THE TRICKS OF THE EGO

 
The Ego is activated by the principle of self-perpetuation and has a tendency to live and grow through each and any means which is not closed to it. If the Ego is submitted to curtailment in one direction, it seeks compensating expansion in another direction: and, if it is overpowered by a flood of spiritual notions and actions, it even tends to fasten upon this very force which is originally brought into play for the ousting of the Ego.

If a person attempts to cultivate humility in order to relieve himself of the monstrous weight of the Ego and succeeds in doing so, the Ego can with surprising alacrity get transferred to this attribute of humility itself. It feels itself through attachment to repeated assertions like "I am spiritual," just as, in more primary stages, it achieves the same task by assertions like "I am not interested in spirituality."

Thus arises what we may call a Spiritual Ego or the Ego which feels its separateness through the attainment of things which are considered to be good and highly spiritual. But from the truly spiritual point of view, this type of spiritual Ego is as binding as the primary and crude ego which makes no such pretensions.