About I, Me and Myself

One has read about ‘Ahm’ of Vedanta which means ‘I’ or ‘Self’. When applied to a person’s name, it means aligning oneself with the cosmos or ultimate reality. ‘I’ is, perhaps, the most used word in any language. We love to hear our name all the time. Often, love for self is so deeply ingrained in the psyche that one develops a highly exaggerated view of one’s own self.

A child is given a name almost as soon as she is born. Through constant recall the name gets rooted in her being. While the child reacts to the name cheerily, she gradually gets used to be addressed by the same phonetic rhythm which keeps getting reinforced in the formative years and results in creating a permanent impact on her cerebral and emotional being. A lot goes on later in life that forces the child to grow up with a self-fixated orientation. How does this transition happen? We may look for an empirical and a non-academic explanation.

Children are generally free from the ‘I’ syndrome but some elements might creep in early on in cases where pampering has not been tempered with disciplining. Thus, too much attention and fulfilment of every wish by doting parents might lead to an unhealthy sense of self-importance, and promote the ‘I’ cult. Schooling in an exclusive environment and continued patronage could crystallise these traits. Such children are likely to nurture a high degree of self-importance in their growing up years and carry it on to adolescence and adulthood.

The problem arises when a person takes this trait too seriously and looks upon others as lesser mortals. Such a person becomes self-centred and egotistical. He is attention-seeking and is always looking for an opportunity to upstage others. He is clearly not a team person. Such a person tends to be self-righteous and abrasive. He is sociable only to the extent that his voice commands attention, dominates, and gets preferential hearing.

Individualism is not a failing; it promotes healthy distinctiveness. It is a positive trait that provides sustenance for achieving personal excellence and in charting life on one’s own terms. But individualism should not become a ‘new form of idolatry’, and thus an end in itself. The danger is ‘egoism’ and the obsession with ‘I’. This negativity in growing up years gets hardened with time and retards the growth of a well-rounded personality.

No one likes to be in the company of a person who keeps harping about his laurels. His cognition gets corrugated by thick layers of false pride and self-importance. It leads to the making of a conceited character. Such people are not good listeners. Their attention span is short. Their restlessness to shift over to their own story being overpowering gets exposed during the course of a social conversation. It is a habit-forming attribute that can be fought back only by recognising the shortcoming and working around it consciously.

We need to realise and acknowledge that the world is not devoid of talent and that the simplest of persons also has legends to share – many hugely interesting and worth recounting. Internalising the experiences gotten from others provide good incremental learning progression, affording a healthy opportunity to absorb positive notes for building up a well-rounded personality. Personal enrichment comes from imbibing the best from others, rather than from blowing one’s own trumpet.

A little of my mind .." Aham Brahmasmi - Mai Atmaswarup Hun Isame Ekrupata Hai, Yog Hai, Ahankar Nahi ..

Supreme Consciousness is God - the highest state of awareness - absolute knowledge. Gross matter is intoxicating, knowledge redundates matter. Till then, trapped in a well of ignorance, like a leaping frog, a few leaps forward, to fall back again. The net progress is not owing to fate, but statistical probability of actions backed with higher or lower consciousness. God is not the doer. It is but absolute supreme tranquil consciousness. The knowledge is established only after consummating and not suppressing the material yearnings. It is melodramatic that the King of all the Worlds and its Powers is enthroned only after his material yearnings are satiated and any commotion of otherwise neutral still will is for the ignorant on the various stations on the path of knowledge.

There has been an ongoing inner conflict that cannot really settle this issue. Most achieves have achieved glory, fame, success, largely as a derivative of this ego, which craves for name and fame.

We're it not for the ego, what would propel individuals to strive for greatness and I the process serve mankind? And yet, ego still remains and becomes a scourge in so many people who are self centred egotists whose presence often becomes unbearable and overbearing.

Children are generally free from the ‘I’ syndrome but some elements might creep in early on in cases where pampering has not been tempered with disciplining.

The above sentence is not understood correctly by the parents who are themselves exclusive of the majority of society who cannot afford to send their children to exclusive schools. If the education system is changed to same schools for rich and poor, most of the children will get opportunity of respecting the brightness in others also, which may be coming to school on foot, instead of cars. The society may become closer to the dictates of Almighty, who blesses all humanity to love each other unconditionally.

In spiritual philosophy, if we can understand, WOH, YEH, MAIN (he the supreme, this world, and I the individual). The individual has the last identity, which is false pride, and one can see individual identity in everything in this world.

People wish to talk due to the reason that first of all they cannot sit idle even for few moments. Very difficult, further they want to show that they know better than you. Even if you are not talking, they will come and start to talk of any subject. That ‘I’ is creating lot of problems. One must learn how to remove that ‘I’ and forget the ego too. Like a child. That is why all Gurus are telling that you must be like a child to reach God the almighty.

Ego should not be confused with self-respect and confidence to handle challenging tasks. Now a day it has become a common refrain to brand any one more talented and an achiever as an EGOISTIC. But I do agree that to pull along with people of different and varying capabilities one must act as a VERB and not as a NOUN.