Ego question I would love help with......

[bflare]

My knowledge on the ego is that it is our conditioned false self. It is the identification that we have given ourselves. For example, I am Tony, I am an engineer, I don’t like winter etc etc. Hope I am correct so far? The ego lives in the past & future & finds it hard to live in the present?
One question that I am struggling with is the following:
We have a set of limiting beliefs from our childhood etc that hold us back on certain things. If one of those limiting beliefs is that people don’t like us then we will tend to attract that from people. So when someone says something to us that we perceive as hurtful we immediately feel the emotion of hurt or & maybe the physical feeling of pain. Now if we can rationalise this & observe the emotion instead of feeling the emotion & the subsequent pain then why is it so hard to do this? It feels as if we want the negativity & the pain but this would be insane. Is it actually the ego that wants this negativity to feed on it therefore carry on its existence?

Hope I have not lost anyone haha.

Thanks,

Tony.

[DreamKey]

Originally Posted by bflare

My knowledge on the ego is that it is our conditioned false self. It is the identification that we have given ourselves. For example, I am Tony, I am an engineer, I don’t like winter etc etc. Hope I am correct so far? The ego lives in the past & future & finds it hard to live in the present?

Hi Tony. You could think of ego as a conceptual self referencing framework that formulates the foundation for identification with the conditioned self, or with conditioned thinking. In this sense there is a degree of unconsciousness implicit in the word ego. This would be the ego that is obsessed with past and future.

Others use ego to point directly toward the conditioned self, without taking into account degrees of unconsciousness. In this sense, everyone has an ego, or everyone is an ego.


Then some others use ego to point toward self interested desires. They'll differential between desires of the heart and ego driven desires. All frameworks possess some utility, but none are ultimately true in their own right.

So when someone says something to us that we perceive as hurtful we immediately feel the emotion of hurt or & maybe the physical feeling of pain. Now if we can rationalise this & observe the emotion instead of feeling the emotion & the subsequent pain then why is it so hard to do this? It feels as if we want the negativity & the pain but this would be insane. Is it actually the ego that wants this negativity to feed on it therefore carry on its existence?

Hope I have not lost anyone haha.

Thanks,

Tony.

In the unconscious state emotions that are not fully felt can leave a residue on the human aura. In this sense when hurt arises in the moment there is some past pain being carried along with it. While the initial pain, and even the trigger to that pain can be observed, and linked, you may also notice a momentum to that pain coupled to a tendency or desire to keep the pain at bay. If you want to feel pain and don't want to at the same time, you're looking at a split in your energetic field. These splits are always unconscious. (although to say anyone wants emotional hurt can be a misnomer. sometimes, pain is conditioned to arise)

Through noticing splits in thinking/energy, the splitting dynamic (wanting to feel and wanting to block at the same time) is made conscious, which will lead to a release of the energy, which in the short term may mean feeling things more completely, such as emotional hurt. Egos come hard wired to resist these types of feelings, so you may expect an ebb and flow as you're gaining consciousness of localized energy dynamics.

It seems like you've already gained a fairly high degree of consciousness of what's taking place, but from the ego's perspective this can be experienced as a loss of control. If the question is, how do I get control of what's going on, higher consciousness isn't the answer. If the question is, how do I surrender control and become more fully present, consciousness is the doorway...

[vespa68]

You cannot control the ego, only by facing it we can understand this and then move beyond this. It is the programming that creates the issue yes. For example a sibling can tell you when you that no one likes you when you are young and then yes there would be faced situations where someone would not be nice and we would be hurt. It can also be an exaggeration, the person would be in a bad mood etc.. In fact this is more complicated than it seems and hard to explain here. But basically you have to face the negative emotions behind the programming, you cannot rationalize it. We tend to face things during spiritual growth periods and can get to a certain level .I have definitely been through a lot of this but have a hard time explaining the full context that I understand. In other words we are here in 3d for a reason, we have certain issues to get past to certain degrees. We have certain people in our lives who set the programming. We have certain levels of consciousness in our lives as well. When we become more conscious of our issues/ programming we have more of it so we face it and have less of it.

[vespa68]

@Dreamkey. The person in fact needs to get to higher consciousness by facing the hurt over and over again at different levels. Being more conscious each time. There are many levels of being conscious of the same issue. Once you get to the higher consciousness of the issue you let it go or at least get to a more comfortable level.

Originally Posted by bflare

My knowledge on the ego is that it is our conditioned false self. It is the identification that we have given ourselves.

May well be the case but it's the person's front that they use to negotiate their way through their days and society generally, learning to play roles to get the best they can out of situations. It's certainly driven by a real self that has to be modified and adapted to deal with encounters - simply because society is a collection of individual egos all wanting the same thing. Conventions like employment, services, families, come with expected behaviours, hence roles. Effectively we learn to act.
Ego, to me, is a social process, a way of actualising identity in situations. Some are good at it, some aren't. They can learn but people will always be successful in their social aims in some situations and less so in others. Strengths and weaknesses...a strength in one situation could be a weakness in another, etc.

One question that I am struggling with is the following:
We have a set of limiting beliefs from our childhood etc that hold us back on certain things. If one of those limiting beliefs is that people don’t like us then we will tend to attract that from people. So when someone says something to us that we perceive as hurtful we immediately feel the emotion of hurt or & maybe the physical feeling of pain. Now if we can rationalise this & observe the emotion instead of feeling the emotion & the subsequent pain then why is it so hard to do this? It feels as if we want the negativity & the pain but this would be insane. Is it actually the ego that wants this negativity to feed on it therefore carry on its existence?

All true and often comes down to expectations arising from needs at various levels, whether ours or those of others, given the situation under review. It isn't so hard to rationalise if you "love people generally" appreciate they have struggles, likes and dislikes, and needs that may not match ours.

We're all prisoners of our childhood but we learn to stand on our own feet. The search for our Selves (the real ones) takes us through a learning process about ourselves, the culture we live in, and can appreciate people for what they are.

It could also be explained in other ways, like learning to interpret signs and not deliberately misinterpreting them to fit in with our own emotional needs etc.

I think this old Freudian idea is overplayed. Everyone has an ego. You can't get rid of it without losing your identity/identities in the milieu in which you live. We can refine it ad lib (partly what spiritual development is about) but it's always there.
As we start to glimpse our Selfhoods and move toward them we become more deeply aware of the core of our being and can trace through some of what we thought were natural responses based on experiences but now we develop an awareness of how those experiences affect the way that "core" leads to our behavioural reactions, emotions and rationale. And we can change how the processing works.

Just my views.

...

[DreamKey]

Originally Posted by vespa68

@Dreamkey. The person in fact needs to get to higher consciousness by facing the hurt over and over again at different levels. Being more conscious each time. There are many levels of being conscious of the same issue. Once you get to the higher consciousness of the issue you let it go or at least get to a more comfortable level.

Welp, it isn't actually the person that gets to higher consciousness. The person is unconscious until it's noticed and made conscious. In this sense to distinguish between lower and higher consciousness would be a misnomer. You are consciousness, and you don't need to get higher.

With that said, obviously you can be more conscious today than you were yesterday. Minds can become more conscious, and I applaud that. During the becoming conscious process, you won't necessarily need to feel the hurt over and over. You may notice some emotional wounds have roots that run deep in the unconscious, and thus these wounds and the pain associated with them can tie into various emotional issues in waking life.

I am a fan of uprooting 'causal emotions', which is the unresolved pain and conflict that brings more pain and hurt, and alters the point of attraction in value degrading ways. Causal emotions can release in a sitting, depending on the conditioning of the person. Someone with a lot of blocked energy can take years to fully heal. It really depends on earnestness, willingness, courage, etc.

[DreamKey]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

May well be the case but it's the person's front that they use to negotiate their way through their days and society generally, learning to play roles to get the best they can out of situations. It's certainly driven by a real self that has to be modified and adapted to deal with encounters - simply because society is a collection of individual egos all wanting the same thing. Conventions like employment, services, families, come with expected behaviours, hence roles. Effectively we learn to act.
Ego, to me, is a social process, a way of actualising identity in situations. Some are good at it, some aren't. They can learn but people will always be successful in their social aims in some situations and less so in others. Strengths and weaknesses...a strength in one situation could be a weakness in another, etc.

All true and often comes down to expectations arising from needs at various levels, whether ours or those of others, given the situation under review. It isn't so hard to rationalise if you "love people generally" appreciate they have struggles, likes and dislikes, and needs that may not match ours.

We're all prisoners of our childhood but we learn to stand on our own feet. The search for our Selves (the real ones) takes us through a learning process about ourselves, the culture we live in, and can appreciate people for what they are.

It could also be explained in other ways, like learning to interpret signs and not deliberately misinterpreting them to fit in with our own emotional needs etc.

I think this old Freudian idea is overplayed. Everyone has an ego. You can't get rid of it without losing your identity/identities in the milieu in which you live. We can refine it ad lib (partly what spiritual development is about) but it's always there.

...

So we could say before realization you are your ego (identified with it), while after you just wear it, like a costume to a party or suttin.

[Lynn]

Hello

I had a childhood that should well have held me back in by beliefs and in where I went with things. I had many things to over come and move past in what and whom I am in this life and worked on the past lives I have too had. I was blessed early on in childhood to be shy and quiet and inwards not EGO driven or the Divine only knows what a mess I might well have landed in. Being that I could "read" anyone, I could talk to the non living, and I could use things to do things, I was blessed to be shy. It was not until I was 13 that I started to rebel some first from the Anglican family faith that could not give me answers, only child never talk on such things, as a reply. Never fitting in with school but knowing the answers and so wanting to participate at times but too shy. At 16 I was ready to leave life, and intervention came, again the EGO was there but not in full play, I was in that experiment stage of life. In a relationship at 18 with an abusive man, I spent 33 years there on a growth path. This is where EGO comes in, it is your survival place at times, that force that is there to drive you forwards and too protect you. It also is there to deal out the life path issues you have to face up to, a Near Death Event at 21 set me on the positive path of doing good in whom I am and not using the power of the dark that is out there.

