Ego and the Seven

For the next seven posts, I will be writing about the seven deadly sins of human nature. If you have watched the movie "Seven" starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, you should be quite familiar with these mortal sins that all human beings are born with - Pride, Wrath, Lust, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Envy. Today's post focuses on Ego, the core of human consciousness and mother of all the deadly sins.

From a very young age, a physically able child knows how to fight for his own survival. In an environment where food is scarce and there are other creatures vying for the limited food, the toddler intuitively grabs it for his own consumption. Eating is a basic need of survival and it is from this that we can become most aware of the in-born self-centred tendencies of men. The human psyche drives the thirsty and the starved to feed before thinking of anything else. If an individual has not been cultivating his awareness, he will not have anything with which to recognise and combat this intense drive.

Ego operates at the core of our very existence. It generates the desires that we have for things that we deem essentials - food, water, shelter. Ego is also responsible for the birthing of higher level wants (which are often and conveniently relabeled as needs) of sex, pleasure, recognition, power, status and control. The need to satisfy the pulsating hunger that Ego constantly produces is overwhelming from the very moment we are conceived. In the supposedly safe environment of a mother's womb, twins and other multiples compete for the finite amount of nourishment that is available to them. Even at such an early stage in life, the foetus fights for his own survival.

At birth, we wail for the attention of our parents and scream for milk, water and protection. As toddlers, we clamour to be loved and pampered. As school-going children, we vie with our friends and playmates for popularity and friendship. As adolescents, we compete with our peers for recognition and acceptance by the social groups we participate in and from members of the opposite sex. As adults, we fight for our promotions and salary increments in the corporate

world.

We are literally born into self-centredness and selfish behaviour. Left unchecked, the wailing baby grows up into a screaming toddler into a demanding child, into a rebellious teenager, into an unreasonable adult. The awareness that is required for the individual to recognise his human traits and the weaknesses that are woven into these traits is not guaranteed by his genetic heritage and upbringing. While the seed of awareness is present in almost every single human being, it sprouts differently in everyone of these individuals.

For some, the seed sprouts early in childhood and flourishes quickly to integrate into the bedrock of one's conscience. For others, awareness does not come about until adulthood when suffering triggers its bursting from the seed. There are yet others for whom awareness is but a momentary and fleeting sensation on their death-beds.

The ego that is untempered by awareness expands rapidly to fill any available space in one's heart and mind. The ego leads the uncultivated individual into thinking that he is all-important, all-powerful and everything that the universe needs. The bus passenger who elbows his way through the packed bus assigns to his own time the greatest of importance. The driver who overtakes and cuts into other lanes indiscriminately does so because his own journey is the most crucial one on the roads. The manager who refuses to give the rest a chance to speak in the meeting lives with the perception that his views shape the world and the entire universe.

From these simple but ubiquitous examples, we see the burgeoning swell of Ego in the form of the first mortal sin - Pride.