Ego is a good thing

[HITESH SHAH]

Transcendence or sublimation implies a continued process and is relative and accordingly the status based thereon also is situational and momentary .

Like person having name in top 100 billionaire names in fortune 500 magazine is 'rich' and also a person having merely 0.1% wealth of this (so to say 1 million $ in his bank) also is considered 'rich' by majority on wider yardsticks .It's all relative & situational and one can not make any eternal /absolute statements based thereon.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Jyotir

Interesting….


Ahhh, but of course then there is Altair’s “good thing” tradition:
the onerous negations and invalidations - unconscious projections of ego-based subjective preferences and prejudices as apparently objectively embodied by other egos!

It seems that the “good thing” about ego is in giving itself permission to perpetuate the maya and samsara of its limited separative cognition as both means and existential purpose of intention and action.

That's something to praise (until it produces painful results),
or it always led to suffering (but it was too busy praising itself to realize that).

~ J

''Maya'' and ''samsara'' are made up concepts that you believe in. It's your choice to believe. As for the guru's, many do wanna be worshipped and caressed by their followers, demanding obedience and blind faith, and interpreting experiences according to a specific tradition. That's their big ego's at display. Your choice to follow them, but don't assume it is relevant to all of us.

I haven't a clue what you mean by ''Altair's good tradition''.. LOL. I don't think I'm really interested in it either..
Your post is coming from the ego, as is everyone else's... that's the irony with all these ego threads.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

If you call it ego then you can call it 'not me', and that takes the responsibility away. It's someone else's fault and that's often at the root of discussions of the ego. If the ego judges and has prejudices, not me either.

Good point about the responsibility..
This can also become very unnatural to one's self, where you end up becoming your own police man, constantly correcting yourself and categorizing yourself in different parts. Alternatively, we can have the view where we are not multiple identities but are one (identity) that is variable.

[Phaelyn]

Originally Posted by HITESH SHAH

Transcendence or sublimation implies a continued process and is relative and accordingly the status based thereon also is situational and momentary .

Like person having name in top 100 billionaire names in fortune 500 magazine is 'rich' and also a person having merely 0.1% wealth of this (so to say 1 million $ in his bank) also is considered 'rich' by majority on wider yardsticks .It's all relative & situational and one can not make any eternal /absolute statements based thereon.

Yes it is either here now, experienced now, projected now, or it doesn't exist.
Only now actually exists. The past and future are only known and imagined now. So neither is actually anything about the past and future, both only exist in the now.

Conceptually we understand and imagine moving through time, and mentally we can have ideas about transcendence or sublimation, but as applied, this means imagining ourselves externally, me as a thing, me as an idea (that is moving though conceptual time) ...which is an idea of me. If one carries an idea of oneself mentally, and is not simply experientially aware of "I am", one is in ego, is an ego. Ego is a consciousness identified with their conditioned conceptual content. With mental images. Instead of merely being here now free of such's influence. Conceptual content is always in the now, readily available in the now, but one without ego makes it background and not foreground. One without ego carefully decides what to make a part of their now. What to entertain mentally and what not to. What to make a part of the now and their consciousness and what not to. Pit bulls exist in the world, but one does not have to let them into their yard. So it is with pit bulls and ideas.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

You're looking at it from the perspective of reductive materialism, I think? In other words dualism. I'm looking at it from the perspective of non-dualism. Two diametrically opposed worldviews though I do understand the reductive materialist worldview.

Not reductive materialism nor dualism but individuality and the sum of the parts creating the being, or what is known in Sanskrit as Ahamkara or 'I-maker'. The 'contents' of the ego are not in dualism with the ego and they are not necessarily materialism, while the contents of one person's ego might be concerned with materialism your ego is concerned with Spirituality. There is no reduction neither, if anything there's a hierachy of symbiotic relationships.


The ego is the centre of the consciousness according to Jung, and the processes thare are 'responsible' for creating your "Sense of I am" are also responsible for your conscious reality - including the stuff in your unconscious.

Originally Posted by HITESH SHAH

That's your clinical assessment not valid for truly spiritual person. Who is truly spiritual is altogether another question .

Who is a truly Spiritual person? That's your assessment based on your judgement.

Originally Posted by HITESH SHAH

Yes . I am still hold on to what i say. One always need to transcend ego for spiritual improvement / amelioration in life . This does not mean there is no ego or no need for ego .

Without the ego there is no Spiritual or improvement.

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

Thinking that you have transcended the ego is one of the best ego tricks there is.

There you go, and thinking you don't have an ego is a very close second.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Well, that would be full-blown enlightenment. There's a continuum between totally absorbed in the ego-self and enlightened, and if one pays attention the difference in state of being along that continuum is apparent. So it's not black & white.

No it wouldn't, and that's the misunderstanding of the ego that Spiritual people don't seem to want to know. Without the ego there is no Spirituality, no elnightenment, no transcended. Buddha had an ego, believe it or not. Full-blown enlightenment means you can work with your ego because you are enlightened enough to understand the role it plays.

Originally Posted by Phaelyn

The ego saying not me is pretty common though. It's the ego that points away from itself and says... the ego. Or put another way, only an ego can discuss or conceptualize an ego. The ego is built on concepts and the conceptual. It's a projection of mental conceptual phenomena.

What are we without an idea? We are what we are. Ideas don't really add substance, they add interpretative experience, and what interprets mentally? The ego.

An ego definition:

Me + My Ideas = Me

No ego definition:

Me = Me

Some people's egos point away from themselves, not THE ego but THEIR ego and that's the understanding. The ego is individual. It's actually the 'result' of a number of conscious and unconscious 'subsystems' so there isn't a 'thing' such as the ego. As Jung put it, "A sense of I am," which is determined by a number of psychological factors. It's not just mental conceptual phenomena, both conscious and unconscious cognitive processes 'contribute', as does one's own personal history and possibly from childhood. The 'subsystems' that creates your sense of I am also provide the framework for your entire reality and everything in it - including what you are not conscious of. The ego doesn't interpret mentality, if anything mentality is one of the aspects that is in a symbiotic relationship with the ego. The 'pointing away' can be caused by any number of things, from personality disorder to denial to agenda.

You are more than your ideas, you are what you are conscious of and also what you are not conscious of, but is still an aspect of you.

[BlueElephant]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

No it wouldn't, and that's the misunderstanding of the ego that Spiritual people don't seem to want to know. Without the ego there is no Spirituality, no elnightenment, no transcended. Buddha had an ego, believe it or not. Full-blown enlightenment means you can work with your ego because you are enlightened enough to understand the role it plays.

Good point. The ego, when "purified" cleaned up, simplified, carries character and with that a kind of enjoyment of existence, temporary or eternal.

In many traditions / spiritual paths the ego is used to accomplish Realization ( need I explain what I mean by this term?). As written above it is for all paths.

What I mean here is that it is blatantly used, no need to necessarily curb it.