Note: I initially wasn't going to post this as I feel it may be too similar to Vulnerability in Sharing an Inner Personal Conundrum. However, I did share it with a dear friend yesterday who encouraged me otherwise.

Early on (in my teenage years), I have had my mind on ideals of Enlightenment and Transcendence and have done what I have felt would better lead me down that path. One of the first steps was in observing many of the world's most prominent messiahs were divergent; they figured things out on their own aside from the cultural frameworks they were born into and inherited; they forged their own paths. So I chose to do the same, often gleaning from other sources but not committing to any one practice or tradition. It's a synonymous function to that found in chaos magic. I've also been an auto didact most of my life.

Concerns around ego balance and management were some of the primordial nexus points for my growth on this path. I felt that I had observed a great deal of egoism in the world and would try to augment my thoughts, behaviors, and actions accordingly, attempting to avoid promoting anything similar. The way "ego" is often spoken of also seems to be couched in negative connotations.

It became an ongoing program running in the background of my mind. I became neurotically obsessive.

This position and practice over time became overextended; with depression in the picture as well, in trying to "manage" my ego, I have in some ways destroyed it.

Example: I work hard on my body; my body is my temple. While observing my physique in the mirror this morning, I thought "I'm looking pretty good." Immediately after came a series of thoughts connected to feeling of guilt or shame for thinking that I looked good in that moment. I felt egotistical.

This feeling permeates many areas of my life. I'm sure you can imagine.

It's hard to give myself any credit. It's hard to let in a believe compliments of many kinds.

Why I feel bad/aweful/guilty/ashamed thinking some of the thoughts I think

No wonder I deal with so much action paralysis and feel unaccomplished, and seemingly get very little done!

No wonder spiritual, psychedelic and philosophic work is that much harder to do.

And I find this funny, in a dark humor kind of way, that such mismanagement of such a goal can lead to such a "traumatic" conundrum. I've lost/forgotten how to really feel balanced (and sometimes goodness) and to allow it.

This is also an example of overgeneralizing.

At least now, I see it and I know .

Something to be balanced, explored, and managed.

The ego, despite how it's spoken of (and not discounting the amalgam of abstract manners in which the ego is seen how it is (ie, combinations of philosophies and practices to which the word "ego" is used and applied, eg. Buddhist, Hindu, Freudian, western philosophical practices and traditions, etc.)) is not something to be "rid" of. It is part of our being, it is what allows the self to operate as a singular function (such that, ego death can be interpreted not as the elimination of the self, but as the period of ego shutoff in which the self is indifferent to being a self; that is when we feel the self has dissolved and combined with the whole, the self is still extant). Many individuals are run and ruled by their egos. The goals should be to balance it.

Note: the feeling of being egotistical even comes up in sharing posts like these

Thank you for reading.



One love

I have to say that shame would have to be something I would associate with an Ego level of consciousness. A more transcendent aspect of yourself would have more compassion for you.

I would as well, but from the ego being damaged. And it was a specific feeling from thinking I was thinking egotistically. I'm finding that much of the compassion I show externally could be well used internally as well.

Thank you for reading and sharing.



One love

I understand this borderline maniacal desire to "get rid" of the ego. I've been there for some time as well, but quickly found it to be a rather slippery slope, one that I definitely didn't like being on, so I pulled back.

Throughout my journeys, the notion of "ego" has transformed many times, and ultimately took the form of a single idea - that of "separation". And ever since, it's been difficult for me to think of ego as anything else but the material aspect of our existence subconsciously separating itself from everything else. This is what leads to the feeling of "me versus you", and of material versus immaterial. But there's one thing that stands out clearly to me - as much as the two realms are different, they are also inseparable.

The entirety of human experience is comprised of two strands of metaphysical "reality", and to completely remove or denounce one of these is to shatter the integrity of the whole. Sometimes it's healthy to do so in a calculated, deliberate and intentful manner, but one could not possibly exist in that state all the time if they want to do so in a state of relative comfort or harmony.

To me, suppressing the ego means suppressing the part of consciousness that imparts the existence of boundaries. Boundaries between people, between ideas, between physical or metaphysical realms and mediums. A state of egolessness is a state of complete unity with all. And it is imperative that everyone do it once in a while.

I completely agree with your POV, and with the sentiment for balance. The latter has been a focus of mine for the past few years. Before I took off to Peru I tattooed the yin-yang symbol on my hand, with b. caapi and p. viridia twisting around it and around my arm, as a symbol of the balance I strive to achieve through the help of plant teachers.

You may not be there yet, but I just wanted to say I'm proud of your continued efforts and dedication to perfecting your experience. It's inspiring to have people like you around, so others that may be feeling stuck in an unpleasant loop can find the power to work on themselves.

Thank you for sharing your story. There's something to learn from all of your posts.

