I’ll give you an honest answer - because yours is. Sorry, it’s weird, I know, but it’s true.

When you communicate with an enlightened person in the context of spirituality, he becomes a perfect mirror for your ego. You are basically seeing your own reflection in him. Only ego can see ego. If you’re seeing ego, you are ego.

Questions like this come from a deep confusion about what ego is. Most people think ego is what makes people mean, selfish, rude. No. Nice, pleasant, altruistic is still ego. There is no difference. One is a plus, one a is minus, that’s the only difference. No ego is not a plus, no ego is zero.

Ego is vanity. Ego is what makes you think you are better than other people. Look at your question. He appears selfish to you, grandiose, with an inflated ego. It’s bad to be selfish, of course! Bad to be grandiose! You are much less selfish! Much less grandiose, much more modest, your ego appears to be much smaller. In other words, you are seeing yourself as better. That’s your ego.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t “resonate” or “rings true”. It won’t. The thing is, this is just impossible to understand before authentic enlightenment. Impossible. It is very painful to see that being nice, kind, modest, and all around “good” as it’s culturally defined in the society is vain. Moreover, it’s cruel. It is very painful to realize that you were incapable of love. Because when you are like that you can’t really love unkind and rude people, those who need love the most. You’ll be telling yourself you can, but you really can’t. All you do is unconsciously kick them down with your “if you were like me, you’d be happy like me” demeanor. It is very painful to see your own cruelty. Most people absolutely aren’t ready for that, they’d much prefer to stay good than to become zero.

In the dream state, everyone gets exactly the opposite of what they need, that’s why it’s so hard to get out of it, so hard to wake up. Everything is against you. People who are suffering and lash out in their suffering are shamed for that, so they suffer even more. The shamers, those who think they are happy and nice are only happy because they are allowed to feel they are better and they are allowed to shame. Their callousness gets a stamp of approval, validation and praise from society. They can’t see it, of course, ego can never see itself. You can only see it after you die. All of it. Without suffering, there can be no depth.

So, if your ego is beaten down, if you are depressed and self-hating, an enlightened person will never appear to have an inflated ego to you. He will appear to be a beacon of hope, an embodiment of love. I would never kick you down when you’re in pain already. But if you’re full of yourself, and oh-so-proud of your modesty, he will appear to have a huge ego - your own reflection.

In public forums this dynamic can look supremely weird, if one has no clue what’s going on. The ones who try to match the social “ideal”, who go around making a show of themselves displaying their wisdom, kindness, compassion, pleasantry and politeness, and tell others they should all be like them in various suggestions which they call “sharing” and “transmissions” often times get brutally smacked down by an enlightened person. They are the ones having the most inflated egos, and you can see that if you know how to look - because immediately after having their attempts to shame and educate firmly rejected, they show their teeth and become verbally aggressive. Just watch. You don’t even have to insult them - they consider a simple factual statement like “you have nothing to teach me” an insult or a sign that they need to double their efforts to mold your behavior into the proper shape. And if you say something mildly unpleasant to them, that, of course, is a sign of ignorance. That’s what vanity looks like.