An Ego Hidden in Awareness’s Blind Spot: The Aware-Person Ego and the Superior-Person Ego

I. A Wake-Up Call

Many spiritual practitioners become aware that their own “superior-person ego” limits them, leaving them less able than ordinary people to face their despair, embarrassment, and confusion with composure.

Ordinary people often see themselves as ordinary people who are getting by in the present, perhaps even enjoying a little happiness, who feel they have not reached a particularly high level of understanding, and who experience plenty of despair, embarrassment, and confusion. This is actually a very good state, fate, and level of understanding.

II. Awareness’s Blind Spot

Many spiritual practitioners have some awareness of the “superior-person ego.” I often write that value investing, Daoism, and Marxism-Leninism are all paths for ordinary people, and that genuine paths lead toward recognizing and accepting our own limitations, powerlessness, mediocrity, and ignorance.

Conversely, all these fields frequently produce megalomaniacs, amateur philosophizers, self-styled masters, and unaffiliated free spirits, and the price of self-righteousness is often devastating. I previously wrote “Spiritual Practice Is a False Concept,” “The Spiritual-Practitioner Ego,” “The Elitism of Spiritual-Practice Malaise,” and “Practicing Marxism-Leninism the Way We Practice Zhuangzi,” among other pieces.

This awareness really exists, and it is positive. But it has not yet developed into a deeper awareness.

The “superior-person ego” hides behind this “ordinary-person ego.”

It is as though I have shone this dim flashlight on myself, and each time its beam catches me, what I see is an “ordinary person.” Meanwhile, the “superior-person ego” is like a phantom hidden behind crystal, hazy and indistinct. I have been unable, and perhaps even afraid, to look at it directly.

The frightening thing about this blind spot: awareness becomes a routine. I think I am being aware, but I am actually walking in circles, trapped in a dream within a dream.

With awareness, the moment you strain for it, you go astray.

III. The Aware-Person Ego

The “aware-person ego” is a common symptom of the “spiritual-practitioner ego.”

“Awareness” becomes a means of growing stronger, an ability, a means of supervision, a means of self-inspection. It then becomes a routine of dogmatism and even bureaucratism—going through the motions to satisfy the supervisor—and a self-imposed prison.

When I become “aware” that I am a “superior person,” I feel smugly pleased with myself.

When I become aware that I am in despair, I simply label it “a loss of awareness,” and become extremely angry, dissatisfied, and self-attacking.

There is no unconditional tranquility, ease, or seeing.

IV. Some Roots of My Own “Superior-Person Ego”

1. Severely depleted mental and emotional resources, leaving too little capacity for awareness

I have made many enormous, difficult decisions. There are many issues and challenges in my life, and I avoid questioning myself.

My narcissism has been wounded, and I need defense mechanisms. The self is unstable, unable to face reality directly.

1. The spiritual-practitioner ego

Because I am in a stage of “spiritual practice,” with an “emphasis” on returning from suffering to tranquility, and on tranquility and the abiding presence of one’s true nature, I reject, avoid, and look down on suffering and karmic obstructions. The “spiritual-practitioner ego” is itself hope amid despair, a form of defense.

Awareness becomes a routine: the blind spot of the “aware-person” ego.

1. Anxiety about survival, and the useful-person ego

The issues of ability and usefulness. Value investing, Marxism-Leninism, Zhuangzi, and psychology all fall within theoretical reflection in the social sciences, raising questions about being a superior person and being “useful.”

The task-doer ego, the utilitarian ego: the egos of the admonisher, the preacher, the advice-giver, the person who helps others succeed, and the go-between.

The online-content-creator ego: outward appearances, contrived personas built from pretense and formulas, entanglement in the karma of online content creation, utilitarian motives.

Analyzing macro trends and anxiety about the broader environment: these two issues are themselves deeply entangled.

1. The ego of the worldly sage who stands apart from society

A need for spiritual identification, narcissistic identification, issues of loneliness, issues of severed connection, a Marxist ego, identification with people living in Yunnan who have opted out of striving, and projective identification from my readership.

1. The Marx-Zhuangzi psychology ego

Karmic obstructions often accompany both academic and professional pursuits. Enormous ecstasy and surges of libido energize narcissistic karmic obstructions. The alienation of intellectual capital.

1. The ordinary-person ego

A simple abstraction of myself, an identification, an attachment to appearances. I am “able” to regard myself as an “ordinary person”—how extraordinary I must be.

1. The value-investor ego and the IT ego

They arise from conditional confidence and self-narratives.

IV. The Drawbacks of the Superior-Person Ego

1. An inability to properly face reality, the present, and the despair within

The suffering of “despair” becomes even more painful because the “superior-person ego” has been frustrated. In this respect, I am worse off than during my period of uncomprehending struggle from 2015–2020, when I passively accepted my suffering, disarray, and struggle. From 2021–2025, I moved toward awakening. From 2026 onward, a period of awakened struggle.

Accepting the suffering of my own despair—suffocation, fear, anxiety; embarrassment—awkwardness, disarray, struggle, admitting mistakes; and confusion—mediocrity, loneliness.

1. The extent to which I am aware of the reality of the present is the extent of my awareness of my true nature; the superior-person ego obstructs letting things take their natural course, living in the present, and being wholly at ease.

1. The ego’s series of consequences: narcissism, defensiveness, concealment, fixation, arrogance, and so on; entanglement with other people’s karmic obstructions.

1. A fixation on being capable and making things happen.

1. Other drawbacks.

V. How Big a Deal Are “Despair, Embarrassment, and Confusion,” Really?

When an ordinary person admits to despair, embarrassment, and confusion, other people find it entirely unsurprising, and may even appreciate it.

How mortifying a dark side is this, really?

Yet because of the ego’s karmic obstructions, I hide this dark side. Elitism’s oppression of ordinary people.

VI. Embarrassment Can Be Positive

The Magma series is about how people remain full of karmic obstructions and suffering even after awakening. Marx, Engels, and Su Shi were all full of suffering—how much more so are we.

1. I remove people from my contacts, then add a small number of them back. On the one hand, this is growth; on the other, it also reveals the real turmoil within me. Some people do not ridicule me; instead, they see my authenticity and sincerity.

1. I am looking for work again, and my current state is unsettled. Some people also understand and identify with me more because of this.

1. In terms of counseling and ability, I am no master. I am an ordinary person: Nora leaving home, a prison break across the Gobi, a long illness making the patient a doctor. I am a liberator, a specialist in karmic obstructions, a specialist in awareness. I am not a Champions League coach; I am an amateur-team coach. Being able to help people become aware is enough.

1. People of these generations like Huang Bo, Wang Baoqiang, and Xu Zhisheng more than Andy Lau of the Four Heavenly Kings. This, too, is because of ordinary people’s authenticity, embarrassment, and the clarity gained through life’s trials.

VII. Gratitude to My Past Self

My true nature has always been quietly at work. I am also grateful to my present self, to my true nature today.

We will ultimately see the truth clearly, truly understand and come to love ourselves, simple and unpretentious, relaxed and natural, wholly at ease in the present.