Love & Light

I definitely know what you're talking about with the pervasive tendency to see ego as inherently bad and something to be suppressed and fought against, and also your observation that it's simply an inseparable part of the psyche. At first I too was quite set on the idea of the ego as essentially a problem to be solved, but over the course of many trips I realised not only that this attitude isn't very helpful, but that even the very concept of ego itself is quite a slippery one and therefore focusing on and thinking about it too intently will probably cause more problems than it solves (actually this latter point applies to all kinds of things; I think intuition is often far more capable than the reasoning mind when it comes to problems concerning the personal, often unlanguageable world, which reason tends to get hopelessly tangled up on. In my opinion intuition is absurdly undervalued and mistrusted and can very easily come to parsimonious resolutions for all kinds of otherwise hazy and labyrinthine questions/problems). I was often surprised after serious trips that I came out with a very strengthened ego, especially after trips where the feeling of oneness in some greater whole was the strongest and most profound. I feel that this is due to the fact that this 'ego death' experience occurs when we recognise ourselves as the greater whole, not necessarily when we are dissolved into it. I have also come out of trips feeling that my ego has been pruned, with excessive defensiveness or denial or pride that has grown over time being simply cut away. My guess is that psychedelics help to mold a more 'balanced' ego, one that is less fragile and/or overgrown and/or whathaveyou, and one that to me that feels more 'natural' or 'appropriate'. Using psychedelics and intuition, I feel that the ego can be happily managed as a healthy and fulfilling part off the psyche without too much fuss.

Many thanks for sharing

I have never met anyone without an ego.

There are many good reasons for keeping ego under controll. The ego is flawed, it does not always see the world for what it is, it can ignore the interests of others, it has a tendency towards overindulgence, etc.

So there are good reasons to keep it on a leash. But i don't believe it can ever be defeated permanently. It is part of what we are.

Even the most disciplined practitioners of the strictest form of buddhism, will admit that they have not defeated it. And in many cases, those who claimed to háve done it, have later on been accused of sexual misconduct towards people, lower in the hierarchy of their order.

It may sound like a bit of a paradox, but i think that believing the ego can be shed off permanently, is just another trick of that very same ego itself, and that to controll our ego, we'll have to let go of that fantasy.

Part of what we are, is that we are an animal. We have a spiritual side as well, but as long as we'll live, we will never stop also being an animal, with animal needs and desires.

I believe it is more enlightened (and also much more difficult, unfortunately) to just admit that, and try to deal, than to try to deny this basic truth of what we are in this earthly realm.

This is very very beautiful to me. Thank you all for your thoughtful and candid contributions.

Considering the issue being shared, and in an effort to take a step towards change, I am allowing the understanding, encouragement, and validation from all of you to actually enter me and be accepted without worry or concern.

I'm commonly not understood well by most that I've happened to engage with, so this is really refreshing for me.

I share these kinds of things for a few reasons: While I know dealing with this issue may be sort of novel and rare, I'm not one to think I'm the only one dealing with a particular issue. As such, I hope that my personal reflections may help others with their own subjective interpretations and reflections. I also feel that putting myself in a vulnerable position of sorts and calling myself out in an open way can be a powerful facilitator of change. Lastly, since it's something I struggle with, this has been a way for me to see it more clearly and deliver appropriate scrutiny over my interpretations of my realizations.



Can't lie, I stuck with it so long because I assumed it was supposed to be really hard. I didn't want to "give up."



While I may have worded things differently, I am in general agreement with your perspective and I appreciate. And humbly, thank you. it's all work in progress right?



Very beautiful titus. Thank you!

What this brings to mind is the idea of abstraction. Some abstractions are combinations of abstractions to make a greater abstraction. Saying something is abstract (like love, intelligence, ego, etc) does not mean that it is not "real," but moreso states something about the nature of it's "reality," such as it having a certain mutability and flexibility that the physical world doesn't really have. As such, we must be mindful of the differences within varying contexts in which we apply certain abstractions, because they lack concrete sameness in all contexts. This is coming as an agreement to the statement that the "ego is slippery."



There are some statements you make that really make me laugh and I'm not sure if you have a dry sense of humor (like I tend to), and are intending some statements to be funny However, I haven't met anyone without one either.



In light of some perceived synchronicity, the friend who encouraged me to post the op and I both reflected together on the idea and sentiment that Buddha was more than likely intimately in touch with their ego and as such had a certain mastery over it.

And you know me, if it's a paradox it probably makes perfect sense to me But your wisdom shines and I agree, it was certainly a trick, both by my own ego as well the intrusive and colonizing nature of depression.



This I find very meaningful, in that one of the subrealizations experienced after the initial realization was, "this does not mean I have left the path or that goals have changed."

