'I have no ego' is exactly where the ego hides best

We all know how to spot a proud person. The loud one who turns every conversation back to himself, who needs the front seat and the last word — that ego waves a flag. It is almost honest in how openly it asks to be admired.

The ego that is genuinely hard to catch is the opposite kind. It is quiet. It speaks softly, gives things up, touches feet, says 'no, no, I am nothing.' It has learnt that in our world humility is admired more than pride — so, very cleverly, it puts on humility like a clean white kurta and keeps doing exactly what it always did: it makes you feel special.

This is worth saying gently, because it sits inside all of us, including whoever is writing this. The moment we start working on ourselves — meditating, serving, renouncing, becoming 'spiritual' — the ego does not pack up and leave. It simply changes its address. It moves out of 'look how much I have' and into 'look how little I need,' and from there, in those soft robes, it is far harder to see. The same 'I am special' is running underneath; only the costume has changed.

Picture the ego not as a thing you can throw out, but as a tenant who refuses to leave the house. You evict it from one room and it quietly settles into another.

When you are young, it lives in achievement: my marks, my money, my looks, my job. Then maybe life humbles you, or you turn toward something deeper — and the ego, sensing the old room is no longer admired, packs up and moves. Now it lives in 'I have let go of all that.' It feeds on a new kind of praise: how detached you are, how simple, how disciplined, how early you wake to meditate.

Notice the trick. Nothing has actually changed at the centre. Earlier the sentence was 'I am better because I have more.' Now it is 'I am better because I want less.' Same 'I am better' — the ego only swapped the object it leans on. This is why people can spend years on a spiritual path and grow not gentler but subtly prouder, collecting renunciations the way others collect possessions, keeping a quiet inner scoreboard of how far they have come. The path became one more thing to be the best at.

Once you start looking, you can see the ego wearing three particular disguises again and again — three robes so respectable that we rarely think to check what is underneath.

The first is the robe of renunciation: 'I gave up so much.' It keeps a careful ledger of every sacrifice and waits, quietly, for the world to notice. A gift that needs to be seen was never fully given.

The second is the robe of devotion: 'I am closer to God, more sincere, more pure than these worldly people.' This is the most dangerous, because it borrows holiness itself as fuel — using the divine as a mirror to admire your own reflection in.

The third, and finest, is the robe of humility: 'I am so humble.' The moment that sentence brings a warm glow, watch closely — because real humility does not know it is humble. The instant you can feel proud of being humble, and look slightly down on the arrogant, the arrogance has simply changed sides and put on white clothes. Here is the simple test for all three: does this 'goodness' make me feel taller than someone else? If yes, it is not goodness yet. It is the old ego, better dressed.

The comfortable belief is that humble, gentle, spiritual people have somehow finished with ego — that goodness and ego cannot live in the same person. That belief is exactly what lets the hidden ego survive, because it tells us to stop looking the moment we become 'good.'

The Gita is unusually honest here. It divides our nature into three strands — heaviness (tamas), restless craving (rajas), and goodness (sattva) — and you would expect it to simply praise the third. Instead it gives a warning: 'sukha-sangena badhnati jnana-sangena cha' (14.6) — sattva, though pure and luminous, also binds, through attachment to its own happiness and to its own knowledge. Read that again. Even goodness binds. The peace of a calm mind and the pride of 'I understand things others don't' are gentle chains, but chains nonetheless — and gold chains are harder to want to break than iron ones.

So the fact behind the myth is this: becoming good does not end the ego; it gives the ego a more respectable place to hide. The arrogance you can see in a loud person is, in a strange way, easier to work with than the refined self-regard of someone certain they have moved beyond all that.

If the ego can wear any clothes — pride, humility, devotion, renunciation — then chasing each disguise one by one is hopeless. Cut one and it grows another. So the older teachers point past the costumes to the single thread holding them all up.

Ashtavakra says it in one fierce line: 'aham karta ity aham-mana-maha-krishnahi-damshitah' (1.8) — you have been bitten by the great black snake of the thought 'I am the doer.' His cure is not to become a better doer of good deeds. It is to drink a different nectar: 'naham karta' — I am not the doer — and be at peace. Look at what that undoes. 'I renounced' is still 'I am the doer of renunciation.' 'I am humble' is still 'I am the one being humble.' Every robe is stitched from the same thread — a small, busy 'I' claiming the action as its own.

This is why the real movement is not from a bad self-image to a good one. It is a step back from the self-image altogether — catching the 'I' in the act of taking credit, even credit for being good. You do not defeat this ego. You simply see it clearly, again and again, until it loses the dark corner it was hiding in.

There is a trap waiting at the end of all this, and it is worth naming before you walk into it. Once you see that even your humility can be ego, the mind rushes to a harsh place: 'so I am a fraud, my goodness is fake, I should feel terrible about myself.' But look — that self-punishment is the ego again, simply in its newest outfit, now playing the tortured seeker who is hardest on himself. It never tires of being the main character, even as the villain.

So the point of all this is not to despair, and not to stop being kind or simple or devoted. The point is lightness. You learn to catch the small swell of 'I am special' the way you notice a child showing off — with a smile, not a slap. No drama, no self-hatred, just a quiet 'ah, there it is again,' and you carry on serving, giving, sitting in silence — only now without keeping score.

That is what this whole matter finally means for an ordinary life: the goal was never to become an impressively humble person. It was to become so unbothered about being special that the question stops mattering. And maybe the most honest place to start is the next time praise brings that familiar warm lift — to notice it, name it kindly, and let it pass without feeding it. Who would you be, even for a day, if you had nothing left to prove?