The ego plays at being your captor and your savior

I had a dream once where this man was trying to do something bad to me or was threatening, so I ran off and went up this hill where I met this other man. This other man at first seemed to be offering to shelter me from the attacker and to protect me from him, but it soon transpired that this other man was in fact the same attacker in disguise. Even though he was putting on a show to make me believe I could run to him for safety, he was in fact the very person I was trying to get away from.

This is how the ego functions. The ego is two-faced. It will pretend to be your savior and your attacker at the same time. It will pretend to be trying to make your life better while simultaneously making it worse. It will tell you it knows how to help you be 'less of the bad stuff' and 'more of the good stuff', while reinforcing the bad stuff and secretly being your enemy. It will even act like your savior, advising you to get rid of the ego entirely, which it knows will keep and increase the ego by getting you to side WITH it AND AGAINST IT at the same time.

The ego is a representation of SELF ATTACK, since it is what you used to attack yourself. It therefore is made of self attack - attacking of self. It is against itself and for itself at the same time. It will happily attack itself while trying to protect itself. It will choose to hurt itself while at the same time enjoying being hurt (pain=pleasure). It will warn you against death while bringing it about. It will tell you to go in a certain direction while leading you down the wrong path. It will tell you you're doing the right or wrong thing while doing the opposite. It is completely contradictory in every way. In particular we fall for its messages because we tend to want to side with 'good or bad' or one or the other polarity of its madness. But we need to recognize that ALL of the ego is false. ALL of the ego is a lie and a deception. The ego is a two-faced liar.

Even this 'anti ego' ego message comes to you in part from the ego enjoying attacking itself.

Cryptic!