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Ego is not a dirty word.

I just stumbled onto this old post a couple of days ago and thought it would be relevant to this discussion:

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=1224882

"It is not ego, in the Freudian sense, that is the actual target of the Buddhist insight. It is, rather, the self-concept, the representational component of the ego, the actual internal experience of one's self that is targeted."

This is basically the crux of the issue. A lot of people have the misconception that the ego is some set of behaviors or some part of themselves that they view negatively and want to "transcend". That is, if anything, the Jungian shadow.

The point of ego death is not to overcome or to get rid of some aspect of yourself but to see that your idea of yourself, the way you think of yourself and represent yourself to yourself is a mental construction.

If you get attached to your idea and start saying seriously "I am this" and "I am that" you are really putting on a kind of mental straight-jacket. Instead of expanding your self-concept as you discover more of yourself, you contract yourself in order to fit your self-concept.

It is as if the ego is your "theory" of yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviors are the "data" that the theory is meant to explain. But if you identify with the theory, you will falsify the data to hold on to it.
 
^Well, the topic isn't so much about ego-death, but whether the ego is an inherently negative structure/illusion/what-have-you.

It is as if the ego is your "theory" of yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviors are the "data" that the theory is meant to explain. But if you identify with the theory, you will falsify the data to hold on to it
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Thats a good analogy. The ego is more like an input then an output.

But then- I find that my emotions and behaviour actually get more confused and cause more irritation/suferring when I am constantly trying to shift what I feel as my natural perspective. I think that the ego and emotions/perspective/behaviour/etc. are all a sort of two way filter, colouring what comes into the mind and also colouring what goes out. Part of the distortion that ego creates is neccesary and almost spontaneous. I think the ego is the most easily "molded" part of our minds, in that we have a lot more concious control over it then other strata of the brain- so when we get the idea that something is "bad", a (perhaps) spontaneous seeming reaction to 'incoming data' has occured, tainting or otherwise shifting our initial persepctive in a negative (or positive) direction; in between ourselves reacting, and 'outputting' that perception, we can change the basic assumption, using the idealistic ego, and perceive things the way we want to.

I don't know if I made any sense....:\
 
Psychodelirium said:
I just stumbled onto this old post a couple of days ago and thought it would be relevant to this discussion:

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=1224882

"It is not ego, in the Freudian sense, that is the actual target of the Buddhist insight. It is, rather, the self-concept, the representational component of the ego, the actual internal experience of one's self that is targeted."

This is basically the crux of the issue. A lot of people have the misconception that the ego is some set of behaviors or some part of themselves that they view negatively and want to "transcend". That is, if anything, the Jungian shadow.

The point of ego death is not to overcome or to get rid of some aspect of yourself but to see that your idea of yourself, the way you think of yourself and represent yourself to yourself is a mental construction.

If you get attached to your idea and start saying seriously "I am this" and "I am that" you are really putting on a kind of mental straight-jacket. Instead of expanding your self-concept as you discover more of yourself, you contract yourself in order to fit your self-concept.

It is as if the ego is your "theory" of yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviors are the "data" that the theory is meant to explain. But if you identify with the theory, you will falsify the data to hold on to it.
Click to expand...

This is easy to understand when you take a mushroom or mescaline trip... Your perception goes from ego-centric to universal-- sights, noises, and emotions dominate your perception, not thoughts of the self. 'Looking in the mirror' while tripping is sort of a reversal of the Freudian formation of the ego--you don't recognize or relate with the thing you see in the mirror because of that loss of the ego.

I also had this happen to a lesser degree when I was meditating this weekend. Noises dominated my perception, and to a lesser degree, the emotions or vibrations of all ~50 people sitting in the zendo around me.

In essence, you simply give up trying to control the universe and allow yourself to be a unified part of it.
 
Psychodelirium said:
If you get attached to your idea and start saying seriously "I am this" and "I am that" you are really putting on a kind of mental straight-jacket. Instead of expanding your self-concept as you discover more of yourself, you contract yourself in order to fit your self-concept.

It is as if the ego is your "theory" of yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviors are the "data" that the theory is meant to explain. But if you identify with the theory, you will falsify the data to hold on to it.
Click to expand...

That is, by far, the best explanation I have heard regarding the nature of ego. Thankyou for sharing your clarity!
 
The term "ego" is very misunderstood, IMO. It isn't an entity, but a set of habitual tendencies (to divide, separate, oppose, and attempt to maintain existence as a psychological entity having continuity in time and location in space).

As such, it involves certain habitual behaviors -- denial and avoidance being chief among them.

