EGO GETS A BAD RAP
The Ego is the arbiter, the mediator, the balancer between all the positives and negative strengths or forces in an individual human being.
Ego is not a thing, per se, but an expression of who we think we are or might be or can be, a moving point in our mind, in ourselves that changes, perhaps day-to-day, in relation to our experience of our physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. It is when the Ego gets out of balance that it becomes obviously dysfunctional, ugly, and maybe destructive; of course, that happens because of insecurity which causes us, humans, to compensate by becoming too aggressive or too passive. The insecurity, I would say, is caused by fear and doubt which seems to spring from our genetics, and perhaps our Karma, and clearly our environment…………. To me, this all looks like a slowly simmering, bubbling cauldron or system for the development of an individual or a civilization or perhaps a window into the evolving consciousness of a person or a whole nation of people.
There are lots of ways to look at Ego; it’s not a simple thing to blame our or other peoples unbalanced behavior on, it’s a beautiful daily, moving presentation of the awareness and values of a person or a group of people that, studied over time, can help us all to see and assess truth or deceit in one of us or in all of us, it’s like a picture of ourselves without our physical and personality beauty aids on.
I know some of my remarks about Ego sound a lot like describing personality, and obviously, Ego is a huge part of what most people think of as personality. Let me try to clarify what I see as the basic difference between personality and Ego. First, Ego feels like a personal pronoun to me, and secondly, by comparing two Christmas trees: a Christmas tree with all the decorations is our personality and a tree with no decoration which is our Ego; just a beautiful, honest, spiritual gyroscope that is reflecting the state of our spiritual health…………. Remember, a dysfunctional Ego may have to be dynamic, the center of attention, or they may be a drab wallflower or even a recluse.
In my opinion, most Egos, the every-day kind, are wonderful; they can rise to excellent accomplishments only to fall in disgrace, be beaten down to almost terminal humiliation but in the end be able to see a much truer and higher value in themselves and become great human beings. WOW, my hat’s off to the Ego.
Jack