The Ego as a Thief

From Many Angles

We can see the ego from many angles, and certainly from one angle the ego appears as a thief. From another angle the ego appears as a powerful metaphysical entity that possesses us and only releases us from its grip when it has gotten something that it wants, from another angle the ego appears as a concept and a mental process. Taking the angle of mythology, the ego appears as the red demons of Seth (Egyptian), Medusa and the snakes on her head, the vile metals of the Alchemists and seems to be common to all the mythologies and religions is the ego appears as a beast, a monster or an enemy that the solar hero has to defeat.

Despite the many representations that have been given to the ego over time, we are going to dedicate this post to exploring the representation of the ego as a thief.

A Thief

Why a thief? The ego is one that has a piece of our essence in it. Because of our errors and lack of the transformation of impressions we created an ego. What an ego really is a piece of our free essence that has been conditioned to think, feel and act in a certain way. The nature of its conditioning is basically determined by the nature of the impressions and the events that were used to create it.

So for an ego to be formed a certain piece of free essence has to be stolen away from the body of free essence and put in a certain capsule or bottle. That capsule or bottle is a symbol or an analogy to the conditioning that that piece of essence has undergone.

The only way that ego or ‘I’ can continue to exist is for its conditioning to remain intact or in symbolic terms, that the bottle that holds that piece of essence remains intact and does not get broken.

A Thief that Wants More

For the ego to remain alive or continue to exist it has to maintain itself and it does this by trying to make the bottle stronger and in doing this, it in avertedly steals more essence and the contents the bottle grows and the bottle itself grows too. So the ego’s thievery continues.

If the ego would stop stealing energy from us to fortify itself it would get weaker and weaker and die. The ego needs affirmation otherwise the illusion that is at its core gets weaker and the free essence will come to understand that the ego in question is not really needed and is wrong.

The motto or underlying desire of the ego is ‘the more’. The ego is always about more, and in fact it only operates or exists in relativity. It wants more because it is made of relativity and duality. It makes a reference then compares and wants more.

In general the ego needs more energy and essence, and to get it has to steal it from us and so we can greatly weaken the ego by not identifying with it and not giving it our energy.

The Key to Stop the Thieving of the Ego

The most radical key that we can think of and have applied to stop the repetitive actions of the ego is to find out what the ego steals and why. At the heart of the reason why the ego steals there is the benefit that the ego looks for and gets.

It always looks for and takes some benefit. This benefit maybe something tangible or something psychological. It is very important to the work of the dissolution of the ego that we find this benefit. Because once we have found it we can investigate why the ‘I’ wants that benefit and why it has come to need it.

There may even be cases of “I’s” where we can get the same thing that the ego wants but via a different way, a way that is more respectful, honest and clean or we may get the thing that it wants but in such a way that it integrates with our spiritual work and does not go against it.

Once we no longer need the benefit that the ego always looks for or we break the attachment we have to the benefits of the ego we deliver a mortal blow to the ego. It cracks at its very foundations. The reason and the impetus for the ego to act is gone. There is no reason for the ego to continue and therefore it will be very naturally loose its force and all its stealing activities will disappear.

The Ego Steals Our Life

In a way the ego steals our life away from us. This is very obvious in the case of the big egos. Where, for example one ego can grow to be so big that it controls our life. For example, an addiction to gambling or drinking is a clear example. The person becomes controlled by the ego and all they spend their day doing is drinking or gambling or thinking about it. Then everything that they had in life begins bit by bit to crumble away until they are left with nothing only that ego.

The ego steals our good or decent level of Being and takes us to a much lower one where there is a lot of pain and suffering.

The Ego is ‘Life Greedy’

These egos are very greedy and they like to take more and more of our time and energy, which is equivalent to our life. This is something very serious. As the ego becomes bigger and bigger it takes more and more of firstly our inner life or psychological space and then it later takes more and more of our psychical life. Which includes our time and our physical energy.

The Ego Steals Our Energy

As alluded to earlier the ego steals our energy. This is the main thing that the ego does and this is where the ego takes its victory over us. The psychological and energetic fields within us are really a battle field where we (as the essence) either allow or disallow the ego to take the essence’s psychological space or the body’s and essence’s energy.

