A man and his little son were walking through a mountain valley. At one point, the boy slipped about 20 meters down the mountain until he caught hold of a tree branch.
Then the boy shouted, “Help me!”
A sudden voice boomed back: “Help me!”
The frightened boy shouted, “Who are you?”
The voice echoed back: “Who are you?”
The boy, a little confused, said: “You are an idiot!”
The voice came back: “You are an idiot!”
He said again, “You are a coward!”
The voice yelled back, “You are a coward!”
Soon after, his father, who was trying to climb the tree, finally managed to catch up with him.
The boy asked his father, “Who is this?”
His father laughed and said, “Son, this is called Echo, but it is also one of the dimensions of your life. Your Ego”.
“Ego? Dimension of my life? How so, father?”
Ego is your perception of yourself. A concept about you that you identify with. In this case, what you heard was nobody, just your Ego talking and you listening.
“Hearing what?”
“your Echo…”
Contemplating what his father had said, the boy asks: “Hmm…so Echo is like a reflection in a mirror?”
“That's right, son! Like a mirror, but in the auditory sense.”
Promptly, the boy asked: “But father, then, what is the difference between the Echo and the Ego?”
The father answers serenely: “Echo is the repetition of a sound due to the reflection of sound waves. The Ego is repetition only… without reflection”.
What have you been listening to lately?
For those voices that obstruct your inner peace? What contaminate your emotions? The one that says, "I'm not good enough"..." "They don't understand me...?"
The egoic mind repeats, distorts and condemns itself.
O Ego tells a story of the victim, feels harmed, has disturbances and passes like a hurricane that takes and destroys everything and everyone in the way.
O Eco it is harmless and free. It doesn't cling to anything. Absent from narratives, expectations and pre-assumptions. It emerges in silence and in a matter of seconds it returns to itself.
What's up? Echo or Ego?
Tip: The difference is not only in the exchange of “g” for “c”.
"If you're not knowing yourself, you're deceiving yourself."