One love

I think that it can be good thing to be critical of oneself. However I think that becoming over critical of our actions will limit our ability to think clearly and ingrain bad habits in the future.

As beings with perception and cognizance we have the ability to see the cause and effect chain that we are apart of. By seeing this we can differentiate experiences that have merit and those that do not. It might be the ego's responsibility then to replicate the experience that bring about wholesomeness. This gives the ego a job rather than making it an enemy.

I think beings that realize this might be called enlightened just because there actions and speech are constantly aligned towards this one realization.

Part of the problem with Buddhism in the West (at least for me) is that much of the literature and knowledge that can be accessed is rather extreme at least for Buddhism. I think general practitioners might be more hardcore on average in the West than East because of this.

Additionally Buddhism is no longer just the teaching of the Gautama. Buddhism has followed the process of evolution. Most of the schools of thought do not call for absolute death of the ego for enlightenment.

I think that you are right in that the Buddha was intimately in touch with his ego. I think my favorite portrayal of the Buddha is in the manga Record of Ragnarok. If your interested it is a really violent and very silly but touches me emotionally in a way that things rarely do.

Thank you for your input and support Icyseeker.

Your observations about the extreme extent of practice found in Western cultures resonates very much with me. I am relatively intense, as well as detail oriented, and as such, have tried to act on the degree of detail I notice which lands me in the extremes of various spectrums. So, at this time, it's time for me to notice and act on the fact that to a great extent, I have been trying too hard. There's a little too much "rigidity" in some key regards.
There's so much that I need to relearn to allow myself.

As a result of a recent discussion, I have reinterpreted some Buddhist axioms around suffering. Simply, I am replacing it by striving, which I feel is a bit more accurate of an translation and interpretation and allows me to not feel like I'm supposed to be miserable all the time.

And I really just look at all of this as part of me traversing my path. Part of the framework is the idea that "Enlightenment can be found, attained, and discovered anywhere," and so have approached this ideal in my own way. It's always evolving. Similar to that of say Buddhism, which has already been highlighted has evolved to include many sects of thought around some of these matters. This is why I am fulfilled by approaching things philosophically; so much seems very open-ended.

And I'm going to check out that Manga. Thank you for sharing.

Sorry if my prose is a little weird. I'm finishing this while coming down from changa. I may have been too critical in how I wanted to respond. Critical thinking is somewhat innate for me.

One love

Ego is just another tool in the box. Banging a nail in with a screwdriver is rather inefficient.

Indubitably

And thank you again everyone.

One love

Hello Void. Great read here through the OP and replies, thank you.

I think if we did not have an appreciation for the visual result of the uncountable molecules that form our bodies it could be considered rather ungrateful. Perhaps when that thought becomes detrimental is when we think we 'look better than someone else' and thus grow notions of superiority.

It is my belief that part of the ego is our sense of individual desire. I must have picked that idea up from someone far wiser than me. Possibly Alan Watts but I forget. To completely eliminate the ego we would need to eliminate all desires. Which is where the great joke becomes apparent. Eliminating the ego is a desire in itself. Unable to be completed until all desires are first eliminated.

Greetings fink, and thank you for weighing in.

I agree with you here, hence why I had to take note of my internal response to said appreciation. It was a huge hint at doing something that I needed to change with myself. And while it's naturally nice when people compliment my physique, I really just want to be able to be pleased at looking at my own temple, as it is a symbol of many things for me personally.

While I don't listen to him myself, seeing as Watts (and Ram Dass) were a few of the first to bring Eastern thought to the west (often from Buddhism and Hinduism) it would be unsurprising if that was where you encountered that idea.

Something else that might be interesting to share is the "kind" of desire that this was framed in in my mind. It was framed as something that I felt I should be doing, rather than something I wanted to do. However, regardless, the attempt was derived from a certain "class" of desire.

I commonly call the great joke the "cosmic comedic tragedy."

It's been interesting since having noticed this hang up and sharing it here. After doing so, reflecting on this post (and a few others that are related in some way) I've "dropped the rock" so to speak, feeling a great weight lifted. It's so much easier to be patient, understanding and compassionate of myself now. I also feel a bit more freedom within.

One love

This is a revelation and relief. You don't know how many times I've thought of that saying and wondered if I'm truly doomed. Striving is something I can believe in and get behind. In fact, it is healthy. It just requires the appropriate focus to focus the striving in different areas that lead to progress and ideally contribute to society. The opposite of striving is meditation. Alternating between striving and meditation is a life that can put me at peace.

I also wanted to add that my mission for the last handful of years has been to craft a healthy ego. The ego of a warrior.

