Whether ego brings down a person or not, it certainly brings down the peace of a person. The flipside of ego is that it craves for attention. Ego, for its survival, thrives on attention. The craving is to get noticed. Everyone goes through this phase, where the ego drives one to do anything and everything only to get noticed and recognized. It is a phase when good is good only when it gains attention; even bad is good if it can draw attention, and ironically, even good is bad if it fails to attract attention. The ego survives on gaining attention. But then, one must outgrow that phase of life; if not, the price you pay will be your peace.
True, ego can be a source of motivation; but then, ego is a very poor motivator. By its very nature, ego needs feeding. And hence it makes you a perpetual beggar. The problem with ego is that when ego is fed, you struggle out of superiority complex, and when ego is starved you suffer out of inferiority complex. Either way, it robs you of your peace of mind. The price ego asks of you to be your motivator is your peace of mind.
Every moment is heavy, every situation is nerve-racking, and every interaction is tense .An ego-filled heart is always walking on fire. Never can there be a moment of marriage between ego and ease. Ego is never worth the losses. With ego, you are struggling all the time to win over the situation; you want to get the better of others. When you transcend ego, you just want to win over yourself; you want to make the most of your own potential. There is enormous freedom in letting your ego go .
A crow carrying a piece of meat in its beak found itself being chased by all the other birds. It dropped the piece of meat, and all the birds went after the meat. Now, alone in the sky, the crow remarked, “In losing that piece of meat, I gained the freedom of the skies.” The piece of meat is ego. And, the freedom is your peace. When ego comes, everything else goes. When ego goes, everything else comes .The ego survives on gaining attention. But then, one must outgrow that phase of life; if not, the price you pay will be your peace.