Does the e-go have to go? (Page 2 of 3)

...This made me think a long time.  Indeed, I have a very hard time picturing how or why a person would grow if there wasn't a sense of being flawed or incomplete or less than they could be.

But the question that jumps into my mind immediately after that is, how much can a person grow if they think that they're inherently flawed or bad or wrong?

By viewing our separation from the Creator *as a mistake* aren't we setting ourselves up for disappointment and self-judgment each time we're aware of our separation? 

Is it possible to accept yourself as a being that is not a mistake and still grow?

Or, another question, do we view ourselves as making mistakes or AS mistakes?

...As far as "judgment" goes, I feel it necessary to pinpoint the meaning.  In your reply, T-Ren, you imply judgment is important, but not absoluteness of judgment.  I'm not sure what absoluteness of judgment is, or what a less absolute judgment is.

Judgment in the sense of the capacity to assess situations or circumstances and draw sound conclusions, or good sense, is--I think--very necessary for growth.  I usually don't term this judgment, but discernment or simply awareness.

When I use "judgment" I suppose I most often mean "moral judgment," the projection of thoughts/feelings of right/wrong, good/evil.  I separate it from discernment because I feel discernment has the capacity of being an energetically (internal) and neutral process, whereas moral judgment involves either holding inside one's self or projecting energy/thoughts/emotions of either "right"/"wrong" or "good"/ "bad"/"evil."  I see judgment as an energy that, by its nature, often puts into motion other (usually emotional) energies like fear, hate or disdain.  In honesty, I look upon this moral type of judgment as a thing (as thoughts and emotions are things) that slows down, gums up and clogs energy fields in the sender and receiver.

So, in that sense, my intuition and feeling have nearly always rejected (moral) judgment as leading to growth.

Within the realm of discernment, however, is an awareness of positive and negative--which doesn't necessarily or have to involve moral judgment or its accompanying energies.  Wrong/bad/evil are not necessarily synonyms with negative.  One can recognize a person or path as negative without reacting to it and holding inside one's self or projecting feelings of fear or hate or the energy of "wrong!"  It can simply be understood as very unlikely to lead to growth for you at that time. 

My intuition tells me there's no need to hate myself, and that I can like every part of myself.  That doesn't mean I do, and I hope I won't try to hold myself up to a perfect picture.  But I feel there is a way to approach a path of growth without moral judgment of yourself, without identifying this or that as "bad/wrong."  In the spirit of neutrality and discernment, I think, you can purely understand choices as more limiting or more freeing, perhaps--hurting others (including yourself) or helping the greatest number of others.

My issue is really not with the DEFINITION of the term "ego," but with the word itself because it confuses the concept of selfness with STS behaviors.

Does the concept of selfness inevitably lead to STS behaviors?

Does one have to define self as "separate," or in such a way that an awareness of self cancels out an awareness of others?  (What about an understanding of self that is a piece of a holographic universe?)

The other posters in this thread variously defined ego as: a lens, a filter, a container, a mask, as that which enables you to distinguish yourself from everything else.  Does "lens," "filter," or "that which enables you to distinguish yourself from everything else," imply STS behaviors?  To me, they don't seem to.  But ego does, because of its history and related words.

When I object to the ego as a concept analogous to "The Fall" or "Original Sin" it is not because I disagree with the idea of a "Fall" or separation, or even the motivation that the awareness of less-than-completeness can provide us with...What I object to is the INTERPRETATION of the event of the The Fall/separation, and the fact of separation, as our *fault.*  The consciousnesses who separated may have been responsible, but saying that they're responsible is different from saying "their fault."  Fault implies blame which implies wrongdoing which implies that all of creation is wrong, a mistake to be corrected.

To my knowledge I have never grown from feeling wrong or bad, I believe I've always grown through self-love and forgiveness for believing that I was wrong.  I may have acted negatively, or I may have been negative, but I didn't forgive that negativity until I let go of the judgment of it (forgave it). 

That life has problems I don't dispute.  That problems and struggling is necessary for growth I don't dispute.  But I wonder if it is necessary to make ourselves fundamentally a problem...

T-Ren...

I signed on this morning to make an add to my post, but what you posted before me already contained all my thoughts...

Yes, exactly!  That is my primary concern with the mass-accepted conceptualization of the ego, *that it can cause feelings of "I'm not worthy!* 

And, simply writing "third density self (ego)" above there has clarified so much for me.  What I was about to write about was how, after sitting with these ideas, I realized that the "ego" and the conscious core are not equivalent in vibration and that this is all the source of confusion.  ...I knew this before, but somehow got away from that knowledge when I became so enmeshed in sorting out the "unworthiness" feeling from what I feel is the actual function of the ego.

You've really hit on something for me.  And I'll try to formulate it in my own words...It's the identification with the energy signature of the ego, which is but a third density of extension of your total spirit, that perpetuates the perception of separation (and there is a "big jump" in the quality of energy from third to fourth density--that's what perhaps gives the sense of a void or nothing beyond the self, the vibrations are so very different that at first it might feel like there's nothing there).

I hope I didn't twist the meaning of your words, but this is making sense to me now.  Yesterday, I also picked up "The Eye of the I" by David Hawkins and there was a passage that brought me a little light:

"The ego appears to be the product of fear, and its purpose is to control the next instant of experience and ensure its survival."

I've heard variations of this statement over and over again.  And while, right now, it doesn't make much sense of me to say that the "the ego is the product of fear," the second part of the sentence makes sense.  Since, as you noted, we are extended from a higher realm (6D or whatever) into a realm of linearality (3D), and come to believe in 3D time/space so staunchly, we (out of fear--okay, I think I get that part now) seek to control "outcomes."  The fear is a result, perhaps, of increasing identification with the linear system, and this explains (for right now) the "tyrant" aspect of the ego that I've been having such a hard time with.   

