Give the Ego a Chance:
How to Heal and Work with it
Many people are striving now a day to be happy.
All over the world many of us feel compelled to grow and find a personal and
collective state of joy and peace. When we face this enormous so-called challenge
of “becoming happier”, we realize that there is no other form of growth than
self-development, and that this journey is all about self-discovery.
It is common to seek the questions of “why”
this or that is happening to me, but certainly, this leads to a great
frustration as we realize there is no real or satisfying answer. We then move
to a much more effective question: “how” to accomplish that person that I want
to be. And without hesitation this dilemma encounters the real great question:
“who am I?”.
Getting to Know the
Ego:
One of the major blocks we find in the journey
of self-discovery is the Ego. What is the Ego? Although there is a popular
knowledge about it through affirmations like “this feeds my ego” or “you need a
stronger ego”, when we come closer to eastern perspectives it is frequent to
find the notion of letting go of the ego.
How does this really work? Who am I beyond my
ego?
First of all we need a definition of ego to
give a common ground of what we are talking about. Although Psychology has made
long-term attempts of defining it, now a days there is a growing necessity of
managing this and more concepts, and moreover, applying them in our real life. In
this article I will give grounded notions of the Ego and its adherent concepts
so that we can learn to work with ourselves in our daily life.
Just as we need a vehicle to move through long
distances, we need an ego to function in this third dimension and navigate
through this material reality. Just as a car (or our body), commonly we don´t
know all of its pieces and mechanisms, but we are aware that it moves,
functions and serves a purpose.
Imagine yourself floating around with no
purpose and bumping into the objects in the world with no direction. It would
be chaotic. So we need a certain guideline, a sense of motion and an inner
sense of piloting this navigation.
The ego is a vehicle. Of what? The real You.
Picture yourself sitting in a computer (which for this example could be another
type of vehicle). Imagine that the computer suddenly starts using you and
begins to open programs and applications with no control of you over it. It
would be ridiculous right? It is as ridiculous the way that the ego –and its
ally, the mind- controls our lives. So
if the computer is the ego and the mind (as a software), then who or
what is controlling it…? You. Who is you? Think for a moment… There is an inner
sense of you that moves beyond the vehicles, that has consciousness of them and
gives purpose to that use. That inner attitude could be defined as the Soul, in
C.G. Jung´s terms.
As the computer registers a history of how it
was used and when, so does our Ego. We register all of our impressions in the
world as we grew up. Our first society is our family, directed by our parents,
and this is the first mirror and given source of concepts that we get for
ourselves and the sense of who we are. And of course there is a whole realm of
ourselves that we don´t yet know (the personal unconscious). But as our parents
were also influenced and impregnated by something else (the collective
unconscious) our ego is a product of multiple and inherited patterns of
conditioning (behaviors, morals, etc),as Osho refers to it, that “models” our
external presentation.
So the Ego becomes a character built up by
multiple characters, concepts and the roles we play in society, everything we
have externally learned as good or bad. So the Ego, the subject of
consciousness, as Jung defines it, is the complex of things that we have
identified upon and by which we function. In other words, what we know about ourselves,
or what we have chosen to know about ourselves are those characters we play in
all of our relationships.
But the Ego, this vehicle, is part of a whole,
something bigger in which it is sustained. The Psyche, that bigger realm,
contains 2 dimensions: the conscious and the unconscious. In the field of the
conscious the ego resides. In the field of the unconscious the Self resides,
that animus part of us that embodies and manifests the soul.
The consciousness would be like the property of
our whole psychic realm of knowing itself.
The Traps of the Ego:
So the Ego is made of characters and concepts
learned (most of them imposed!) and like in any movie, the Ego likes to play
games between these roles. Emotion and commotion are the motors of this
theatre, and although it can be fascinating it can also be very exhausting and
destructive. The Ego was taught to manipulate and be manipulated, to attack and
defend itself. So the vehicle that we are taught to use has these main
functions.
As part of the show, the Ego is so, a creator
and victim of this ornamented illusion. It relates primarily to the external
world, thus, likes to control the uncontrollable. The Ego knows that the realm
of the unconscious is by nature, uncertain, and so, as a vehicle, needs a
structure to feel secure. It will do anything to keep holding the great
illusion of a perfectly controlled and manipulated world outside, where
everyone else is revolving around it and fulfilling its demands. This is what
we call the traps of the ego: it will lie, push, demand, defend, attack,
compete, protect, constrain, yell, and dramatize, as far as it can go, so to
keep up this ongoing game of sustaining the main illusion of control. The greatest joke of the Ego is that it makes a fool of itself. As it is
oriented towards the outside world, the Ego won´t take responsibility for
itself, tending to judge and blame the outside world for its results. It is
good to remember that “we don´t see thing as they are, we see them as we are”.
The great illusion that happiness or God is something you search on the outside
is a notion that comes from the Ego.
On a collective level, the sum of Egos build up
a conditioned and rigid society whose individuals are confined to determined
ways of behaving and in which the world is a result of black and white, good
and bad, a consensus of “normality” and what is expected of each one. There is
no room for spontaneity, authenticity and creativity, because this defies the
old rigid ways of the Ego and so, we learn to compromise our inner truth since
the very beginning. And every time the illusion is cracked open, it is hurtful for
the Ego (not the true Self).
The process by which the Ego derives to a False
Self instead of a Real Self is a matter of a whole new article; however, it is
central to understand how this vehicle can be oriented to fulfill one way or
another. The Ego, which is an essential quality of the human being, is prone to
support either the negative sides of yourself or the positive ones.
