Less ego… more joy! A path of freedom Christophe Massin

The ego: an illusion source of suffering that should be rid of as soon as possible. This is what a number of philosophical and religious traditions seem to affirm, both in the West with Pascal denouncing a “hateful self”, and in the Hindu and Buddhist East. What is it in reality?

In line with the Indian sage Swami Prajnanpad andArnaud Desjardins, the psychiatrist Christophe Massin proposes, in his latest book, a “path of freedom” making possible the inner equation: “less ego, more joy”. But how to apply it without upsetting our precarious balance based on a very solid ego which also ensures our mental health? The Western-trained therapist asked himself this question, intimately as in the context of his professional psychiatric training, and the bet was not without risk. Yes, this me needs to be built and to be strong so that we can grow in harmony. No, he must not take power totally and definitively, at the risk of cutting us off from others as well as from our very reality. What is it ? And who is this me?

Christophe Massin deciphers this infinite questioning over the pages with clarity and beneficial, liberating simplicity. First, by allowing us to understand why the ego leads us to live in fear of loss, then by realizing that it unduly appropriates everything it uses to function: our intellectual capacities, our thoughts, our emotions, our memory and even our consciousness. It is this mechanism of identification which imprisons consciousness and engenders all human suffering. Finally, by helping us to accept that the ego “is not the enemy to be defeated, but an unavoidable passage, a universal condition of human experience to be known intimately before going beyond it. »

Also, after asking the question "Who am I" (or even " which am I), the author invites us to ask ourselves “What do I want? », in the relative world as well as in the absolute. A way of overcoming the illusory opposition between these two dimensions. To answer it, he draws on his own experience, moving from the particular to the universal, and proposes a journey that leads to erasure, to detachment, to better exist in harmony with others. Freely