Ego is always infallible
Mulla Nasrudin made life very difficult for his associates because he believed he was infallible. Finally one of his workers spoke up. 'Nasrudin,' he said, 'you surely have not been right all the time?'
'There was one time I was wrong,' admitted the Mulla.
'When was that?' asked the surprised worker. He could not believe that Nasrudin would ever admit that he was ever wrong, even one time. He could not believe his own ears. He said, 'When was that?'
'The one time,' recalled Mulla Nasrudin, 'when I thought I was wrong, but I was really not.'
Ego is tremendously defensive. Ego is never wrong, hence you are in misery. Ego is always infallible, hence you are in misery. Start looking in the loopholes. Make your ego fallible -- and it will fall and disappear. Don't go on supporting it, otherwise you are supporting your own misery. But we go on supporting it. In good ways, in bad ways, we go on supporting it. You call somebody a good man, a moral man, a very respectable man. He has his own supports and props for his ego. He goes to the temple every day, to the church, reads the Bible or the Gita, follows the rules of the society. But he is just trying to find props for his ego -- he is a religious man, a respectable man, a moral man. Then there is somebody else who never follows the rules of society -- never goes to the church. Whenever he finds any opportunity to break any rule, he enjoys it. He is enjoying another sort of ego -- the ego of the criminal, the ego of the immoral person. He says, 'I don't care.' But both are finding supports for the same miserable thing. Both will be in misery.
As Muldoon walked down the street, he pinched a strange woman on the behind, threw a brick through the jewelry store window, and cursed a poor old lady. 'That should do it!' he said to himself. 'When I make my confession I will have enough to talk about.'
Even when people go to confess, they don't want to confess small sins -- they are not worth confessing. This is the experience of many priests of many religions -- that people exaggerate their sins. When they come to confess, they exaggerate. They may have killed an ant and they think they have killed an elephant. They exaggerate, because it is not ego-fulfilling to do such a small thing. The ways of the ego are very subtle. If you go to the jail and you listen to the talk of the people confined there, you will be surprised. They all go bragging that they have done so many robberies, and they have killed so many people. They may not have done at all, but there -- that is the way of the ego. Then you are miserable, and then you become worried. Why? You create a barrier between you and life. Ego is nothing but barrier.