The ego goes through three stages of strength.

First stage: “It’s someone else’s fault.”
If I blame other people for my bad decisions, I cannot be confronted. This is my form of longevity. I will drag you into unnecessary conflicts — you are unique. You are special. You will become impulsive and collect more enemies. Your cortisol will remain constantly high. Irritable and exhausted, you will only be able to rely on yourself — that is, on me: your counselor of self-destruction. You are mine. You depend on me.

The second stage is what is usually called “the blessing of ignorance.”
The ego is a resident; if the room expands, it gains more space to operate — and that means more blind spots. The ego benefits from progress, from the evolution of the self. And this only comes after some degree of self-understanding.
“Self-discovery should weaken you!” — and it is through these assumptions that the ego accumulates strength. Self-development is a steep climb: as you ascend, you gain broader vision, more repertoire, and more neural connections to solve problems. The cost is comfort. At higher altitudes, oxygen flow is limited: you think more, but your breath shortens. Although more precise, your actions become slower. You see everything and cannot cry out for help. The ego will use your own logic, placing reason and emotion in conflict so that, in yet another attempt, you destroy yourself alone. Wisdom will feel like a curse.

The third and final stage. A tragicomedy.
It can be summed up by the anecdote: “I finally defeated my ego, and that’s why I’m better than all of you.” This is how many people who consider themselves spiritually elevated are, in truth, merely ill-mannered. The ego will make you believe you have eliminated it completely, and then every act motivated by supposed sobriety will actually be an order from the ego itself, feeding and growing at the expense of your “awakening,” like a parasite lodged even deeper within your core — unreachable by the touch of consciousness, because your unprecedented arrogance has been renamed self-confidence, freedom.

Some saintly philosophers would say that the solution at every stage is: humility, humility, humility. I would also include perpetual self-vigilance in this equation.

Thank you for reading this far, my friend.

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