There is a place called ‘Ego Paradise’, believe it or not, and that’s a place where all the egos can have all the cool stuff that they love. All that great great cool stuff. Can you imagine anything better? If you an ego that is, if you’re an ego… If you’re an ego you love all those great things – all those wonderful special things that make you feel so great…

All these great things put you immediately into a kind of dream, a kind of pleasurable delirium. They are singing a song to you, a song of fulfilment, a song of unbelievably sublime satisfaction. People come up to you and tell you that you’re the best, the best ever, the bestest of the best, and you can’t believe how good this is making you feel. You want to join in with a song of adulation and tell yourself that you’re the best too. You want to add your voice to the multitude. Yes, you really are great, you tell yourself. The great feeling that you’re having is very, very precious you realise. You know that it is extremely important that nothing should be permitted to come along and disturb that good feeling and so this means that you have to be constantly alert, constantly on guard, ready at any moment to take action to prevent anyone from devalidating your experience.

That’s the secondary aspect of ego paradise, which is something that cuts in after a while. It’s that kind of paranoid awareness where you start to be alert to the fact that there might be plans afoot to sabotage that precious good feeling that you’re having. Sometimes this can make you feel very, very angry and at other times it can make you appallingly fearful. This isn’t so much fun of course but it’s all part of the ride. Paranoia and paradise go hand in hand, even though this is something they don’t generally tell you in Sunday school! I like to think of paradise as a hotel that egos can check into whenever they like – sounds appealing doesn’t it? Welcome to the Hotel Paradiso my friends. We trust that you will be delightfully happy here, revelling unreservedly in the glory that is rightfully yours. Receiving the homage that none can deny you…

You’re famous here you see. You’re automatically famous and you are revered accordingly. You are receiving all this adulation graciously because you are in your element. It’s what you expect, after all. You’re doing all the super-cool stuff; you’re doing all the great things. It doesn’t mean anything of course – it’s random, pointless, preposterous bullshit but you carry it off with style! It’s all about creating a mystique – creating a mystique is the name of the game. Everything you do is golden, everything you do has a secret, indefinable meaning to your millions of devoted followers. They wish they could be you, partaking in the ultimate ego fantasy. They are lesser egos you see – they’re not like you. They are worthless ten-a-penny egos whilst you – you are the supreme Master of Illusion, captivating the world with your every gesture. You’re famous for being so great you see and this is your very own private fantasy. You’re famous for being famous. You’re doing all the super-cool stuff and you know that you’re very cool indeed. You’re in awe of your own greatness.

So this is ‘Ego Paradise’ then and a very splendid place it is too! This is somewhere we would surely all like to visit if we could. And it actually is a real place too – it’s a perfectly real and valid place and not a tall tale despite what you might think. Okay, so there is a downside to Paradise but then there’s a downside to everything really – you can’t have anything that doesn’t have a downside somewhere and I think that’s a fact we’re all going to have to face at some time or other! If we were to be mature about it that is, which of course we must be. There are two main downsides. Firstly, there is the paranoia that strikes us like a sudden bolt of lightning  when we realise to our horror that someone might be plotting against our precious happiness and trying to take it away from us, and then secondly there is the crushing, utterly indigestible disappointment that comes when you discover that this Ego Paradise you checked into is just a tawdry fantasy. A fantasy in the very worst taste. There’s no denying that that this is a bit of a bummer alright. You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth in this life though – there’s no sense in being a wimp about it and crying every time you discover that your precious illusion is only an illusion! The smooth is the smooth and the rough is the rough and that’s all there is to it…