Value Your Ego

Digging into Ego, rather than being a negative thing we need to fight or control, is instead how we use our voice to set boundaries, manifest our best life into the world practically, and unfold our best self into interconnection with the rest of the universe. 

Transcript

Value Your Ego

Over the past sixty years people have come to think of Ego as something we all have, but which tends to be negative. Various religious and spiritual communities have taken up the message that you need to let go of your ego or release it, or at the minimum control and struggle with it in order to be in harmony with the universe, connect with your higher nature, even move towards enlightenment. This concept developed into a common phrase in spiritual community, "You need to get out of your Ego!" It was lobbed at people so often for so many reasons the meaning of it has thinned to almost nothing in the same way "Ooooh, I LOVE that!" stopped having anything to do with actual love. Today the concept seems to have made it into the realm of common sense so well-known there are HuffPo articles about 5 ways to manage your Ego. *sigh*

When I was growing up, I took in this message and tried to follow all the advice given as I thought it was a required part of being on a spiritual path. But the more I learned about Ego, about spirituality and actually walking a spiritual path, the less and less any of this made sense. While the concept made sense at a disconnected, universal, thought/mind level, how it was applied seemed arbitrary and disproportionately abusive to certain populations like minorities, those who are differently abled, women in various cultures and so on.

So where's the disconnect?

I looked to Freud, who popularized the term, and I didn't find a description of the Ego as negative. In fact he found it necessary in order to be healthy and happy. It is the self-identity we use to navigate not only the world around us, but the universe inside us. It's meant to be the decision maker which uses reason to problem solve situations and bring order out of our Id (desires) and the hypercritical, unrealistic Superego. 

The ego operates according to the reality principle, working out realistic ways of satisfying the id's demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society. The ego considers social realities and norms, etiquette and rules in deciding how to behave. So while the Ego can be unbalanced, in a healthy person Freud saw the Ego as the good guy and we should be in it.

Ok, so if this is the case, then how about Jung and the Ego?

Well, he agreed with Freud in this. According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind as it comprises the thoughts, memories, and emotions a person is aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. This works in conjunction with the unconscious and the collective unconscious, which is where things get interesting, dynamic and sometimes dangerous.

Since they both agreed the Ego is a good thing and necessary to the well-being of the individual, providing a means for them to interconnect with the world in good ways, I went looking for other sources for this "negative ego" concept. 

Buddhism in general and current meditation/mindfulness practices are mentioned quite a bit in these discussions but when I started digging there I was surprised to find Buddhist scholars agree: Ego is something we need to navigate the world. They speak about it in terms of "the sense of separate self", but the concept closely translates to Ego in Western culture.

When ancient ideas get transferred to another culture, they often lose their context. It seems historically, while Buddhist teachings recognize and honor the psychological importance of Ego, the teachings about Ego as being a construct and an illusion were amplified when Buddhism migrated to the West and these teachings drowned out the need for a healthy ego as a foundation for Buddhist spiritual practice. 

These teachings around egolessness and letting go of the self have merged with other teachings in the West such as man as essentially sinful and broken, low self-esteem as an indication of moral failure, and experiencing trauma as either normal or the responsibility of the victim, all of which leads to a toxic spiritual path. 

For some it has pushed people into spiritual bypassing, attempting to experience egolessness in order to avoid dealing with issues or problems in a pro-active or even practical manner. For others it has created a wheel of self-loathing which never seems to stop spinning and from which there is no escape.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out: 

"The Dalai Lama isn't the only Asian Buddhist teacher surprised at the amount of self-hatred found in the West. Unfortunately, a lot of people with toxic super-egos have embraced the teaching on egolessness as the Buddha's stamp of approval on the hatred they feel toward themselves."

So this common wisdom, turns out to be not wisdom, but a misunderstanding. We are not meant to get out of our Ego, but rather to be in a fluent and healthy relationship with it.