The journey to more warring ego:

Strong ego: My trips got a lot better when I started to push back against the plants and even get into arguments with them sometimes. They like it. This wouldn't be possible if I wasn't confident in my humanity. The plants aren't humans. Frankly, I don't think they are always right in their judgements. They are extremely removed from this reality. In explaining this to them, I've gotten them to accept a lot more semi-"toxic" aspects of my life. I invite toxicity into my life because I believe I'm taking on society's karma. I've basically told them they need to be a lot more accepting because we are humans and unless they don't like humans, there's a lot to life that is not love and light. This is how I got them to accept me as a more corporate warrior taking on society's karma than hippie.

So I think I have a strong ego.

Flexible ego: I also think one unique thing about me is that I've been able to evolve my ego to a huge degree over time. I become almost a completely different person every 5 years. And that has take conscious effort. I have spent years partying, years networking, years being studious, working in vastly different types of organizations that require different personalities. I've almost been like a different person in each of those phases. I have big plans for the future that require huge transformations so I know I won't even be the same person I am now. This wouldn't be possible without huge control and flexibility over my ego.

In order to have a healthy and strong ego it has to be flexible. You also have to be discerning and know what is right and wrong. When to bend and when not to. Most times it's best to bend and to evolve.

Conclusion
I don't agree with obliterating the ego anymore and I actually think it is toxic in many cases, unless you are using it to become a stronger and better person. If it's making you weaker and more removed from society, that doesn't impress me. It's essential more than ever that we contribute to society and if nexians are sitting at home obliterating their egos, they are not maximizing their potential impacts. I think the goal should be bringing things back from their trips that they can use to make themselves better, improve their lives, improve others lives. Crafting a life and ego for themselves that can drive progress and evolution. Not removing themselves from the process of evolution.

In summary, strong and flexible ego is better than no ego.

Thank you for sharing some of your story and perspective on this matter, jungleheart.

I am certainly with you (now) on building an ego that's strong, balanced, and mutable. Traits that I have chosen to assimilate into my own egoic substrate of myself. Change is constant, and the ego changes with time too.



One love

Lately I’ve had both coexisting in me at the same time.

One thing that has confused me about ego, is that different people seem to describe different things with the word ego. To the Freudians, ego is fundamental to the psyche, to ram dass, and eckhat tolle, it’s something else, more like what y’all are talking about. And to the ancient greeks, as far as I’ve found at least, it meant the beingness of a person.

Hey BfP! It’s great to see you around here so much again!

I think that’s an important point to make in these discussions; the confusion around examining ego is often semantic. The original Latin word just means “I”, but since Latin verbs come fully furnished with their own built in pronouns, anyone who used the word Ego was usually considered to be tripping pretty hard on themself.

And of course, Freud referred to the Ego as the balance act between base desire and totally selfless altruism. I think this is where it gets confusing, as the aspect of self that gives agency is often confused with the Ego. Not only can higher orders of ourselves have agency over our actions, they can comfortably cohabitate with more mundane aspects of ourselves, as you mentioned in your post. My post was just reminding Voidmatrix of the well known practice of “riding the horse”, where the higher self observes lower order mental processes and actions that are the product of conditioning and trauma and allows for built up neurochemical potential to express (purge) itself, but higher order self maintains ultimate control.

I think the state of consciousness where total selflessness is harmonious with lower order aspects of consciousness can be achieved under special circumstances, but is not easy to maintain in mundane reality, though an absence of this state is what some of the schools of thought mean by the term “suffering “.

Obviously, we all need desire to go on living in our bodies. If you don’t eat, you starve to death. While the lower orders of self urge us to eat, there is a huge difference between eating the neighbors and pinching the sweet and tender tips of a plant which usually results in fuller branching at the pinched point. And if you are out doing good in the world, it doesn’t serve the greatest common good to let yourself wither, either. When we project our love out into the universe, it’s very important to remember that we are also part of the universe.

My apologies. I somehow missed these last two very powerful posts and would like to respond to them.



This is where some of my issue was as well. I literally tried to cover all the bases on this one and that meant the inclusion of disparate definitions and descriptions of the ego. I suppose it was a valiant effort, but ultimately, from my personal experience, it's drastically destructive.



And this reminder is and has been greatly appreciated. It was actually a catalyst for noticing another dire parameter of my depression: often when I feel that I am "observing" or trying to be the mode of observation, I can still be in a depressive loop, and it will be shown when I am completely pulled back into a dark state from the pseudo-observational state, which is a constant battle. This is another example that highlights my statements about depression "hijacking my thinking."



And this one hits home because it's what I am currently pushing up against. I have gone a great deal of time castigating myself for having desires and acting on the in a manner that is a gross overgeneralization, but I kept it up because I thought that it was "right" and necessary for certain goals. As it stands, I am really trying to do what I want when I want because I want, within reason of course. In pushing the restart button with psychedelics, I am trying to push myself to allow myself to mildly journey when the thought arises. I've built a relationship with these substances for a reason.

One love