The ego as a parasite

The ego is a set of ideas. The principle idea is that you are separate from others and must fight for what you want in a zero-sum world where another’s gain is your loss and what you give is a transaction from which you hope to receive back at least what you gave. You can listen to the voice for God or the voice for the ego. The ego itself is not moral or immoral, because it has no soul and therefore has no moral agency; it is merely a system that is internally logical from certain angles but categorically insane when viewed synoptically. The question of morality arises only when someone who has moral agency (a person, you or me) has to choose. What are you choosing? Are you choosing the ego’s voice or God’s? The ego can do no harm unless its directions are followed, and only a person can follow the ego’s directions. It is a powerless parasite, growing only like a blood-inflated tic as it is permitted to hold sway. It is not its own blood it is filled with but yours. Fortunately, however, since the ego is powerless except in as far as you become its agent (for it has no hands but yours), the solution is gratifyingly simple: withdraw your belief in it and it dies. This you do by seeking God’s will and God’s will only, rejecting any voice originating in fear or hate. The ego’s power lies only in its ability to convince and then persuade to action; its defeat lies in placing one’s conviction in God and letting ourselves be the hands of God in the world.