When the Ego hinders the spirit

[hallow]

It can really depend on how one uses "I" or "me". Ok lets say you dropped your breakfast on the floor. You tell someone about the mess it made. When you say "i dropped my breakfast and it made a big mess. "I" used like that is taking responsibility of what happened. Saying my ego dropped the food is placing blame on something else. Ego is trying really hard not to say "i" in this thread. Ego "i" like to use "i" for examples when i explain something referring to certain subjects because i am saying this what i do but you don't have to. So if you never say or think "i" or "me" in moderation then well no responsibility is taken for anything. Ego did it not you. So what you do, do is completely for "ego" if we pick apart every letter in a sentence theres a good chance we'll miss the meaning of the sentence in its entirety. I feel ego is more of a state of mind. If you're looking for a certain thought or idea out of something you find it no matter how its intended.

In this discussion it seems agreed upon that the Ego is a thing.
Either to tame, to be at war with even. Sometimes useful, a center. a way of being what have you.

The way I understand it the Ego is no more than a thought, very much like any other thought. It appears as a contextual construct, put together from memories in the past and projections of the future. In my mind it is no more that A I-sense.

When I started meditating I couldn't help but agree with Thanissaro Bhikku who often talkes about the mind committee. When viewed like that I seem to have many ego's all with different perspectives on what I would want.

In the end though I found they are all just thoughts, thinking themselves into existence right here right now.

We can let them come and go like any sense-experience. They have as much substance and significance As I choose to let them have..

In the end though I cannot help but conclude that there never was an Ego.

With Love
Eelco

I still see it as a process. Spiritual development modifies it, allows us to be more aware of our selves when we interact, lets us modulate its emotional content, our responses, choices and on because we (hopefully) become more aware of the flow of our experiences. It adjusts to every situation we face. New situations are new experiences and aware, we can follow the outcomes and learn, sometimes consciously, sometimes initially not or perhaps not at all.

It isn't static. Some like to think it is - but just as we continue a search for real Self if that's our aim, so the ego adjusts and adapts. Were it static we'd be incapable of learning.

[Raziel]

I wonder if a person such as myself states that they have no Ego, does that confuse the matter for others?

Do they shout "yes you do & it needs to be conquered" or are they able to ponder that perhaps, quite accidentally or naturally that I actually don't?


There are no separate parts to me, if I react a certain way to something it is because that is the way knight reacts.

A cat will track a fly across the room, a dog raises it's ears & head when something catches it's attention & Knight acts as .. Knight acts.


I can be incorrect but if I discover that I am incorrect then I also find the correct answer in the process.

Again is this not how primitive man learned & succeeded?

I would think of spirit as essentially imagination - a can do attitude or more like "hmm I wonder" without limiting yourself for any specific reason.

Originally Posted by knightoflenity

I wonder if a person such as myself states that they have no Ego, does that confuse the matter for others?

No confusion. If you haven't an ego you couldn't express yourself in a post. Even by responding to the topic you'd need your identity, experiences and so on. And you certainly couldn't signify your forum identity with your username!

It could be a Schrodinger's cat thing. Your recent silence from this forum could mean you were egoless. (As long as you aren't posting you might be) but then I couldn't assign that word 'you' to you.
You're only a 'you' when you turn up here. (As for elsewhere I can't know.)

[Raziel]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

No confusion. If you haven't an ego you couldn't express yourself in a post. Even by responding to the topic you'd need your identity, experiences and so on. And you certainly couldn't signify your forum identity with your username!

It could be a Schrodinger's cat thing. Your recent silence from this forum could mean you were egoless. (As long as you aren't posting you might be) but then I couldn't assign that word 'you' to you.
You're only a 'you' when you turn up here. (As for elsewhere I can't know.)

What if "my" ego or identity are purely for others convenience?

Would I then be faking ego in order to communicate?

Would a dog be considered as having an ego since it responds to it's name or does it do so purely for humans?

Can I not be the same?

.

Originally Posted by knightoflenity

What if "my" ego or identity are purely for others convenience?

Would I then be faking ego in order to communicate?

Like I said up there it's a process. Fake? You can pluck selective stuff from your repertoire to be tactical or an actor/ress. We observe. If we want to "be someone else" we practice - observation, imagination. Many act in entertainment and things like facing a job interview or dating someone new; and fake a few things but they'll need suspending spontaneity and/or take practice/rehearsal. Again, process, one can learn from outcomes and the ego is augmented along two axes: knowing it was possible; and the success/failure of the tactic/act. It is still your apparent identity.

Would a dog be considered as having an ego since it responds to it's name or does it do so purely for humans?

Can I not be the same?
.

Can you bark?

[Raziel]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Like I said up there it's a process. Fake? It is still your apparent identity.


Can you bark?

Ha ha - classic example of avoiding a point.

The question was genuine, I was given my name & referred to as it since birth. I was sat in a classroom & compared/tested by standards that actually meant something to someone else.

Does someone consider this face handsome? Is this mind considered clever?

None of this was initiated by me & I use the word me since how else would another differentiate? Often offence is caused if specific wording is not used.


Love is easy & natural but if the words "I find" are not communicated other bodies that look different to my own become upset & provide incoherent logic as to why love is not these things.

They are untrue but to communicate it is necessary to listen & re-word.

This body/vessel has to negotiate egos but doesn't automatically default to one .

People box themselves in waaaay to much.

I am gay, I am straight, I am a fireman etc etc the global tribe then asks for further clarification & proof.

A Christian by such a statement sticks to a mindset provided by others, ideas & concepts from a book.

Ego/identity is how humans have chosen to catalogue the physical - what delegates us is that you tell me that you feel differently forcing me to differentiate between us.


If I hear the words "it hurts" that is different to thinking them. It forces separation.

I don't have an ego - you say that I do, on someone else's terms after reading books written by others.

Perhaps it is difficult to communicate but my dog question is still valid.

Perhaps identifying YOU by being forced to - generates a sense of ME whereby any other time I don't have one.

A slide, a tree, rocks are all matter physically identified by sight for their differences.

If you don't understand then perhaps you won't?

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Yes, this is something that Jung seems to have sorted out. I'm acting somewhat dangerously from too little neuroscientific knowledge, the question being how neurons reprogram patterns as part of a learning process. (Not to go into a debate about it here except to say that the summation on the post-synaptic dendrite leading to an action potential seems to change as we learn.) So the more detail we extract from our awareness (our uncluttered intake of "what's out there") the stronger position we can develop about "reality", our perceptive processing.

My knowledge is probably hopelessly out of date. It's something I kept up interest in because of a wider interest in systems and communication (semiotics). I felt that Freud's model (that seemed to deny spirituality) is ok for his clinical use but doesn't explain mind in enough detail. My knowledge of Jung's work is slight but it seems his break with Freud was over components that influenced personality growth that may have affected the content of the mind but not how it works - as I see it. I may be wrong.

I wouldn't be as presumptuous as to pit myself against these masters. I just see the mind as physiological, processing data and taking in the entire body, not just how we interpret external stimuli (how perception works) but resultant motor action of the body, the firing off of hormones etc. Without doubt there are researchers out there looking at this.

It won't for a long time explain a 6th sense or input channel that definitely seems to exist.
.

Well, talking about a sixth sense or input channel....

I needed to find out more from reliable sources, because when it comes to certain subjects Spirituality is far from reliable - as it is in this case. What was being said in the forums didn't make sense any more and quite frankly it was becoming the perpetuation of a myth. Ego death????? The search led me to Jung and what he was writing made so much sense, and I'd take his word over Victorian attitudes any day. Freud and Jung weren't besties it seems, but they were coming at it from very different perspectives and no doubt their own psychologies were affecting their research and therefore results. The interesting part for me is that a discussion about ego in these forums shows more psychology than Spirituality.

I was watching a TEDTalk with a guy called Anil Seth, who'd gathered a multi-discipline team including philosophers to come up with answers as to what consciousness is, but they couldn't find one. What he did say was that it was as much internal as external, which is similar to some of the things that Spiritually says is the way we process our realities. Personally I have to wonder how self aware can be if we're only looking through the very narrow lens of Spirituality and completely ignoring what will give us real answers.

We already know quite a lot about how the motor action of the body and the firing off of hormones work, the research is out there. If you're looking for the relationship between motor action and psychology, think about how you walk and body language. Changing the way you walk changes the way you think about yourself, and the way you walk reveals things. When those hormones start firing off they can change us physically, mentally and psychologically - and all of those are related to Spirituality.

[muffin]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Well, talking about a sixth sense or input channel....

I needed to find out more from reliable sources, because when it comes to certain subjects Spirituality is far from reliable - as it is in this case. What was being said in the forums didn't make sense any more and quite frankly it was becoming the perpetuation of a myth. Ego death????? The search led me to Jung and what he was writing made so much sense, and I'd take his word over Victorian attitudes any day. Freud and Jung weren't besties it seems, but they were coming at it from very different perspectives and no doubt their own psychologies were affecting their research and therefore results. The interesting part for me is that a discussion about ego in these forums shows more psychology than Spirituality.

I was watching a TEDTalk with a guy called Anil Seth, who'd gathered a multi-discipline team including philosophers to come up with answers as to what consciousness is, but they couldn't find one. What he did say was that it was as much internal as external, which is similar to some of the things that Spiritually says is the way we process our realities. Personally I have to wonder how self aware can be if we're only looking through the very narrow lens of Spirituality and completely ignoring what will give us real answers.

We already know quite a lot about how the motor action of the body and the firing off of hormones work, the research is out there. If you're looking for the relationship between motor action and psychology, think about how you walk and body language. Changing the way you walk changes the way you think about yourself, and the way you walk reveals things. When those hormones start firing off they can change us physically, mentally and psychologically - and all of those are related to Spirituality.

Good afternoon Greenslade or morning

"Ego death?????"

Unsure what people mean by ego and not something I've real look into. Other than to lose it is like, water off a duck back and for that you need to be scrub squeaky clean inside.

As for consciousness, you leave this world in the same manner as you entered it.