Don’t I need an ego to interact in this world and live a good life?

From the perspective of the “me” of course I do! As a self in a world populated with others, developing and nurturing a healthy ego is fundamental.

But if I recognize my essential nature, then ego is seen to be a conditioned psychological expression of a particular bodymind. It’s neither essential nor non-essential. It is part of this incredible appearance we call reality.

Then ego or self is seen to be a patterning, continually changing and updating, narrating itself to itself, thereby creating the convincing illusion that it’s real.

But in fact, it’s mentally inferred. Like a rainbow, which isn’t an actual object floating in the sky but a pattern my perception constructs.

No one owns the pattern. All that self-referential thinking never creates an actual person: an individual supposedly inside the body, supposedly in control of much of it.

To the conditioned thoughts that narrate themselves into an individual, any talk of no-self produces more thoughts framing that as an existential attack. What do you mean I don’t need an ego? Of course I do!

The more what I am beyond that self-identification is noticed, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the narrow identification as a someone. And this is just noticing what has always been the case, not achieving anything new.

What we call ego doesn’t disappear but is no longer clung to as the exclusive identity. It no longer needs to be developed, nor gotten rid of.