Tao and the Ego

If your “prayers not answered” meaning your “expectations not fulfilled”, maybe you’d like to ask why not? Yes, many of us would like to ask the same question, whether we pray or not. Indeed, many of our expectations in life are seldom or never fulfilled.

Lao Tzu recommends the wisdom of reverse thinking, which is thinking backward to find out the origin of something.

“Expectations not fulfilled” has its origin from the ego.

The Ego

What’s an ego? Do we all have an ego?

An ego is an identity of any individual. Yes, we all have an ego, with no exception.

As soon as a baby begins his or her perceptions through the five senses, that baby begins to develop an identity, such as “this toy is mine” and “I want this.” There’s nothing wrong with that initial identification. However, as time passes by, the human ego continues to expand and inflate to the extent that it may become problematic.

Well, what exactly is an ego, or the ego-self?

Simply look at yourself in front of a mirror. What do you see?

A self-reflection. Is it for real? Can you touch it? Not really; it’s only a reflection of someone real—the real you in front of the mirror!

Now, do something totally different. Place a baby—if there’s one immediately available—in front of the mirror. See what happens. The baby might crawl toward the baby in the mirror. Why? It’s because the baby in front of the mirror might think that the baby in the mirror is another baby, and just not his or her own reflection.

Likewise, the ego-self may look real, but it isn’t real. To think otherwise is self-deception.

How You May Have Become What You Are

Descartes, the great French philosopher, made his very famous statement: “I think, therefore I am.” Accordingly, you think and you then become what you think you are—the byproducts of all your thoughts and your own thinking.

Unfortunately, Descartes’ famous statement is only partially true: it’s true that you identify yourself with all your thoughts projected into your thinking mind; but it’s not true that your identities thus created by your thoughts and your own thinking truly reflect your true self. The fact of the matter is that you’re not your thoughts, and your thoughts are not you. To think otherwise is a human flaw, which is no more than self-illusion or self-delusion. In other words, you’re not what and who you think you really are.

Gradually, all your life experiences with their own respective messages—the pleasant as well as the unpleasant, the positive as well as the negative—are all stored at the back of your subconscious mind in the form of your assumptions, attitudes, causal concepts, and memories.

Accumulated over the years, millions and billions of such experiences and messages have become the raw materials with which you subconsciously weave the fabrics of your life, making you who and what you have now become—or so you think. In other words, they’ve now become your “realities” or your ego-self.

Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau