What is the ego? The ego is, in short, your self identity, your personality, your self concept. It is not necessarily easy to define the ego, but I will list as many of the components of the ego as I possibly can and I will dive deeper into each one of them.
1.The ego is made up of qualities, traits and behaviors that we want to be identified with by our peers to make us look like a worthy and good human being
2. The chosen self also plays the role of a survival & protector mechanism because it is what you chose (unconsciously) as an adaptive response to help you survive danger in your past.
3. Sometimes, an emotion can become part of our identity.
4. Thoughts, feelings that are repeated often enough and become patterns, beliefs, therefore becoming ingrained
Now let me break these down for you. First, ego, as I said is comprised of traits and qualities that we put forth so that the world sees as good human beings, therefore worthy of belonging, love and acceptance. We are taught from an early age by being punished, rewarded, reprimanded etc that the most desirable trait in a human being living in a society has to be that of a good person. If you're not a good person, you cannot be loved accepted and cannot belong, the society says. And so it makes it a matter of survival (as we are fundamentally social species ) to be a good person. And what does a good person do? Well, a good person has to go to school, earn a diploma. A good person has a valuable job (mostly CEOs, lawyers, doctors etc). A good person has to have a relationship and get married and reproduce. And depending on the values of the family you grew up in, there are certain standards and values that you need to abide by in order to be be labeled and seen as a good person. For instance if a family's strong value is represented by honesty, as a child, if you lie, you will be punished severely and so in order to avoid that in the future, you will adopt that value and you will identify as an honest person. It doesn't matter if it is truly part of your being, you adopt it without questioning it because you had to survive in that family. All of these things represent who you are in the world and you want to show off as much as possible because they are considered valuable by this 3d society. However, they are not more than a component of your ego.
2. Now let’s talk about the ego’s role as a survival & protector mechanism. When we are faced with hardships as children, these hardships take a toll on our being. The pain that we feel is so unbearable and seems so insurmountable that we dissociate, meaning our consciousness splits. The aspect in us that is so hurt and cannot find a resolution to the pain will be pushed and rejected from the conscious awareness of our mind into the subconscious/unconscious, becoming a shadow (I will talk about the shadows in the future). We will therefore not have an easy access to it through our conscious mind. This vulnerable part being hidden away, what we bring forth is a protector aspect, a strong aspect that is meant to obviously protect us from further pain, but is also meant to deny and dismiss anything that may attempt at unveiling, uncovering the vulnerable part that was tucked deep inside our subconscious. This is how we cope and therefore survive a tremendously challenging situation as children.
The protector aspect of our ego - and ego in general- hates unsafety, being seen as weak and what feels unpredictable because it feels exposed and judged in such situations. And because the protector aspect offers our being the safety that the hurt parts in us never could, we start identifying with it. We create our self identity around this protector personality. We create our ego around it. We further more identify as that protector side and we take on the energy of it, we embody it. People who have this protector personality, whenever triggered into feeling their pain, will have certain reactions like snapping, becoming aggressive, defensive, shutting down, lashing out, taking themselves out of any situation that may threaten to bring to light this vulnerable aspect and its pain. You may also see people saying I'm fine when they're obviously not, people bulldozing the need to cry when the vulnerability in them is triggered etc. This is the ego taking over us.
3. We can also identify with an emotion. For instance if we are told that we are angry when we are children, we internalize the emotion of anger as part of our personality, but because it's not a desirable quality to have, the child growing up as an angry person will most likely develop an opposing quality that is meant to antagonize the anger that they were told they identify with. And so they put up a front of a calm and collected quality. But because the anger is suppressed, it doesn’t go away, but it shows in a subtle way & in an unconscious manner in the persons behaviour, gestures and their entire being, even if they struggle to keep cool and calm. Basically they will show up as a pressure cooker that is smiling at you and tells you they are calm. Children internalize anything they are told about themselves and try their best to please their caregivers.
4. The ego is also comprised of thought patterns, belief systems and feelings. When something bad happens to us as children, as I described earlier, when our minds are too easily hurt by the external world and therefore our consciouness splits, we assign meaning to these events because we are unable to process them (for instance if your mother neglects you emotionally over and over again, you as a child draw the conclusion Something is wrong with me, otherwise she would love me. I am therefore unlovable). We make the events mean something about ourselves, we take them personally and the meaning too, that we then repeat over and over until it becomes a core belief, a story, that we unconsciosuly hold about ourselves. A core belief then generates a myriad of certain belief systems that all lead back to the core one. Beliefs, even though at face value are detrimental, at the core they’re role is actually not negative, it is to prevent you from doing bad things again and hence to suffer the consequences of having love withdrawn from you. And so the ego will be formed around patterns in behaviours and thoughts & feelings that are meant to prevent you from re-living that specific pain again (if you neglected by your mom and you unconsciously create the core belief I am unlovable, then you may take on the persona of a people pleaser, a person that is always available, ready to meet everyones needs so that people will love her/him and to not be put in a position of having someone else neglect you again). The chosen self will push your conscious awareness as far away from the unconscious core beliefs as humanly possible. The ego needs the familiar and dreads any change, that is why healing of the untold pain within us is so hard for most of us. Because you have unknowingly built walls around your pain through and with the help of your ego so that you can never feel that hurt again. Ego is all about resistance to anything that it perceives as a threat to its predictability (what is predictable is safe, says the conscious mind hence the ego).
I want to sum it all up and leave you with some food for thought. Whatever comes after the statement "I am" is part of your chosen self, part of your ego construct. It is a social and artificial external form that your being takes. Your ego is technically all the conclusions you drew as a child upon seeing things happen around you or/and to you. It is a mechanism, a structure built and created as a reaction that your being chose in your most defining and intense moments.
But the truth of you lies beyond your ego. You are not your ego. You are so much more than a bundle of emotions, thoughts, qualities, traits and behaviours that you exhibit. You're so much more than your name, your job, your gender, your religion. These are just labels. From the perspective of the world we live in, the ego is all there is, but from a higher perspective, your ego is an illusion because you are an infinite, limitless being. Nothing can truly confine and entrap who you are at the core. NOthing about who you are can be bound, defined and categorized.But know this. Your ego is not your enemy by default, it was created by your being and your consciousness as a way to navigate this world. It is necessary to be able to live in a 3d realm. So, at its core, the chosen self or the ego is not inherently bad nor is it good. It's a tool. And as any tool, the way you decide to use it makes it either good or bad.
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