Our natural survival instinct is the birthplace of ego.
From the beginning of life in the human, our primary instinct is survival.
Even before birth this is true - and as soon as the baby is born it starts to reach out for support, comfort and food.
As conscious awareness increases the 'sense of self', the ego, gradually becomes incresasingly creates an ever-widening scope of needs and wants - all related to that same instinct for survival.
Our thinking is fundamentally driven by the same primordial instincts for survival throughout our entire lives - but now, for most of us, particularly in the developed countries, the stress has become far more intellectual. We no longer simply compete for physical survival, we now compete on many levels; physically, socially and economically. The mind responds to this by seeking that which it associates with safety and success, which are of course predominantly self-interested. This mutates into selfishness, and a desire for power. Along with this intense self-focus an inflated ego-identification can develop, and then, because ultimately our life situation, physical body and beliefs are essentially fragile in this totally unpredictable life, there builds a continuous underlying fear of failure or loss. This creates doubt and confusion, leading to irrational beliefs and an ever-more reactive mind response - all contributing to mental disorder.
- combined with our- are the cause of all egoic thinking, feeling and behaviour.
The totality of the individual self is the entirety of our unique reality.
This includes what we know, within our conscious awareness, and all that is beyond conscious awareness in our unconscious.
The most powerful aspect of the totality of self is the survival instinct.
From birth, our survival instinct causes us to attach to whoever provides for our basic needs, but soon, we start to attach to behaviours that seem to contribute to our security of survival.
We then begin to attach more widely, to physical objects, other people, knowledge and beliefs.
This process of attaching to, and then protecting, is driven by our survival instinct - and its purpose is the survival of the self.
This is why we rise to defend our self - our physical self and all we have attached to - whenever they are threatened.
The self never feels secure enough, or satisfied for long, simply due to the ever-changing and uncertain nature of life.
We are ever-conscious of this feeling of insecurity, and therefore there is in us an almost constant need for more, not just to satisfy physical wants and needs, but also in an attempt to protect our self against a threatening world, and the passing of time.
These basic realities of life cause a natural self-focus - and from this come self-interested thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
Further along the scale this creates a sense of discontent, anger at how life is unfair, greed for whatever temporarily fills this void, and a lack of real interest in anything that does not serve the interests of self.
At its worst, this results in unbridled self-gratification and evil.
Moral intuition
In addition to our survival instinct, humans have moral intuition.
Its source is also beyond awareness in the unconscious.
It is an intuitive knowing of right from wrong, good from bad, kind from unkind, unselfish from selfish.
And it is this that eventually causes Awakening to begin.
The Inner Journey Progresses
The more we come to recognise our egoic self interest, the wrongness of it and the suffering it causes, the more motivated we become to rid ourselves of it.
The problem is, we cannot consciously access the unconscious.
But we can recognise self-interested impulses arising into our conscious awareness.
We can sense selfishness in our thoughts and feelings.
To diminish these egocentric tendencies we must become ever-more vigilant of our inner experience - and ever-more determined not to allow them to overrule our moral intuition.
Summary
The ego - which is our 'sense of self' - combined with our natural survival instinct - are the cause of all egoic thinking, feeling and behaviour.
It is this that is at the root of all suffering, both in our self and in the world.
For us to head in the right direction on our Inner Journey we must turn away from egoic self-interest and onto the path towards selflessness.