenly feel ourselves gain a new strength, which will fill us with understanding and the sensation of how to conduct ourselves in ways where we will get along with each other optimally. It is as if our intellect and emotion will then suddenly work in ways that are mistake free.
Such an inversion in consciousness takes place because we invert the force that divides “mine” from “others,” and then everyone and everything appears as belonging to oneself, as a single system. Moreover, we gain a clear perception and sensation of the higher force of nature that drives the system, a form of love, bestowal and connection, and balance ourselves with the trajectory of that very force.
Based on the video “Should One Try to Strengthen or Eliminate One’s Ego?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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