😃 WHAT ISN'T EGO 😃

The problem is partly down to people in this discussion (and I suppose believers in Freud's model of mind generally) treating the ego as an object which it isn't. It's the same with 'mind' and concepts like 'conscious', 'subconscious'. Adopting a metaphorical objectivity leads to attempts to ascribe concrete attributes to them when they're processes, flows, abstractions.

Ego is a social process which is impossible to concretise.
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[JustBe]

Lorelyen your point makes sense.

I tend to look at my mind/body/spirit in terms of energy. What’s the energy I’m infusing into my own process that reveals itself ongoing? So maybe it’s not what we are in relation to mind or ego as a thing, but how we can get caught up in our own process. Without a fixed identity or idea about you and your own process, you can flow more freely and loosen those energetic constraints that often create the force behind process. So as an example if your angry and decide your ‘just an angry’ person who lashes out continuously, their is no space to allow yourself to become aware, it’s a temporary moving energy that can move you beyond those ideas, it’s you.

So if ego is involved with energy, it can interfere and control processors that can flow and shift more freely.

So I agree with you, it’s far better to be an open flowing vessel, without the ‘identifying’ hold on your own processors.

If you identify the ego as ‘something’ and fight to protect that concreteness, your could actually just be controlling your own makeup more defined. Where as an openness in yourself lends you to develop more flow and openness from within.

So I guess if one changed the focus from what ego is or isn’t and looked at the is and isnt’s and the hold it takes on in yourself, you can naturally free up the energy you direct into fixed self ideas.

Hope that makes sense.

Originally Posted by JustBe

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, indeed.

Rather than worry about identity, just be. (as is your name here.) In any situation being encompasses a selection of ones totality of self to date.

Others could see what they may describe as a persona but they're experiencing a subset of that person's being. Different observers will see different personas depending how their energies interact with the being person. And while it may be useful to concretise their observation as 'a persona' they should also recognise the colourations of nuances that are, as you put it, a flow of energy, that, like the ephemeral nature of the sky, changes little by little, moment by moment but could suddenly change big time.

Hence, over-concern with ego or persona is unproductive. Just be. The situation one's in will adjust how that being manifests.
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Originally Posted by JustBe

So if ego is involved with energy, it can interfere and control processors that can flow and shift more freely.

Which it isn't, ego is the sum total of your perceptual reality. Or if you prefer Jungian - and preferring your own personal 'version' to Jung's is your ego - the ego is the centre opf the field of consciousness.

Originally Posted by JustBe

So I agree with you, it’s far better to be an open flowing vessel, without the ‘identifying’ hold on your own processors.

'Better' is one of the 'fingerprints' of YOUR ego as you identify with being an open, flowing vessel, since ego - accurately the 'contents' - is individual.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Which it isn't, ego is the sum total of your perceptual reality. Or if you prefer Jungian - and preferring your own personal 'version' to Jung's is your ego - the ego is the centre of the field of consciousness.

But it's by no means static. As you've said below it's the total contents but they aren't fixed values. It's a process. I doubt anyone including the owner actually sees or comprehends the whole of the contents at any one time and they're augmented as the seconds pass.

Although it's a belief I still think the process figuratively involves energies just as the underlying biology uses physical energy. 'Energy is never created, just converted from some other energic form' and I see this as 'the process': flow means transit from a point on the spectrum to another, the earlier one giving up its energy to the new one, even if those points as such don't exist other than blips on a continuum.

Unfortunately one of the Freudian things that Jung couldn't shake off was Freud being an arch-medicaliser of human behaviour. I believe what I said a few posts back: it attempts to concretise a metaphor. To me, behaviour is the flow of subsets of those contents relating to the needs of a perceived situation which, as it evolves moment by moment, will change (sometimes subtly, sometimes not) with corresponding experiential feedback to those contents.

'Better' is one of the 'fingerprints' of YOUR ego as you identify with being an open, flowing vessel, since ego - accurately the 'contents' - is individual.

That seems to rephrase what was being said except those contents are never static - unless you posit that an individual's entire data content is static, unchanging in the face of unfamiliar stimuli; without imagination synthesising 'idea', no new or re-interpreting experience possible, which seems unlikely.
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Originally Posted by Lorelyen

But it's by no means static.

Jung says that it begins around puberty when the ego starts to form and we have a more 'defined' sense our ourselves - which is perhaps one of the reasons teenagers are so grumpy. But we grow up, get jobs, and all the bother stuff that happens to us until we pop our clogs. Since our perceptions of who we are is a response to all of those things - including getting old and knackered - then yes it is a process. Getting old is a process that we respond to.

On saying that though, there are 'static' elements as well, such as the 'contents' of the Shadow Self. That's the repository that contains what we either can't or won't deal with at the time - such as childhood traumas - but stay with us and affect our adulthood.

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Although it's a belief I still think the process figuratively involves energies just as the underlying biology uses physical energy.

There's a figurative symbiotic relationship between perception, consciousness and energy. "Anger is an energy," according to John Lydon. Happiness, sadness etc are all responses to perceptions and they have their associated frequencies.

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Unfortunately one of the Freudian things that Jung couldn't shake off was Freud being an arch-medicaliser of human behaviour. ..

I think we have to remember that neither Jung nor Freud had the shoulders of giants to stand upon, and while much of today's psychology is based on their work it has evolved. Human behaviour depends on what is essentially intangible, so while cognitive behaviour can't be measured directly we can observe its 'results' being either constructive or destructive. What also can't be measured is an outburst of anger might be because of having been bullied as a child and the associated memories of the perceptions having festered inside the Shadow Self.

Behaviour is relative to both the conscious and unconscious minds, and as you've already said those are going to change throughout one's lifetime.

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

That seems to rephrase what was being said except those contents are never static - unless you posit that an individual's entire data content is static, unchanging in the face of unfamiliar stimuli; without imagination synthesising 'idea', no new or re-interpreting experience possible, which seems unlikely.

A person's perception of themselves is going to change regardless, your perception of yourself as a teenager is likely different to your perceptions of yourself today, and will likely be different to when you are old and frail. I know mine are. But there are those that make the choice to have 'static contents', as Life in a small fishing town that is virtually cut off from the outside world has shown me. If people don't see a need to change they won't.

[God-Like]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

Please present your views as to what Ego is not.

What isn't self related in some shape or form?

x daz x

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Which it isn't, ego is the sum total of your perceptual reality. Or if you prefer Jungian - and preferring your own personal 'version' to Jung's is your ego - the ego is the centre opf the field of consciousness.
'Better' is one of the 'fingerprints' of YOUR ego as you identify with being an open, flowing vessel, since ego - accurately the 'contents' - is individual.

I’m not compartmentalising or attaching to my expression so if you see it as a fingerprint of ego it’s most likely your ego identifying and deciding through your belief.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

...Rather than worry about identity, just be. (as is your name here.) In any situation being encompasses a selection of ones totality of self to date.
Others could see what they may describe as a persona but they're experiencing a subset of that person's being.
...

Your a breath of fresh air around here..💖

[Miss Hepburn]

Reminder, 2-3 sentences when quoting others.