Projection being another.

Spiritual folk (and actually all folk) often seem to like pointing out "ego" in others.

And yet, the very seeing of a psychological entity separate from oneself (an other) -- is ego.

"It takes one to know one".

Only ego sees other egos (and reacts to them).

Consider: When one's own ego dissolves, all egos in existence dissolve along with it.

That's not to say one can't witness "immediate behavior and words" from someone that look deluded or like a reaction, but it's clear that there's no continuous psychological entity there.

If there's none 'here', there's none 'there' -- simple.

Because actually, here == there. Non-separation. Always already the case.

Peace...
 
The ego is nothing but a facade, a narrative that plays in your head based on past events/experiences in life. Once you become fully immersed in the moment, (mindfulness meditation can help you see this) you can separate the ego from your being. The past on a metaphysical level, doesn't and has never existed. It was only the present moment at one point. The ego can be a useful tool in life, but acknowledging it too much (straying from the present) can be very destructive. It is a separate entity from your being, and you must look at it that way.
 
EGO is the defense mechanism of the self. Without it one would become totally selfless, ultimately to the point of death. The problem begins when the EGO motivates our actions and to some degree it's almost impossible to entirely escape selfishness in any given situation.
 
IMO its about balance and realism. If your ego gets to uncontrolled then you don't learn anything because you know everything. If your ego disappears to much so does a part of yourself. If you find a middle ground where you simply know who and what you are, its easier to thrive. Hope for the best but plan for the worst or so they say.... To much egotism kills intellect overall. Your to selfish to have empathy. Your lack of empathy disregards you from learning from others experiences. If its not in check you mainly stay stuck in place. Life is about balance.
 
Just read this thread from the beginning and I'm in mourning for some of the gentle and wonderful voices we have lost.:(
 
Ok... So the ego is just some bullshit, obsolete programming in the mind. It's going to spit out bullshit negative thoughts and feelings for the verrrry most part. I've learned by now to just let it spout its useless negative crap. But I get to be in control though. I get to choose not to react to all of the egos lies. I once got the worst fear in my life and thoughts that I was going to be painfully overcharged with electricity from meditating too much. Well and energy breathing i call it too. I wasn't in control then and let the ego convince me to run around an outside theatre naked and screaming. I despise the fucking ego now yes. However, I realize in order to go deep in meditation and minimize tension I have to let the piece of shit be heard at least. I now recognize how negative and deceitful it is. I now see that any overwhelming fear and self damning thoughts are just a piece of shit obsolete program on it's last legs..
 
Ego is self-referential. So if you hate ego, then it's just ego hating itself.

Having come very close to death many in the past 5 years, I can tell you that ego is necessary to life. Core consciousness, or core spirit, doesn't care if the mind-body lives or dies. It is in absolute unchanging bliss at all times. The tenacious selfishness of ego is what grasps at life and motivates life to perpetuate itself.

I have noticed in spiritual practitioners who spiritually bypass or who constantly abdicate ego to the Absolute, their health begins to wane. They feel no personal connection to life or its activities. All these practitioners begin to sound the same and even look the same, as their vitality becomes hollowed out by depersonalization. You know, the ones who talk in dulcimer tones, and say things like, "It's all Oneness. I'm not this body, I'm not this mind, I'm not this person. I'm Emptiness, I'm Nothing."

The thing is, core spirit is universal, but it's also individualized. That's why we live in duality. We are Oneness, but we are also this. Although each object in the universe is a manifestation of the whole, each object is also personalized, and it's not ego. Ego is a projection of the mind-body, a survival strategy for navigating the material world of duality. Core consciousness is Divinity-personalized-as-you. It is bliss and unchanging. The ego (you who's reading this) can be made to see core consciousness, but it can never be part of it.

It does no good to hate the ego. In my view, it's better to bring ego (you) into alignment with core consciousness so that everything which is projected by the ego onto the world is bliss. This is how paradise on Earth can be experienced. I mean, even if you want to live a life of hell and internal suffering, core consciousness is perfectly content to be its purity of awareness. Eventually ego dies and awareness returns to what it always was. My suggestion is merely for making life easier for the mind-body, which is the only thing capable of generating experiences.
 
100% agreed. The ego is simply the individual self, the personality of an individual. I think the reason it gets conflated so much is because we also use the word in a derogatory way to mean "asshole", basically. If someone is full of themselves/arrogant/etc, we say they are egotistical or they have a big ego. Those people have an ego (personality) problem, yes, but this doesn't mean that personality is bad, or wrong. It just is, it's the result of having to navigate the world as you grow up and age.
 
