The Ego is like a children’s bouncy castle.

My family owned a bouncy castle for many years. You rolled it out on the grass and it was totally flat. It had no real shape and so you couldn’t see what it was. Then comes the magic part. You connect a fan which pumps in the air and slowly the shape of a castle appears and there you have it. Some people think you can turn the fan off when it’s all inflated, but no, the fan is working flat out to keep the bouncy castle, well, bouncy. The moment the fan is switched off, the castle flops to the ground and the illusion is over. Well in many ways, I see our Ego is like this bouncy castle, because when we are born into our baby bodies, there is no sense of ‘I’, no Ego – we just are. Like the bouncy castle lying flat on the ground, we are unlimited potential, a perfect and innocent expression of consciousness. Then the fun starts . . . As we start to grow up, it’s like the fan starts slowly filling us with words and we develop a sense of a separate ‘I’. This is ‘my’ body, these are ‘my’ parents, this is ‘my’ house. By the time we are an adult, our Ego Mind is fully developed and seemingly in control of our lives, running amok. The castle is inflated. Perhaps like some people’s Egos, one could say, over-inflated . . . Most of us fail to notice the constant stream of thoughts running through our minds, which like the air from the fan, are working hard to maintain our Ego and we start to suffer from what Mooji calls ‘Person Poison’. Not only do we believe ‘we’ are inside a body, separate from the outside world we perceive, ‘we’ start to feel feelings of lack. ‘We’ are hunting for love in the outside world. Where is it, who will give it to us? But it’s a fruitless search, like trying to find the end of a rainbow. Well, my friends, there is a way to end this suffering and find freedom. It’s time to just sit quietly, be aware of the whirling fan of thoughts and realise the True Self, which is the unmanifested, timeless and formless - like the bouncy castle lying motionless on the ground, before it took any shape or form. It’s so exhausting trying to maintain the Ego Mind’s illusion, so maybe it’s time to unplug the fan for good, let the castle slowly deflate and drift back to the ground - the ground of our Being. This is our true Home. - Rob Holmes