The Ego

The ego gets a lot of bad press but most likely we can describe it as that part of ourselves developed as best we could to survive the modernity pressures & the fake world, (eg Fourth Wave), the child is asked to survive in, whether it’s misleading statements at home, school or society at large.

I had a dream about two brothers. When I had analyzed it with the help especially of Tom Chetwynds book of symbol interpretation it went something like this. One brother the ego isnt doing so well, the other, the shadow (side we dont want to admit to) says well I have a solution. You just fake it, pretend to be the person everyone wants to see and I will be the rest of you that we better cover up. The ego brother says, heh that might work & the show goes on. The problem was that the ego brother believed he needed to cover up when there really wasnt anything wrong with him except he couldnt fit in with all the other ego’s in the world, also pretending to be something other. There really isn’t anything wrong with the true self, or ground consciousness.

There are lots of other versions of the ego but they all boil down to pretty much this scenario. I had a chat with a Christian Minister on the radio once. He said but Brian you’re a therapist you know that deep down we arent all that nice. I said precisely wrong, I think deep down we are entirely fine & of immense value. I was talking about our ultimate spiritual value, that is priceless & he had got mixed up with the ego. Some Christians think you have to do good works to atone for the bad person you must be and others think that God accepts you the way you are regardless. I think the first version is mankind’s nasty version projected onto others & not being able to cope with the idea that deep down we are fine soul’s. Since we are dealing with ego’s & not the true self we think that the ego is deep down! Its just a facade or a mask/persono as Jung said.

Once many years ago when I was starting out a woman came to see me with a very sad story & I found myself wanting to cry. I didn’t as I didn’t want to distract her from her issue but I had this interesting observation that, this was really good as the tears/empathy didnt come from ‘me’ they came through me. I didnt have enough consciousness at the time to realize that I had said something both odd and yet profound. Who was it coming through if not ‘me’? What was this me that it came through. In simple terms it came from the heart or true self, at that time I did not know such terms in this context. However, I had been wondering ‘did I really care’ or was I doing it as a show? I got my answer, real emotion, love & empathy come through you deeply & not because you trumped it up. Only the ego self would be afraid of that!