In our ordinary condition of never leaving ourselves alone, our manipulation happens on all levels, from gross to subtle. We can be trying to push ourselves through the eye of a needle by molding our experience in some highly manipulative way, or we can be engaging in a subtle form of holding on simply by remembering a condition that we enjoyed in the past and trying to shift our consciousness in that direction. – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, ch. 3
As long as you believe that you can find something wrong with yourself, you can hate yourself for it. If you investigate the ego activity of judging and comparing yourself, you will recognize the hatred in it. But if you explore the actual feeling of wrongness, you will see that you cannot really find anything that you can put your finger on that is wrong. What’s wrong keeps changing. It is a belief that is arising because you do not have a certain perception of yourself. If you really see that it is just a belief, and the feeling of wrongness and of badness accompanies this belief, then you recognize that it is based on a mental perspective, a delusion, and it becomes possible to let go of it. The activity of trying to find out what is wrong with you and make it better becomes superfluous when you recognize this delusion for what it is. You recognize that this activity is a waste since it won’t do anything, because there’s nothing wrong to correct anyway. So you lose the motivation behind that resentful activity of the ego. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch. 14
The consequence of this activity of trying to get something and trying to get rid of something else, is that you identify with the activity of searching. You are doing it, the activity is always present, and you take it to be you. Thus, you continue projecting outside the thing you are looking for. In the process of doing the Work, you merely continue the activity of seeking that you engaged in while pursuing personality goals and desires. You used to be looking for the right person, the right job, the right situation, and now you are looking inside yourself. Now you substitute looking for real confidence instead of looking for recognition. Instead of searching for success, you are searching for enlightenment. It is just different words for the same thing; it is the same activity whether it is directed inside or outside. – Diamond Heart Book Four, ch. 2
Only the grace of Being and a pure love for truth can quell our feverish activity; we cannot stop it through our efforts. Trying to squish the annoying mind bug is just another kind of effort to get somewhere— which is inevitably according to some idea of what that place would be. And that always makes a mess. – Karen Johnson, The Jeweled Path: The Biography of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, Ch. 21
Another important factor in the ego activity is that the self is always striving to be a particular way, in order to achieve support. The primary image patterning this activity is the ego ideal. The self tries to approximate a certain ideal, in the hope that if she succeeds, she will be worthy of the support she needs. This ideal is never attained, but the self never tires of trying. Thus, effort is a chronic characteristic of the self-identity structure. – A. H. Almaas, The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization