The ego is self-perception, the awareness of ourselves. It is sometimes described as the ‘witness’; it is watching, observing, maybe evaluating what I am doing or what is being done to me. This witness, self-perception state of consciousness or element of consciousness, does it represent the highest state? Well, clearly not. One reason we can say the ego conscious-ness is not the highest state is because it doesn’t always exist. It comes into being at a certain stage of human development, and it by itself cannot lead us to the goal or to the aspiration to unity, to joy, to peace, to fullness of being that we all have within us. And that is what makes us essentially human. So we could say that the ego only exists in the mind. It’s not in pure consciousness.
( The Brick Wall of the Ego 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
