Read time about 3 minutes. Explore the nature of ego, identity and reality. This stand alone article is part of our new model of reality series.
What is the nature of ego?
And what does Joseph Goldstein mean when he says,
“…thoughts themselves are the thinker”?
The 5 Phantoms of the Ego tells us ego is a mirage—
a label we give to the way we perceive certain conditions.
But there’s more to the story.
Let’s begin with a quick recap of some of the ideas explored in The Origin of Self-Awareness:
At first, it’s quiet.
You’re just seeing.
Just hearing.
Just being.
No commentary—No center or self.
This is pure perception.
Then something shifts.
You start to notice the seeing.
And the loop begins…
Perception folds back on itself.
Awareness reflects awareness.
Still open and innocent—Still vast.
Let’s call this mind—not as an enemy,
but as neutral, functional space—full of emptiness and potential.
An echo chamber of attention.
Still, no problem. No flaw.
Just two halves of a mirror
reflecting an endless stream of reflections.
Perception folding back on itself.
But then…
A thought reacts.
A reaction is noticed.
A judgment is made.
And the judgment is claimed.
And with it, something entirely new emerges—
ownership.
That’s ego.
The loop that named itself
Amid the tension, the distortion, the endless reflections—
an echo of thought arises.
Disoriented, awareness looks for an anchor.
Something to hold onto.
Somewhere to call “center.”
It finds none.
So it invents one.
A false identity.
A fiction of ownership: “I did this.”
“This is me.”
And with that claim,
the echo gives itself a name.
The name takes credit for everything—
less out of arrogance,
and more out of fear.
Fear that, without a name,
it would vanish—
swallowed by space.
Echo no more.
And so the nature of the ego—of the illusion—becomes clear.
A ripple ripples outward, mirroring itself,
an echo echoes an echo.
Every cause must have an effect.
But the ego is an echo, an effect, with an illusory cause.
The illusion of self:
Trace it all back to the beginning.
You’ll find no one there.
Only the capacity to see.
The capacity to hear.
And the capacity to be.
Remember, illusion does not mean nothing is there.
It means that what appears is not exactly as it seems.
The birth of reality is perception perceiving itself.
It is not tangible.
The moment the echo looks for its origin,
it invents one.
And ego—retroactively—is that invention.
This is why ego always feels haunted.
It’s not solid.
It’s not rooted.
Reflection and distortion are the nature of ego
This is what Joseph Goldstein means when he says,
“…thoughts themselves are the thinker.”
Thoughts too are echoes—
repeating themselves until they forget the silence from which they came.
Until you can’t tell just where the ocean ends
and the wave begins.
And yet…
none of this is a problem to solve.
It’s just a pattern to see.
—
Patterns of Perception: Zen Drop 011 is a lighter playful take on today’s lesson.
Part of our continuing Zen Drops series.
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