My lord, C C C. All these interminable questions. By asking such questions, you are no different than the majority who come here wanting the world handed to them on a golden platter without having done
any of the work.
When are you going to stop asking silly questions and start looking inside? Or are you afraid of what you might find there?
C C C:
If a person is slighted (ie. insulted, abused, whatever). He feels "2 inches tall". He feels like he is "nothing". Is his self lessened by this process?
For instance, notice how you have worded the third sentence here. Why don't you try investigating the arising of
vedana within yourself (this "feeling like he is nothing") and see if you can find an answer there? Must everyone else do the work for you!
Also, you might try contemplating any of the following:
A wise man once spoke:
"Be like a mirror. Allow no evil to pass through you. Reflect it back to its source."
"Be like still water: you look into it and see yourself."
"The heart of a wise man is tranquil and still. Thus it is the mirror of heaven and earth."
"Bind yourself to nothing. Seek harmony with all. Then you will be truly free." "A man who knows how to live has no place for death to enter."
This last might be altered to the following with regard to the question asked:
"A man who knows himself and how to live has no place for his ego to enter." Try contemplating that sometime and see what you come up with.
C C C:
If a person is praised or attended to, and feels "ten feet tall and bullet proof", has his sense of self been increased in the process?
Or is it that the degree of self remains the same, . . .
Do you know why you received no answers to these questions?
No? Not even a clue?
Well, then, I'll spell it out for you.
No one but oneself knows the answers to these questions. To ask them of others is to denigrate oneself, and to display for the whole world to see one's inherent shortcoming: one's own ignorance!
Even Mind Over Matter has this figured out, and he is your junior in terms of practice and chronological age. Are you going to let him get away with that! He explained it exquisitely in the following passage:
"There isn't any ego to build, not saying that everyone is enlightened, but the whole point is that
there never was a self, only thoughts about self that go unchallenged, so we believe them. But thoughts are not being experienced by any entity, they're just arising and vanishing on their own. We might believe all, or none, of our thoughts, but in any case, they arise and pass, caused by another thing that also arises and passes."