The Ego: A Security Guard Who Cannot Create

The ego is a security guard. Not an enemy, not darkness, not the secret master of your life — a guard at the gate. He was hired long ago, before you learned to speak, and hired for one job only: to make sure the organism survives. He has not read your books, has not heard your music; your plans mean nothing to him. His instructions run to three points: danger — run, danger — fight, danger — freeze. Everything else is noise outside the fence.

The ego does not want you to be well. The ego wants you to be no worse off than yesterday.

In other words, it is the oldest and most primitive mechanism of all those working inside you. It is instinctive, faster than thought; it does not reason — it reacts. Which makes its handwriting easy to recognise: it repeats itself. Look at your own thoughts honestly, like footage from a security camera: about ninety-five per cent of what you thought today, you already thought yesterday. And the day before. And a year ago. The same grievances, the same worries, the same «what if» scenarios. That is not thinking — that is a patrol round. The guard walks the same route, shines his torch into the same corners, rattles the same doors, because that is what the instructions say. He has no new route and can have none: for a guard, the new is precisely the main threat.

Who says «I want» inside you

Now the most delicate part. Three voices sound in a person, and you have to learn to tell them apart by ear. The mind says «I need to»: need to finish, need to call, need to be on time. The soul says «I want» — and that «I want» leans on nothing, fears nothing and proves nothing to anyone; it simply pulls, the way warmth pulls someone who is frozen. And the ego — here is the trap — also says «I want». But it speaks not in its own voice: a guard has no language of his own. All he can do is raise an alarm, and to be heard he has to dress the alarm in arguments. «I want a house of my own» — and inside it, the fear of being left with nothing. «I want to be respected» — and inside it, the memory of a humiliation. Desire on the outside; a siren dressed in words on the inside.

How do you tell them apart? By direction. The soul’s «I want» points towards a state: I want to paint, I want to see, I want to be near. The ego’s «I want» always points away from a threat, even when it sounds triumphant: I want to win — so as not to turn out weak; I want recognition — so as not to be rejected; I want more money — so as not to fear tomorrow. Run any desire of yours through this filter. Remove the fear from the sentence — and nothing remains of an ego desire; it crumbles like plaster without a wall. Remove the fear from a desire of the soul — and it will not even notice.

The soul wants towards something. The ego wants away from something. Listen not to the words — listen to the direction.

Note that the ego does not lie — it guards; that is its job. It reports honestly: it is dangerous there, you were hit here once, do not go there, you have fallen there before. The trouble does not begin when the guard reports. The trouble begins when the guard is put behind the wheel.

Why a guard cannot run the business

Imagine a restaurant whose owner has gone away and left the place to the security guard. What does he do first? Locks half the doors. Cuts the menu down to the proven dishes — he does not know the new suppliers, and the unfamiliar is suspicious. Stops letting in new guests: a new guest is always a potential threat. A month later it is a perfectly protected and perfectly dead place. Not because the guard is stupid, but because protection and growth are forces pointing in opposite directions: protection preserves what is, growth puts what is into question. The guard is not a bad manager. He is not a manager at all — it is a different profession.

With creation it is stricter still. The brain makes: it assembles new combinations out of the known, like pieces of a construction set — and that is large, honest work. The soul creates: it brings what was never in the set, what was in no one’s experience — which is why the genuinely new always arrives not as a conclusion but as a recognition, as if it already existed and had been waiting. The ego does neither. It has access neither to the library nor to the source; all it can do is check what comes in against its archive of threats and stamp it «admit» or «refuse». That is why you cannot paint a picture from the ego, cannot build a business from it, cannot love from it: each of those acts requires stepping out into the open, and the ego’s entire construction is built around one principle — never step out into the open.

Here lies the link I return to constantly: creation is possible only out of love, because love is the only state in which a person is not defending. The frequency of defence and the frequency of creation do not sound at the same time — just as one and the same movement cannot clench a fist and open a palm. This is not morality. This is mechanics.

Creation is done with an open palm. The ego only knows the fist.

Not to kill, but to appoint

At this point the usual saying arrives: «conquer your ego», «kill the ego in yourself». Turn it over — it is harmful. To kill the guard is to leave the house unguarded, and the first draught will wander through the rooms where you work. You need the ego. It will pull your hand from the fire before you have time to think. It will not let you step in front of a car. It remembers every fall you have taken — that is its value, and that is also its ceiling: a guard has no future, only a catalogue of the past. Which is exactly why every conviction it stops you with is false by construction — it is assembled out of yesterday and presented to a today the guard has not yet seen.

So the task is not to destroy but to assign a post. Put the guard at the gate — and there he is excellent: let him report, rattle the doors, shine his torch into the corners. But behind the wheel must sit the one who knows where to go — your living «I want», the one that runs from nothing. The practice is simple; I know none simpler. When you hear an «I want» inside, ask one question: what for? Not «what do I gain» at the level of profit and use, but deeper: what am I trying to protect myself from with this? If the answer jumps out instantly and smells of fear — it was the guard speaking. Take the report. Thank him: he has honestly worked his shift. And do not hand him the keys.

A well-guarded house that nobody lives in is not a house — it is a warehouse. Too many lives are arranged exactly like that: strong gates, alarm in working order, patrols on schedule — and no owner at home. Let the owner in. Everything genuinely worth guarding is not created by guarding — it is created by love, while the guard merely walks the perimeter checking locks. Let him walk. That is his job. Yours is different.

The work on the cover — “Ego” →

— Evgeny Fleysher