All actions come from the ego and are motivated by satisfying the ego.

“No one has ever done anything that was solely for the sake of another and without a personal motive. How indeed could he do anything that was not related to himself, thus without an inner necessity (which simply must have its basis in a personal need)? How could the ego act without ego?”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

I also put it to you that the people we say have a "big ego" because they brag about how great they are actually suffer from too little of an ego. Someone with a well fed ego is sure of themselves and doesn't require external validation. The braggart, conversely, is seeking validation, a sign of insecurity, a small ego.
 
I would nuance it by saying that the experience level is where all things "seemingly" take place. That's the level that the ego is operating on, in the perception of causality. The experience level originates from birth with the initial formation of duality from oneness consciousness, or core awareness. The core awareness never changed, but it just got artificially partitioned off into duality. I say artificially because core consciousness can't ever truly be divided, it can only seemingly be divided. As adults we have the cognitive function to reverse engineer this and return to a bliss state with a lot of inner work; but as newborn infants we lacked this cognitive function, otherwise it might've been possible to avoid the original duality formation in the first place.

We then spend our entire lives running around in the experience level trying to do the things we think will return us to the original bliss of oneness/pure awareness, and of course it never works. Core awareness is always present, always blissful, always OK. It's the duality/experience level that's not OK.

This is the eternal dissatisfactoriness (often mistranslated as suffering) that the Buddha talked about. Most advanced Buddhists will tell you that the origin of all suffering is actually duality, but you can't tell the average person this because they won't get it. So they simply tell most people that fear, desire and attachment cause suffering. Well, the root of those is duality. You're afraid because you feel separated and othered by oneness and you don't know how you'll find your way back. Those screaming babies? Yeah, they are in stage 1 of the whole drama of that. You feel desire because you want to reunite with the primacy of existence, but you don't really know how to do this so nothing really quells the desire. You feel attachment because some things remind you of the primacy you came from (and are, at this very moment), so you want more and more of those things. Except the objects aren't the primacy, the primacy is the pure awareness already inside of you that the experience level gets a glimpse of through momentary windows of resonance that seemingly comes from external objects.

For example... you go to a movie and the movie is so awesome that you feel blissed out. You leave the movie thinking that the movie is so amazing that you have to go back an see it so you can recapture that resonant bliss. You go back and over and over, but it never lasts. Eventually the movie's effect wears off. The whole thing is a misattribution. The movie created a resonance that let the experience level / ego get a window into core awareness, which is blissful and unchanging. Basically, it was a reminder. Because of duality, we attribute the bliss to the movie, but the movie isn't the one who emanates the bliss. This process describes every addiction humans have to every degree. All humans are dealing with this distortion in every thing they do, in every daily activity.

The first problem every single human being has is that they became a person. Duality "happened" creating the experience level and illusion of causality, and then the causal split formed an ego that suffers because it experiences the constant illusion of separation. You can't be an individuated form without duality coming into play. Ego is not to blame... it naturally arises because of duality, but it's not the reason for it. Without the experience level of duality, nothing would be happening at all, there'd be no you, there would just be awareness, the awareness that is always present.
 
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I think people’s egos are driven by accomplishments they have made and inner circles of family and friends who know and believe in them and love them. It’s like a barrier from the harsh realities of life. A sort of blanket of protection. I Think it’s a good thing to have. But people misuse their powerful egos all the time causing problems and distractions to others to better suit their own will. It’s like a caveman building a fire for the first time. You would kind of think you are a badass, but are you gonna share it or keep it all to yourself?
 
being said:
Buddhism has no belief system. Actually Buddha has said the following: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
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Buddhism has a belief system. Well, not maybe system, but they have philosophy. Religion is always a philosophy, but philosophy isn't always religion. I like C. Jungs views about religion. Anyways, logo of buddhism represents it, the system. I know theology very well. Buddhism is very chynical philosophy. Nowdays people use word chynical, in wrong meaning. Read the philosophy of chynichism, and you'll understand. Schopenhauer was very much inspired by eastern religions and one of his solutions for pain of life is to become kind of monk. Schopenhauer is known as very pessimistic philosopher, but there is much more to pessimism than people think.
 
Buddhism believes in karma, reincarnation, dharma, and in some sects deities. It definitely is a system.

They also believe in sublimating the human level experience into the Absolute. Meaning... "I am not this body, I am not this time, I am not this self" etc. It's ultimately an escapist philosophy, if you take it to its ultimate conclusion.
 
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