How Do We Get Rid of the Ego?

With so many clashing egos today, a young lady asked Perceiving Reality, how do human beings get rid of the ego?

VIDEO: How Do We Get Rid Of The Ego? !!! (05:03)

Our era is one where people are questioning and looking into the ego more and more. How do we get rid of the ego? How should we deal with the ego? We see how people's clashing ego's cause so much suffering these days, whether on personal, social or global scales, so we start looking inside ourselves to do something about this phenomena we don't quite understand - the ego.

Perceiving Reality begins by answering that we first have to define what the ego is. According to Kabbalah, the ego is defined as the "will to receive pleasure." The ego is defined in Kabbalah as everything that constitutes creation, that "ego" or the "will to receive" is the very substance of creation, and it doesn't have to be gotten rid of or changed - nor can it be.

It's not that having a will to receive pleasure causes clashes among us. It's that the intention for which we use this desire is aimed at pleasing ourselves. Moreover, this intention to please ourselves is rooted in our inborn nature, and converting this intention into its opposite - i.e. a will to receive to please another - can only be done by acquiring a new nature, not given to us at birth.

This is the work in Kabbalah: converting the egoistic intention to receive pleasure for ourselves into an altruistic intention to receive pleasure through giving to others. This isn't the usual notion of giving as we perceive it through our five senses in this world - like giving a present to someone or just being kind. It involves acquiring a new sense, a new intention, that is in a constant state of bestowal like Nature itself.

The video uses an example from Baal HaSulam's Pticha (Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah) of the guest and the host to explain this.