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behavior with behavior that is under the guidance of the Higher Self.
    The development of my personal Ego is not unusual. While growing up I was conditioned to believe, “I am an Ilgner and that’s special.” My great grandfather Paul owned a huge vegetable and fruit processing company in Germany in the early 1900s, and was a multi-millionaire. His son, my grandfather Gerhard, was an accomplished pianist who traveled the world. After World War II, the family fortune was lost, but my father, Harry, having grown up in a rich household, still saw himself as different and “better than.” He was talented in several water sports including skiing, skating, sailing, and swimming. The sense of superiority came from both sides of my family. My mother’s mother, Vania, was a prominent opera singer in Europe, and my mother, Kornelia, was a very talented artist. All through my childhood, I perceived an Ilgner as “better.” We didn’t do things like everyone else and there was a pervasive sense of being superior.

    Climbing on the Whitesides Headwall, western North Carolina. The route is called The Warrior’s Way. Photo: Jeff Achey
    Even as I became an adult, this flawed thinking continued. Local climbers considered me to be a bold climber who put up scary routes, which fed my sense of superiority. Ironically, there were long stretches of time when I felt inferior. I was caught in an external value system which forced me to see myself as either better than or worse than others. I compared my externals to the externals of others, concocting weak schemes why I was more or less valuable than someone else. These justifications led away from understanding and seeing the interconnectedness of the world.
    Everyone can recall certain moments that leave lasting grooves in the gray matter. One such moment revealed how asinine I could act when driven by my Ego. I had just gotten out of the Army in 1980, having served in Korea during peacetime. I was driving through town with some friends late at night when the truck in front of us stopped suddenly—seemingly intentionally. I was sure the driver was purposely wanting to aggravate us, and I reacted by getting out of the car and angrily confronting him. Unintimidated, the truck driver also got out. I was fuming, but my emotions were muddled. I felt offended that the driver had intentionally stopped in front of us. The feeling was strong because I felt important for having recently served my country. Huffing and puffing I shouted, “How dare you stop like that! I just got back from Korea serving my country!” His response left me feeling like an idiot, a feeling that remains vivid to this day. “Well, I served my country in Vietnam,” he stated. My Ego’s comparative game had been decisively turned against me. Serving in peacetime Korea was clearly no match for serving in Vietnam during a war. I just stood there embarrassed in front of my friends. My Ego wanted some kind of response to retain its superiority, but fortunately I was finished, for the time being, with obeying its dictates. I at least was aware my Ego had made a fool of me and that I didn’t want to feed it with any more stupid acts.
    Don Juan tells Castaneda that if you live by the Ego, then you can count on being offended or defensive for the rest of your life. You will constantly be tricked and trapped into doing idiotic things and wasting power. It took me until age 35 to go beyond the idea that I was better than others. I also realized we are interdependent, and each of us has a value which is not determined by comparison.
    Achievement
    Once in place in our young psyches, the Ego serves as a tool of society. We are easily trained to equate our self-worth with our achievements, whether those be the traditional achievements of mainstream culture, such as wealth and “success,” or the equivalent elements in climbing, such as the highest number grade or biggest mountain we have managed to climb. We have been conditioned