There is a power in that "Dark Side" as it is in so many movies we see, and I so related to it with the Star War's movies and with Luke and Darth Vader his Father.....there is a pull there.

I do not know if we attract to people that do not like us, more maybe we attract them to learn something from, to learn at times to get along. I feel that we can learn from all situations we are put in the path of, if we learn not to fight. Yes we are emotional beings, and in that we can feel hurt on many levels, but we do not have to let our self LIVE in that space of hurt.

It is hard to let go of things and situations at times, we tend to at times get in what I see as the Hamster Wheel of life, as the hamster in his/her cage will go round and round tire and get off, we do not get off our wheel. We do not see that we attract the wrong people in our path or our EGO wants to win something against them.

I look at me in a bad relationship for 33 years, and how that EGO of me so thought I could "fix" things drove me to stay the course. Too here the childhood teachings come in you give your virginity to a man your his for life, til death do you part. Well there again the EGO could have played a role there with me, I so could have taken him out.....death.

We have a good teacher in our EGO if we learn to break it down and see it more on the life path of lessons and not on the I am better than you childhood way its often explained to us.

We can feed off of negativity and do a lot with negative energy, I know this well, we too can do a lot of good for others in understanding how that negative side of us effects us and grow from how others over come that darker place.

Look at life if there were no conflicts, no struggles, everything just flowed would that not be a dull existence ? It is not more fun on life's path to have a hard life struggle you face and over come it ? To claim the win for yourself is a wonderful feeling.

Yet when one win's be willing to have again that negativity show its face with the EGO of jealousy or envy of others. We tend a times to think the "Grass is greener on the other side of the fence". I remember reading my kids The Three Billy Goats Gruff and then saying that the Troll's EGO lost in the end when he was butted off the bridge. Yet was the grass greener on the other side ? Or was it just a battle of wills to get to the other side ?


Lynn



We have a set of limiting beliefs from our childhood etc that hold us back on certain things. If one of those limiting beliefs is that people don’t like us then we will tend to attract that from people. So when someone says something to us that we perceive as hurtful we immediately feel the emotion of hurt or & maybe the physical feeling of pain. Now if we can rationalise this & observe the emotion instead of feeling the emotion & the subsequent pain then why is it so hard to do this? It feels as if we want the negativity & the pain but this would be insane. Is it actually the ego that wants this negativity to feed on it therefore carry on its existence?

[vespa68]

Originally Posted by DreamKey

Welp, it isn't actually the person that gets to higher consciousness. The person is unconscious until it's noticed and made conscious. In this sense to distinguish between lower and higher consciousness would be a misnomer. You are consciousness, and you don't need to get higher.

With that said, obviously you can be more conscious today than you were yesterday. Minds can become more conscious, and I applaud that. During the becoming conscious process, you won't necessarily need to feel the hurt over and over. You may notice some emotional wounds have roots that run deep in the unconscious, and thus these wounds and the pain associated with them can tie into various emotional issues in waking life.

I am a fan of uprooting 'causal emotions', which is the unresolved pain and conflict that brings more pain and hurt, and alters the point of attraction in value degrading ways. Causal emotions can release in a sitting, depending on the conditioning of the person. Someone with a lot of blocked energy can take years to fully heal. It really depends on earnestness, willingness, courage, etc.

I am talking about facing oneself in a specific way. I do this with intense energy work with clients who are very advanced. However someone can also just feel their emotions in their heart and meditate on it. It does take someone who is very conscious to begin with and who is going through spiritual growth. Depending on someones level, they will experience the pain again and again at different layers and they absolutely go to higher consciousness eventually. If you face your pain at one level you have already gone higher in consciousness but there are many more layers to go through and you get higher every time.

[DreamKey]

Originally Posted by vespa68

I am talking about facing oneself in a specific way. I do this with intense energy work with clients who are very advanced. However someone can also just feel their emotions in their heart and meditate on it. It does take someone who is very conscious to begin with and who is going through spiritual growth. Depending on someones level, they will experience the pain again and again at different layers and they absolutely go to higher consciousness eventually. If you face your pain at one level you have already gone higher in consciousness but there are many more layers to go through and you get higher every time.

That's what I meant by becoming conscious. The cause of suffering is identification with the mind, identification with the person, which is an unconscious thing. It is experienced as a split in energy and the delusion that one can control one's thinking/feeling/experience, as if one is one's mind. So by becoming conscious we could also say consciousness is unbecoming the person, and that is spiritual healing.

In this way the person isn't going to higher levels of consciousness, consciousness is becoming less identified with the layers of unconsciousness from the person's life. This may seem like a distinction with no difference but the idea that someone is ascending planes of consciousness to reach the summit of Mt. Woo Woo leaves a sense of doership in the becoming conscious process that is likely to prevent loss of identification with the mind, or guarantee more suffering.

At the same time, your entirely human approach to the subject is appreciated. Facing pain and spiritual healing can be like peeling an onion, so I don't have any real big issues with anything you're saying.