Eckhart Tolle’s line points to an irony: the ego can survive even in the act of trying to transcend it. Instead of boasting about wealth or status, it boasts about insight, calmness, or consciousness—quietly turning spirituality into a new badge of honor. In that sense, “more awake than others” becomes a sophisticated rerun of the same old self-importance.
This is why the ego he describes is so common. It hides behind admirable language—growth, healing, enlightenment—making it harder to detect and even harder to question. Yet the moment awakening becomes a comparison, it has already slipped into the ego’s favorite strategy: separation. [...]
