We must face reality: there is a tyrannic
”small ego” in everybody’s head, and this small ego keeps grumbling and
complaining all the time. It is a dissatisfied, possessive small ego that often
makes our life a misery. It is for certain that this small ego–or, more
precisely, what we believe is our Self, our Ego–coiled up tightly in the back
of our mind, is responsible for a tremendous amount of senseless and
unnecessary suffering and destruction in the history of mankind.
The Birth of the Ego
The Ego, as the organizing and controlling centre
of our personality, is responsible for creating a balance between the
individuals and their environment. In these efforts, Ego is assisted by two
other components of our personality: Persona
(that is, the ”role personality”) and the Shadow. These two components fulfill
a protective function, as Persona screens potentially harmful effects from the
external world, whereas the Shadow does the same with threats arising from the
unconscious. These components together constitute the identity of the person.
A baby does not yet have a personality, an Ego,
an identity separate from their mother. For a baby, the world is a mixture of
tastes, voices, colours, forms and impressions, the elements of which are
indiscernible. There is no Self and non-Self, a baby still lives in an
unconscious unity. As a consequence of urging bodily needs to be satisfied and
unavoidable clashes with the external world, with ”reality,” the harmony
between the baby and the outside world will be disrupted. The baby learns to
walk, and the world opens up for them. They learn to speak, which will open up
social life. In this way, the baby will
be gradually detached from the mother, and a separate ”Self”emerges in them,
and the Ego is thus born.
With the acquisition of the ability of speech,
the child increasingly identifies with their name. "Little Stevie is hungry!"–the
child says, and gradually learns the concept of ”me” and ”mine.” The child is
increasingly convinced that the more they possess and the more often they
assert their own will, the stronger their own personality will be. That is how
the Ego emerges, the attention turns away from the Miracle and the
Consciousness submerges into that dream. The world is becoming larger and
larger for the child, they possess more and more, and the Ego grows and becomes
stronger. Then follows the kindergarten age, when the child learns to play and
assume roles, thus shaping and developing the Persona, that is, the role
personality, creating the beginnings of the masks they are going to wear later.
In the unconscious, the Shadow is being formed
in parallel with the masks. The patterns of behaviour rejected by the adults in
the child’s environment will sink into subconscious, as these patterns are in
opposition to the role and mask of the ”good child.” That is how the methods of
unconscious operation of the Ego take shape.
The Rise of the Ego
When the child gets to school, they learn more
and more–often unconsciously–from the adults, from parents, teachers, and
unquestioningly accepts everything told them by the grown-up people that the
child considers omniscient.
When the child grows and becomes older, they
fully identify with their ideas, name and gender, with the masks they have
acquired, their qualifications, titles, job and property, learns stories, and
their personal life story will be a part of their Ego, increasing the content
of that Ego.
And the Ego wants to
possess more and more, wants to become more and more powerful. More knowledge,
more faith, more material wealth. The Ego wants to devour more and wants to do
it more anxiously. That is how the Ego becomes a tyrant and dominates our life
to an increasing extent.
The Ego identifies with the
human being, a ”special species” that has privileges on Earth where all
creatures live, and humans are destined to rule over all other creatures. They
want to conquer and subdue nature, then they are alienated and separated from
nature, though they should be an organic and inseparable part of it–in fact,
identical with it.
Ego (which is but a mental
production, a system of beliefs) confronts the deep-rooted, natural program of
life, instincts, emotional warning signs, and chases them away, replacing them
with neurosis, stress and a burnt-out state. What is more, in certain cases it
is even able to destroy the individual in a variety of ways. It also confronts
the external world ("Let us conquer Earth!"), the extermination of
species, violence, wars and ecological disasters show the path of man on Earth.
Terrorists, religious
fundamentalists, nations fighting wars of conquests, power maniac politicians
and uninhibited business people–they are all representatives of the overgrown
Ego. Our entire culture and civilization
rest upon the selfish and possessive Ego and, as the Ego created the
institutions of society, these institutions are also the expressions of the
Ego.
