I recently started listening to Oprah’s A New Earth webcast with Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s book, “A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” has become quite popular as a result of the Oprah series.

While I don’t agree with a lot of his scriptural interpretations, I’ve never been one to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I found his discussion of the ego particularly helpful.

When he used the example of the child who cries when his toy is taken away from him, the light bulbs went off:

“The reason why such acute suffering occurs is concealed in the word ‘my,’ and it is structural…One of the most basic mind structures through which the ego comes into existence is identification.

The word ‘identification’ is derived from the Latin word idem, meaning ’same’ and facere, which means ‘to make.’ So when I identify with something, I ‘make it the same.’ The same as what? The same as I. I endow it with a sense of self, and so it becomes part of my ‘identity.’

One of the most basic levels of identification is with things: My toy later becomes my car, my house, my clothes, and so on.”

(Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, p. 34-35)

Material items aren’t the only things capable of creating strong points of identification. Careers, group affiliations, social standing, beliefs of any kind…these can all hold similar power. And when they’re lost or displaced, well, all hell can break loose.