And yet, is it fair to say that that "fear" or "tyranny" is an inherent (or causitive) aspect of the energy field of the ego?  Or is that fear/tyranny simply the automatic product of focusing your attention so intensely into its energy field?

Thanks, T-Ren...

I realize that 3 types of people I address are a generalization and there are more (those not yet awake but with various tendancies) I was just expressing this thought out loud so to type since I never thought about there being a void and the drawing in of energies. So I hope I cause no offense.

Does the ego have to go  well i dont think you can get rid of the ego trying to do that would be like a dog chasing its tail. 
My definition of the ego is when u don't realise the knowledge u have isnt your own its the universes you only reflect the knowledge like the moon reflects the light of the sun.

Some of this is redundant after reading other posts here, but I can't hold back from posting anyway....perhaps more to think out loud than to add anything substantive to this discussion.

Please do forgive my Ego for needing to contribute!

There is a duality at play here.  Ego is both necessary and real, yet unnecessary and illusory.
Also, it is necessary to go back and forth from being Ego-centered and Ego-dissolved. 

The Ego is a necessary Function....

Without the separateness of the Ego-self, we would be one schizophrenic blob, unable to differentiate "My' thoughts from "Your" thoughts.  Ego is a functional tool that allows pieces of consciousness to learn, to observe themselves, to become more discriminating, to keep a record of what has been absorbed....to focus on this lifetime's projects.

However, on another level, the Ego is illusory, and to Identify with it as Real creates suffering.

Ultimately our lives are not our own, but rather these lives belong to the Great Spirit.
Now, to the extent that you dissolve your ego boundaries and illusions and realize that you already are a piece of the Great Spirit anyway, this is not disturbing.  It's just "What Is."

But if you hold tight to these Ego Illusions that your physical body is the real you, or that your consciousness is totally separate and independent from the whole, the idea of being robbed of this identity can be terrifying.

Ego is paradoxical in that it spins stories and leads you to believe that it will make you big and powerful.  Yet in order to realize any big dream, to create anything worthwhile, to come to any profound realizations, to manifest any form of genius, you must dissolve your ego boundaries.

So the Ego tries to convince you to keep it alive at all costs, telling you that this will make you big and powerful.  But it only makes you small and miserable.

The Ego's story is of separateness and independence.  On a certain level you are separate and independent, but only in the larger context of your complete and utter connectedness and dependence on the whole.

Now, this dissolving of boundaries needn't (and indeed, for most of us shouldn't) be permanent.
It's a matter of switching states, a Shamanic skill.  Switching vision.  Taking your 3-D glasses off and on.   There have been humans (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, the great yogi Patanjali) that spent the majority of their time in totally dissolved states, but then had to re-don their Ego Suits in order to function amongst other humans. 

In order to write scripture and channel wisdom of a high, precise, pure nature, it is necessary to really dissolve ego boundaries and pull from the Higher Totality---the wisdom of All that Is....but then when you're done writing you might have to just go take a walk and talk to some people and go buy groceries and be human and ego-defined again.....

And I suppose it is a function of the temporal Ego-self to be able to then take that insight and put it into Language that is useful in your present time-space....so dissolve the ego to get the wisdom, then filter it through Ego to get it on paper and communicatable.

So the Ego is real yet unreal, necessary yet in the way, beneficial if kept in its place, unbeneficial when out of place.

The Ego is a function that the Self uses (the Self ultimately, it seems, being one Great Self: I-and-I) but should not be mistaken for the Self.

If I cared about degrees I would encourage you to write a PhD thesis on this.

This was a very insightful post, particularly good to think about operational versus conceptual.

But the way you linked the muddied-waters of the term Ego with the reinforcing of the idea of Original Sin and judgment is BRILLIANT.

THANK YOU.  This was so helpful and useful.  Posts like these make me so grateful for Noble Realms.

As for the question of "Unworthiness":

We are all slices of God.

If God is infinite, that means it is All-Encompassing.  There is no such thing as Infinity-plus-one.

So the only unworthiness comes from choosing to continue to focus on STS, petty ego illusions that entail a rejection of the Love of The Great Spirit.  (The fall from Grace, which may be a necessary part of this earth game, a necessary experience in order to learn to distinguish between ego and Higher Self, between illusion and reality.)  This will just continue, it seems to me, until some occurrance or realization snaps that Ego-Entity out of illusion and attachment to that illusion.

Because merely seeing beyond the illusion is insufficient.  One has to let go of one's attachment to it, and paradoxically this is so difficult even when we know the illusion is unbeneficial towards us....
it's an addiction that's hard to drop:
The addiction to Ego's illusion that I am, in effect, "God", separate from all else....

In the Bhagavad Gita it is explained that one of the last stages before Enlightenment is to get caught in the Ego's trap that it is God.  The Gita reckons that the only way to get out of this trap is with a Guru, since, as someone stated earlier on this thread, it's nearly impossible to dissolve the Ego on your own since the Ego will always circuitously bring us back to justifications of its existence and importance.

So either a powerful Guru or simple Grace can do it....so some Sages spontaneously awakened while most of us need more pushing and prodding.

Let's try to distinguish between Judgment (which brings on emotions and makes the mind noisy, labelling good and bad) versus Discrimination (which is detached, calm, observing cause and effect).

I have to run now but had to put two more cents in after finishing reading the other comments.