Chapter 1 Verse 8 - Ego
Ego poisons you to believe: “I am the doer”.
Believe “I am not the doer”. Drink this nectar and be happy . ॥1.8॥
When ego in the form of poisonous snake bite us, the impression of everything is being done by me as doer increases. To erase this impression, rather than eradicating it, we have to understand " who we are? - " Who I am". Unless and until the slightest impression of ego remains - it acts as bite of a poisonous snake.
Ego acts in various levels, like I am Doctor, I am rich. I am poor , I am father , etc. This could be highest level of acting ego. This level can easily be eradicated by simple understanding . But the deepest ego impression of " I am this body and mind" is the most difficult thing to eradicate. In fact we are not going to try also. This deepest impact of me as ego can only be dissolved when we understand " Who I am?" in reality. Even if we understand this thing logically. It still remains in the form of habit. And most of the time we fell safe to go under the shelter of this ego. So this impression of ego not only by logic but also be dissolved by habit.
Now, how I can understand that I am not doer. Whenever we are deeply engrossed in some activity, we even don't have the sense of time and place. That is the situation when the ego completely disappears. But when the activity is over, our ego is quick enough to claim the activity, which in fact is done when it was absent.
In this way we can understand the role of an ego while doing any activity. It is not an ego who completes the activity, but it claims it after finishing it.
Now we will try to understand the activity of ego. Since ego is nothing but a thought in our mind, and since we can think a single thought at a time, during doing activity mostly we think the thought related with the activity. It may happen that, in between, during doing, ego thought may surface up in intervals. But again since mind can think only one thought at a time, it is a activity related thought or an ego thought, active at any particular in time.
From this we can easily understand it is not the ego who is doer, the doer is impersonal, it is wholeness, it is consciousness, which keeps on shifting from one thing to other.
And we might have observed that, it is the time we are happy when we are completely engrossed in the activity / work. This is the reason people tend to be workaholic, and people think that it is the work which is making them happy. But it is not the case . We are happy not due to presence of work related thoughts, but we are happy because of absence of the ego thought.
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