The Downfall of the Ego
The social and ecological crises that threaten
mankind and our Earth force us to make a choice. We must reach beyond our
Ego-dominated mind programs, because if we fail to do that, we will eventually
destroy ourselves and a large part of the world!
The Ego must therefore
fall, as it is against the evolutionary development of the Consciousness. The downfall of the Ego may take
place in two ways: a beautiful, dignified way or a painful one, full of
suffering. But both ways will take us to the same goal: the Miracle, theawakening Consciousness.
We are very well acquainted with the journey
full of pain. A basic aspiration of every Ego is
growth, to become larger, stronger
and more solid in the world of forms and shapes. It wants to posses more, to
get higher and higher in the hierarchic structure of the world, and it wants to
conquer a larger and larger territory. Under the spell of the forms and shapes,
the Ego devotes all its energy to make the forms constant, disregarding the
only constant law of the forms and shapes: every
form is transient, and everything is subject to birth and death.
The Ego intends to elevate the
forms (including its own form) to eternity, which is impossible. This intention
of the Ego will be the source of all sufferings, because its world of forms and
shapes shall collapse like a sandcastle after a while, until death snatches
away the last of the forms: its body from it. It came empty-handed from
Nothing, and that is how it is going to return there. The only treasure it could take along with it is its wakefulness, but
the Ego considers that worthless in the world of forms and shapes, as it was
not a means of increasing the tyrannical power the Ego.
The Spiritual Birth
That spiritual birth starts
with the recognition that most people only make in articulo mortis: that turning away from the Miracle and
identification with the forms and shapes is the reason for all our sufferings.
A person making that recognition gradually gives up their identification with
the forms and shapes, and steps back from the whirling of the world into a more
quiet area. In this way they will be more alert to themselves and their
environment. The clear
sky of Consciousness will be contaminated by fewer and fewer clouds, giving way
to the return to the Miracle of Consciousness.
In the space of Consciousness, in the state of
pure consciousness the person recognizes and clearly experiences that Ego is a fraud. The Ego calls itself
real and the only existing ”Self,” though it is nothing more than a conceptual
product, the continually changing content of the space of Consciousness that
diverts our attention from experiencing the only reality: the Miracle.
The spiritual ”newborn” in the pure state of
consciousness, in meditation, in the wakeful state of focusing on itself, seeks
and searches that complaining and arrogant, constantly chatting Ego in its
mind, but finds it nowhere. The individual penetrates all the way to the source
of that voice, but when they attempt to grab it, it slips away and vanishes.
The internal monologue, the voice of Ego
stops and disappears, it is lost into No-thingness, and the person experiences
that there is not other ”Self” but the Consciousness. The individual will then
realize that the only natural remedy against the paranoid overgrowing of the
Ego is wakefulness and attention.
This is the beginning of a life of different
quality: experiencing the Miracle, which is salvation for the entire mankind.
First as pre-historic people we recognized our bodily needs, in the Middle Ages
we experienced extreme emotions, in the modern age we worship the power of the
mind, and now we are on the threshold of a new period in evolution. We
recognize that beyond the realm of sensations, emotions and thoughts there is a
wakeful, attentive, loving, conscious, factual ”something”–and that ”Something,”
that Miracle is me. That is how the human race, waking to Consciousness
from the dream of the Ego, is born again.
From the new book: 3 Stages in the Evolution of the Human Spirit EGO – ALERTNESS – CONSCIOUSNESS byFrank M Wanderer
(C) Frank M. Wanderer, 2013-2016.
You can republish our articles for free, but please include the author's name and a link to our homepage (www.frankmwanderer.com)
About the author:
Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D is a professor of psychology, a consciousness researcher and writer.
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Frank is also the author of the following books:
- The Revolution of Consciousness: Deconditioning the Programmed Mind
- The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness!
- The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games?
- and several other books on consciousness and enlightenment.
You can follow Frank online at:
- https://egoalertnessconsciousness.wordpress.com/
- http://fmwanderer.wordpress.com
He has contributed to a few different spiritual websites including
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FYI - Typo: posses vs. possess.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post - it is fantastic