On a “metaphysical” level, the Ego vibrates
mainly on FEAR (of the natural uncertainty of reality) and so, it serves a very
specific purpose of protecting the human body, its functions, and the embodied
soul. Although it may surprise you, this is a very essential need for the human
being; if it weren´t for the Ego, we would have no notion of the material world
and our soul -and its floating nature- would make us just wonder around and not
assimilate that a passing car or a raging lion could kill us. This is where the
feeling of separation originally arises from, since we are born in a finite
body, we adjust to the consciousness of differentiation from infinity.
Nevertheless, the Ego is supposed to be what it
essentially is: a vehicle for the soul in this third dimension. And, as my Kundalini
Yoga Master used to say to me often, “the rest is Maya (illusion) and games”.
Shedding the Ego:
moving towards the Soul
As we now know that the Ego is a necessary
mechanism of the human reality, as it translates the experiences of the outside
world to our inner sense of being, we cannot get rid of it. Trying to eliminate
it in the sense of a battle can even create more duality and suffering.
However, if we remember the principle of the Universe, “nothing is created,
nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed”, then we can have a closer
sense of the Ego work that is to be done: Transformation.
As C.G. Jung and many others have described,
transformation can only happen when we accept first. Acceptance has the quality
of inclusion and integration and resonates on the level of LOVE, which is the Soul´s
nature. Accept what? Everything that is beyond the boundaries of the ego
(including it): uncertainty and the unknown. The Ego can only be transcended,
this means, accept it and go beyond. Beyond where? Not to the outside world but
within. As we move towards the inner self (the manifested aspect of the Soul)
we delve into the unconscious and the unknown. This is the place that in
Transpersonal Psychology is called “The Shadow”: hidden on unconscious aspects
of oneself which the ego has either repressed or never recognized. It is the
one that holds the potential of becoming our True Self, it is where our
authenticity, spontaneity and all the pasts wounds related to them are resting,
constituting at the same time, our greatest fears.
The wise Miguel Ruiz said that what we mostly
fear is to become our True Self, and to do that we need to transcend the Ego,
go beyond its mechanisms and tune into acceptance. This is why we mostly
experience the opposite of the Ego in this process: vulnerability, openness, innocence,
flexibility, softness, neutrality. Recalling on C.G. Jung, “the psyche is
transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the unconscious”.
That which you reject gives you the opportunity
of going deeper within you. Working with the Shadow is like going inside a dark
room. You move around it, explore the experience with your whole senses and
intuition and reach for the power switch (that holds your potential), finally
turning the light on. This light, which is our Consciousness, suddenly brings a
sense of completeness again. The more lights your turn on in the inside, the
more consciousness you have of yourself and the saying “we are light” makes
even more sense. It is in this light that it is possible to embrace our own
divinity because there is full acceptance and consciousness of who we truly
are.
This is how self-discovery leads to wisdom; you
have the experience of your Inner Self. Transcending the Ego implies, then, to
go within and not outside, because in the inside our Soul is connected to the
Cosmic Consciousness, the Original Experience… “Who looks outside dreams; who
looks inside awakes” (C.G. Jung).
To contribute to the evolution of humanity, we
must start within ourselves. As we unfold our own personal subconscious,
defying our ego with divine courage, we dive into our own personal
consciousness, and thus, contributing to the collective consciousness too and
its enlightment.
As we move closer to the Soul, let us give the
vehicle (ego) a chance to be what it is meant to be: an expression of the Soul,
serving and manifesting our Inner Self in the outside world.
Opportunities to heal
and work with the Ego:
- -
Get
to know your Shadow and work with it.
- - Unidentify
from your regular beliefs. Remember beliefs are temporary and they will change
just as your circumstances do.
- -
Get
to know your Inner Self through the realm of the body; ask yourself frequently
“What am I feeling right now?” and let the answer unfold itself by sensations
instead of words at first. Take your time! This is not a fast exercise.
- -
Gain
consciousness of your “roles” and “characters”; which are the most common and
when do they come outside to play.
- - Practice
consciousness: be a witness of yourself, use slow and deep breathing, gain
mindfulness upon everything you do.
- - Get
to know yourself in these four dimensions, differentiating between them:
thoughts, feelings, sensations, intuitions.
- -
Practice
interesting games such as dieting of judgments for a whole hour or expressing
yourself without swearing to see what other language and form of expression
comes out of you.
- -
Adopt
an innocent attitude as if you were a child, and play the learning game for a
whole day: Rediscover everything, give yourself the chance of not knowing (and
be ok with it), give yourself the chance of not having the last word nor trying
to prove someone wrong. At the end of the day ask yourself gently: What did I
learn from myself today?
- -
If
you made a mistake, laugh at yourself, laugh with yourself, then forgive
yourself, just as an act of love.
- - Explore
what happens to you internally if something doesn´t go your way. Explore your
reactions. Write them down. Then read them outloud pretending you are a
charcter from a movie. What do you feel?
- -
At
the end of the day, be thankful for all the “bad things” that happened. Explore
what feelings and fears come to you. Let them exist. Allow yourself to truly
thank bad things that happened. Practice this for a week and register what
changes in you after this.
- -
At
the beginning of the day, open your arms and declare: I TRUST everything that
comes to me during this day. Everything. Make the Ego uncomfortable. Take a leap of faith.
