Question: What is the difference between self-confidence and ego?

Sri Chinmoy: Ego wants to increase its power and lord it over others. Ego becomes powerful, more powerful, most powerful in order to dominate others. In ego there is no sense of oneness. But self-confidence is a different matter. It says, “I am God; therefore, I must be for God.” Self-confidence comes from an inner source, a higher source. We get confidence from there, from our inner existence, from our own inner reality. There is a divine root there. But ego does not have any root. Ego’s root is only ignorance. When we have the confidence to become good, we remember who we are: “I am God’s son. I came here to do work for God. I am not an unaspiring person. I am meant for spiritual life. I have to realise God, because that is what God wants.” But ego does not care for God-realisation. Ego only cares for separation. I, you, he, she — this is ego. Ego will give us the message of separativity; whereas self-confidence will say, “I am all-pervading. If I am all-pervading, if I and my Father are One, then it is beneath my dignity to mix with anything that separates me from another creation of God, another human being.” So self-confidence wants to become universal, whereas ego wants only to dominate others. Ego separates in order to show its existence; self-confidence shows its existence by becoming omnipresent, by becoming one with God.