Books spark my ego - any advice?

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum, so here is a quick introduction of mine: My name is Tim and I live in northern Germany, close to Hanover. I am interested in mindfulness and meditation for about a year now and try to live with it as much as I can. So far, I think it has helped me a lot calming down and getting to know myself.

Recently, I was trying to move my ego out of all areas of my life. Doing that, I recognized that my ego finds it quite attractive to have all these books presented in the shelf. I sometimes have the feeling that they show other people who I am and that my bookshelf is letting a bright light shine on me, since most of the books are self-help, spiritual or biographies. Also, I feel my ego getting sparked about accumulating all this knowledge through the books. I catch myself thinking about how much more I know than others and how much more of a spiritual being I am.

Now, I really like reading books and learning, so I totally want to keep up that activity. In order to not having them displayed in my bookshelf, I bought a kindle, but I don't really like the "electronic reading", so I would love to come back to real books. I think, having the books in the shelf also helps me remember the good lessons in them. For example, I have "The Power Of Now" by Eckhart Tolle in my Kindle and I hardly remember his words because I never see something from it. Meanwhile, there are books in my shelf that I read 3 years ago and I get reminded of them each time I walk past the shelf and have a look at them.

Does anyone have any thoughts or similar experiences to this? I just don't really know how to keep my ego out of this.

Thanks in advance,
Tim

I think your awareness of your pride through your bookshelf collection is enough.

I can't see what's wrong in you liking your books. I like mine and have never wanted a Kindle. And there's nothing wrong with ego. We all have one. You may try to transcend it and it may change little by little as you proceed but that's to be expected - ego is a process and not "set in stone".

But books? They are rarely money wasted.