Ego isn't the Enemy

What everyone gets wrong and some rare advice in 3 parts (+ DOWNLOADABLE SUMMARY 📝)

“It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one’s own destiny.

In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate.

Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory”

– C.G. Jung, ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections,’ p. 228

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801) Jacques-Louis David

The age of information has made getting real information harder.

Anyone can publish anything. Even with good intentions, we can get something wrong, and the nature of the internet is the nature of people: edgy, simple, and polarising win our attention while nuanced, complicated, and researched bore us.

Ego is the most pervasive misunderstood psychological and spiritual concept of our time.

Here’s What everyone gets this wrong and some rare advice in 3 parts…

(See end for downloadable summary 📝)

Part I. Misconceptions

“Wanting to kill your ego is the biggest ego-trip going. And of course, you couldn’t if you tried”

– Alan Watts

Ego isn’t pride.

It’s the rationalising function of consciousness. Gaining awareness as a child is synonymous with making sense of our surroundings: “who’s dad, where and who am I?”

The Ego is our life’s story.

The memories we’ve built that informs who we are.

You couldn’t function without Ego, without it, there’s only void. I couldn’t relate to the world if I didn’t have a general conceptualisation of myself (where I’m from, what I like etc.); I couldn’t relate to others if there wasn’t some common ground.

Without a centre of consciousness, there’s no way to communicate.

This is the downfall of new-age spirituality.

Spiritual or “conscious” people who think they’ve killed their egos have only built an egotistical paradigm where they view themselves as egoless.

This very ironically makes them more prone to egotistical behaviour.

“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas”

“The finest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist”

– Charles Baudelaire

These dangerous beliefs are new.

The psychologists who pioneered its understanding would hate them.

Part II. The Role of Ego

Ego is Latin for ‘I.’

Like I mentioned, the Egos function is to act as a kind of centre of gravity for conscious life (without it we’d have no point of reference). The spiritual experience (which I wholeheartedly endorse) is essentially a resting of the ego so one can experience the void.

A state of undifferentiated consciousness.

No i, we, them or it, just awareness.