'ME' - OUR BIGGEST ENEMY?
We often say 'me', don't we? 'Me' refers to the same 'I' when it is used in context with others. We don't say, 'Me is going to the supermarket.' There, the ego says, 'I am going.' But when we talk to a friend, we say, 'Are you coming with me to the supermarket?' Therefore, what is this me? It is nothing but the 'I'. All-day long, we keep on saying, 'Don't disturb me. Don't talk to me. Give me that book. Get me a burger.' When 'I' refers to itself when communicating with others, it becomes the 'me'.
But the spiritual 'ME' has far more significance. Of course, it is the ego, but it is a far more strengthened ego. It is the Mind + Ego that is ME. Can the mind and the ego go to the supermarket without the body? Ridiculous! It is just like asking the software of a computer or a mobile to work without the hardware. The ME needs the body to manifest as the ego. Once the ME is alive in a body, it drives a person to act, just like an operating system in a computer, boots the device to come alive with its motherboard, memory, keyboard, and screen. The ME also drives the device known as the human being. It creates thoughts that become feelings and leads to actions. It drives us to walk, to talk, and to do whatever we do. If the ME is the software of our life, then how does it become our biggest enemy? For this, we need to investigate further. When the ego grabs hold of its best friend, the Mind, together the ME comes alive. By itself, the ego cannot do anything. But once it joins the mind, it starts producing thoughts.
What is the mind? The mind is a thought factory. It keeps on producing thoughts just like a popcorn machine pops corn. It can produce one thought every second. This sometimes becomes a whopping 50,000 thoughts a day! 'It is my mind!' Remember? What does this mean? It is the ego that confirms that the mind belongs to the ego. Is this true? Of course! Your mind is your mind. It cannot produce thoughts for me. It's quite clear. Therefore, the ME is my mind and my ego. When 'I' get busy with my mind, that's when the trouble starts.
I start saying, 'This is my hand; this is my nose' and up to here it is fine. But when I start saying, 'This is my car, my bank account, my pizza,' then the ME is starting its journey as the ego. All this looks very natural. Then why is the ME a problem? The mind and the ego together hide the truth from us. The ME even hides the fact of who we truly are. It stops us from realizing our purpose on earth. It bombards us with thoughts, more negative than positive ones, and creates fear, worry, stress, and anxiety. Thus, though we think these are our most important assets – the Mind and Ego, the ME is our biggest enemy.
'Don't teach me what I am and who I am,' the ME declares. This is enough to stop us from our quest to realize the truth. The truth is something else. But we are made to believe, right from the time we are children that this is 'ME'. That is why, when we see a group photograph, we gleefully scream, 'That's me!' We identify ourselves with the body which we are not. If the picture is of us driving in our favourite car, don't we point at the photograph and say, 'That is me'? We say, 'It is my car. It belongs to me.' What makes us discriminate and declare that the one in the photograph is 'me' and the vehicle 'I' was driving was not me, it was my car?
This faculty of discrimination is our Intellect. Most of us do not realize that it is not the mind. The mind stops us from such a realization because like a dictator, it wants to dominate our thoughts and lead us to actions without being filtered by the intellect. That is why we call the mind our enemy. It is a hidden enemy and we have no clue how it is causing us to be miserable throughout life.
All through life, the ego dominates our existence and makes us believe that there is nothing more important than 'I'. Who causes this to happen? It is ME – the Mind and the Ego. The mind constantly thinks the 'I' thoughts and continues to convince us that everything is 'mine'. It inflates the ego to a level of ignorance that very few of us realize.
Most of us are quite clear about our gross physical body. It is different from our mind and our ego. We understand very clearly that these are our eyes – we see with them. Our nose is pointed and has two nostrils. We have two ears, just as we have teeth in our mouth. We have hands to grasp and feet to walk. We learn that we have a heart that pumps blood and a brain that has billions of neurons spread across every part of the body. This is our gross physical body, and it is a marvel beyond human comprehension. We can physically touch and feel our body and some of our organs can be seen through an X-ray or an MRI.
However, not many of us are aware of our subtle body. It is the software that drives the body to act and to live. We can't see this subtle body, but we know it exists. Its 4 facets are MIME – Mind, Intellect, Memory and Ego. Though the mind cannot be seen or touched, we seem to know it exists.
This is because it is constantly producing thoughts. So also, we have an intellect, that discriminates right from wrong. It filters thoughts and makes us believe in the truth, just as it rejects myth. A well-developed intellect discriminates what is good from bad and helps us live a moral life.
Apart from the mind and the intellect, we have a memory which is another domain of the subtle body. It is like an audio and video recorder that is recording everything that is happening in our life. Its 2 major functions are to remember and to recall. Sometimes, we may remember something, but we can't recall it. That is because of our weak memory.
The last facet of the subtle body is the ego, the 'I' that says, 'It is me.' Together with the mind, intellect, and memory, the ego is a subtle aspect of our existence. Putting them all together as MIME – it is considered the operating system of a human body. While the intellect and the memory are crucial for our wellbeing and happiness, the Mind and Ego, ME, bombards the memory and intellect and dominates our subtle existence. Because of this domination of ME, we are unable to use our intellect and our emotional reactions make us suffer, instead of our intellectual response. Those whose intellect is activated and developed, become aware of their enemy – ME and stop it from destroying their life.
Why is ME our biggest enemy? Because throughout life, it makes us live with a 'mistaken identity'. It lets the ego dominate and repeatedly say, 'I,' 'me' and 'mine' when in reality, these are an illusion. For the first time, somebody who reads, 'I am not I,' will wonder what it actually means. The mind will immediately produce a thought that this is incorrect. But if the intellect is active, it will question and investigate everything. Its function is to discriminate after thorough investigation. The goal of the Intellect is the realization of the truth. Without such a realization, each one of us suffers in this world. We experience the physical pain of the body, misery of the wandering mind, and agony of the ego because we don't realize the truth. This entire suffering is caused by the Mind and Ego, ME. The ME does 2 things – it conceals the truth and projects the myth. We don't even realize that it is our Mind and Ego, ME that is causing all our misery. It is the ME that is our biggest enemy. Because we don't realize the truth, we continue to live in this ignorance, and we think our mind is king. But this is a myth.
Why is it that we human beings do not go in quest to find our life purpose? Are we just born on earth to live and to die? How many of us ask the question, 'Why are we given this human birth? Why did we come to planet earth?' How many of us search for answers of who we truly are? We are so busy eating, drinking, and living, that we don't know the purpose of life. It is because of the ME. The ME wants to survive, and it knows that if we use our Intellect and realize the truth, then the ME will cease to exist. The moment we realize we are not the body that dies, we are not even the Mind and Ego – ME that is born again and again, then it is the end of the story, both for the Mind and the Ego. Thus, the ME fights very hard to keep us ignorant. The ME constantly projects the illusion, just like we see the image on a movie screen. The image hides the screen and projects the movie. Similarly, the ME hides our reality and projects an illusion. It is only when we overcome this ignorance by transcending the ME, using the sharp weapon of the intellect, that we can destroy our biggest enemy, ME from making us suffer by performing actions, creating Karma and being born again and again.