Ego is your silent enemy

Education may impart knowledge, but along with it, the quality of humility should be inculcated in the educated. A highly qualified person is not truly educated if this quality goes missing in him or her. Humility makes him or her humane and popular among like-minded people. A person can be egoistic due to their social status too.

Giving up one’s ego is the first step in one’s spiritual progress. As is said in the Gita, only one who has given up the sense of ownership and  has sacrificed his false ego and attains eternal peace.

One is not the body or the mind, which are subject to the vagaries of disease and old age. The constant is the consciousness within, the soul. The soul needs the body and mind for its purification, but if the person is blinded by ego over what his body and mind have achieved, then the soul will be forgotten. An anecdote from Srimad Bhagavatha highlights
this point.

Jadabharata was a strange mystic, almost treated as insane. King Rahugana, who was passing by, needed a fourth person to carry
the palanquin in which he was seated. Jadabharata was spotted and ordered to do the needful. But the palanquin tottered on its way, and the bearers pointed their fingers at Jadabharata.

The king admonished him strongly, commenting on his sturdy build and threatening to punish him. But Jadabharata did not bat an eyelid and continued on his way.

When questioned by the curious king, he replied that his words were targeted at his body, which he was not. Immediately the king climbed down and beseeched Jada Bharata to explain in detail, to which Jadabharata replied that the king was arrogant because of his bodily stature, which was temporary, and he could be buried under the earth any time in case of an earthquake.

He asked the king to treat the body as a garment that was meant to be discarded after wear and tear. The king realised his folly; he accepted Jadabharata as his teacher and implored him to continue his discourse to him. Finally he attained enlightenment, and in utter humility he bowed not only before Jadabharata but all living entities similar to Jadabharata in thought. As attributed to the Mahatma, "when the ego dies, the soul awakens."