Whenever the ego manifests in our human machine, even if it is only in one centre such as the intellectual centre it is using up the energy of our centres. This is because it makes the centre to work or function. For example, the ego of lust makes the intellectual centre to conjure up images and create fantasies. What is terrible in us is that we have some absurd beliefs that we must give our energy to these egos, with the reason behind it being a very deep seated fear or defeatism or even scepticism that believes that these egos can not be defeated because they are so natural and right that we have to give them right of way and that means taking our energy.

The alarming thing about this point is that as the ego takes more of our energy the stronger it grows, in fact actually feeds off of our energy. It becomes stronger and stronger the more of our energy it uses up, until it gets to the point that it becomes a very strong habit and then a way of life and this is where it has stolen our life.

There are egos which we will see later on in this post that specialise in taking our energy, where their main function is to rob of us of energy because without energy we can not any make progress in any field of life, especially in the spiritual field.

The Ego Steals Our Will

As you may well know the ego or any ‘I’ has its own will. That is, it has a fraction of the will of the essence bottled and it is this will, that actually drives this ego to think and get what it must get. By this fact alone, that the many egos or “I’s” have a fraction of our will power inside them, means that there is not very much will power left free for the essence to consciously utilise.

When a new ego or ‘I’ is created it is takes a bit of our will power, and as the ego or ‘I’ gets stronger it increases its will and takes more of our free will. In the end an ‘I’ can get so such will that it can control our life and we (the essence) with an inferior amount of free will remain helpless before it.

This is really how the ego wins its ultimate goal the prize of our life.

The Ego Steals Our Human Machine

This is something that the ego must to do get what it wants physically. Every ego in fact does it momentarily. If an ego were to do it permanently we would definite candidates for a psychiatric ward. Can you for example imagine someone who has anger permanently in his or her human machine. That person would see everything from the point of view of anger and everything would irritate and aggravate him or her, eventually taking the person to violence.

The ego’s theft of the human machine is complete when it takes the motor centre. Without that we can remain in control here in the physical world, but once the ego has the motor centre it is in control.

Stealing our motor centre allows the ego to act, move, gesticulate but more importantly to speak, which really is what causes the most harm to us in life, is what we say.

The Essence Steals

Even the essence steals. It must steal back what has been taken from it. It must steal back through the esoteric and psychological work what is rightfully hers.

The essence has to become very astute to know how to steal the energy that the body has in its centres for the realisation. With the psychological work the essence wins back its psychological space and control of the mind.

Though the transmutation of the sexual energy the essence can take or steal the sexual energy which is an enormous fount of energy for the processes and works of self-realisation. The essence can channel and drive the sexual energy once it has stolen it by transmuting into the many spiritual and esoteric activities which server to enhance the essence.

Stealing the Secrets of the Abyss

The initiate must until a certain point in his or her path, work in the abyss of the nature and within his or her own abyss. The initiate in the abyss is there to learn and to steal the light from those that dwell there and to then use that light to progress in one’s learning and in the dissolution of the ego.

This is a major point in the first Venustic initiation or in the process of the first serpent of light that is gone through after the completion of the five initiations of fire.

The Two Thieves

There are the two thieves that are crucified on either side of Jesus the Christ on the mount of skulls. One is the good thief and the other is the bad thief. The bad thief is the one whom steals the sexual energy only to waste it, through orgasm and the good thief is the one that transmutes the sexual energy and uses it to build the superior existential bodies (solar bodies, astral, mental and causal) of the Being. The transmuted sexual energy can also be used to dissolve the ego and enhance and effectively complete many other magical and esoteric operations.

Fornication as the Thief

The ego that epitomises the ego as a thief the most, is the ego of fornication.

The ego of fornication only really exists to extract the raw sexual energy from the body. That is its main goal and aim. It has many guises which hide this rather brutal, instinctive, abrupt and animal like action.

It covers the animal characteristic of this aim with a beautiful logic that makes one to never see the true absurd and animal nature of this ego. Logic such as: relaxation, sexual bliss, sexual peace, the giver etc. Which, when one knows how to transmute the sexual energy, and actively does so, these excuses are see as 100% false.

In the end though, this ego is a true thief, the worst one because it steals our sexual energy and with it our potential for spiritual development. This ego works against us and works for the black or negatives forces within us and outside of us. This ego is the one that harms our spiritual development the most.

It is therefore the ego that has to be controlled and die the as the first one.