"Neither Buddhism nor psychotherapy seeks to eradicate the ego. To do so would render us either helpless or psychotic. We need our egos to navigate the world, to regulate our instincts, to exercise our executive function, and to mediate the conflicting demands of self and other." — Mark Epstein

In the face of this negative messaging, it's helpful to remember we each are a piece of divinity. We are a unique light which brings the universe into being. We are responsible for caring for our own light and this is our primary responsibility since we are the only ones who can, and this care doesn't need to be earned. We deserve it because we are breathing. Because we are here. And every single being is better for their being here with us. 

This can be a very difficult message for some people, especially women, to take in completely because the messaging we're steeped in tells us the contrary. Either we're marketed to in a way which makes us feel broken, less than, and inadequate, which is meant to encourage us to buy products which will make us whole. Or we are told our spiritual path is in part to take care of everyone and everything else because this is the way we will earn the right to be loved, cared for, and supported in our turn. Just one more means for us to purchase what is ours by right of our existence.

Unfortunately, spiritual community has taken in this message as well. It shows most readily when it comes to the message around Ego. All religions, spiritualities, and even philosophies have wisdom teaching about being careful of having too much ego, to step out of our ego, to make sure we aren't being ruled by ego or behave in an egotistical manner. These messages have come to be taught as universal wisdom for all human beings regardless of situation or context.

But context very much matters in this case, as in so many things. These wisdom teachings which have come down to us were never intended for a general audience. Most people who would have had access to such writings, teachers, and teachings would have been exclusively empowered males of some level of privilege. They would have been land or business owners, educated elites, political or ruling class families or those with enough power to have gained access to these arenas. From Hinduism to Buddhism, Islam to Judaism, ancient Greeks to Romans, these lessons were aimed at those who tended to overuse or abuse power. Those who were more likely to forget they were/are their brother's keeper, and they are meant to support their community by being of and a part of it, not above or beyond it. Hence the injunction to step out of ego and into service.

Which, as a side note, is why the teachings of Jesus were so very radical in their day. He included the poor, women, slaves, minorities, criminals, and those thought to be beneath notice in his audience. He was one of the few in oral or written history who truly taught to anyone and treated them as equal.

Spiritual teachings about staying out of your ego and focusing on service as a means to walk a spiritual path were never meant for those who had no power or whose life was defined by service and servitude such as women, slaves, animals and others who were considered property. How much more service can you do when your entire life is about doing for others? How ironic is it to be told not to covet what others have when you are never allowed the freedom to covet anything other than freedom? 

But what if the sins enumerated in the Bible, the sins of being too much in your own ego, weren't universal, but instead were formulated to describe an entitled masculine perspective? If so then they would describe the negative aspects of men, not necessarily of women. In fact, if you look at the seven deadly sins you'll see, in general, male empowerment run amok, then look at the seven virtues which are meant to be their remedy and you can see women's service work made to seem saintly rather than a sacrifice of sovereignty.

I've found this concept fascinating for decades because it points to something I have found in my work, that women don't tend towards the same sins as men, but are told they do and so work to redeem themselves from something they aren't doing.

I think Dr. Valerie Saiving describes it best in her article "The Human Situation: A Feminine View", Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion:

"It is my contention that there are significant differences between masculine and feminine experience and that feminine experience reveals in a more emphatic fashion certain aspects of the human situation which are present but less obvious in the experience of men. Contemporary theological doctrines of love have, I believe, been constructed primarily upon the basis of masculine experience and thus view the human situation from the male standpoint. Consequently, these doctrines do not provide an adequate interpretation of the situation of women — nor, for that matter, of men...

...The temptations of woman as woman are not the same as the temptations of man as man, and the specifically feminine forms of sin...have a quality which can never be encompassed by such terms as 'pride' and 'will to power.' They are better suggested by such terms as triviality, distractibility, and diffuseness; lack of an organizing center or focus, dependence on others for one's self-definition; tolerance at the expense of standards of excellence...In short, underdevelopment or negation of the self."

So rather than accepting the concept of all humans as being naturally egotistical and needing to develop strict controls over their Ego, instead it would be healthy for us to come into a robust relationship with it. Ego is how we use our voice to set boundaries, manifest our best life into the world practically, and unfold our best self into interconnection with the rest of the universe. Rather than seeing Ego as an enemy, we should strive to make it an ally so it can support us, our portion of divinity, in walking our path.