Ego Manifestation

Detail view of the individual self layer — human faces and scenes of joy, grief, ambition, and contemplation

The sense of self forms when pure awareness is filtered through the ego, which identifies with our body, and with time - through memories of the past and projections into the future. Buddha taught that the individual self, or what we might call the ego, is a by-product of the five "skandhas" or aggregates: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Together they give us the illusion of being a separate, individual self. But, he taught, the skandhas are not "you" - they are temporary, conditioned phenomena (produced by a combination of conditions or causes), constantly changing and impermanent. So we identify with the ego and cling to who we think we are, even though this sense of self is never quite the same from one moment to the next.

To be clear, the ego is an essential pillar of our existence - it enables physical safety, social interaction, decision-making, planning, goal-setting, learning, and action. It's essentially our operating system for this life. Even so, science is still working to understand it. Neuroscience points to something called the Default Mode Network (DMN) - a set of interacting brain regions associated with constructing our "narrative self." The DMN becomes more active during self-generated, internally-focused mental activity: mind-wandering, remembering the past, imagining the future, thinking about ourselves, ruminating, daydreaming, etc. It is closely linked to our sense of self and the ongoing mental story of "me", and neuroimaging shows that during states of pure awareness, the DMN quiets down.

As I continue to learn more about the self, I'm beginning to understand that making peace with my ego is a process I need to undertake. When I try to deny its demands or suppress its desires, I escape them only briefly - they return later, often with more emotional charge. Instead, by working with my ego rather than against it, and by keeping a regular mindfulness practice, I hope to move slowly toward more balance, and toward living a little more fully in the present moment.