What is EGO exactly because I'm not sure I understand what it is so I'm not sure how to dismantle it. I'm just confused as to what it means. Is it your personality???

Ego is not just any one thing as it varies from person to person. The simplest explanation to me is that it is all of those things which you believe that you are which you are in fact not. This could include feeling that you are the center about which everything and everyone else orbits. Or perhaps feeling that you are god's gift to wo/men. Or any milder variations which are your fantasies rather than objective observations. I can't say that I really understand it either.

It seems that we probably need some concept of what we are in relation to all the rest of what is but we need to prune it and tame it and reshape it into a more realistic self concept.

Ted

You might also define it as; That thing that makes you think that you ARE the whole being, seperate from everything and everyone else. Preventing you from realizing, instead, that you are simply a small part of the whole consciousness system/being.


peace
patrick

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

I found a good match in terms of question and answer :)

Jassmine: "What is the difference between ego and personality. I understand giving up your story so you don't have to live up to it. I also understand I am none of things that are on the outside is that what you are calling ego. I am not my job, my name, my accomplishments, my outside strivings. I am spirit having a human experience. How does this fit with the therory of the book?"

Tom:" "I am spirit having a human experience. How does this fit with the therory of the book?"

This statement fits perfectly with the theory of the book. Ego is perhaps used here a little differently than what you are used to. Ego is generated when the spirit/consciousness having the apparently physical human experience is ignorant of its true identity and purpose, and is of lower quality (has much to learn, understand and needs to evolve) -- it thus expresses fear, needs, wants, demands, expectations, desire, greed, in its attachment to, and manipulation of, the virtual physical reality. Ego is the sense of I manipulating the virtual physical reality to assuage its fear, and to secure and maintain its wants, needs, and desires -- it gives the physical more importance and exclusivity than it is due. Ego drives the action, when fear is the motivator. Ego and fear are the antithesis of compassion and love. Ego is the consciousness lost in a virtual physical reality manipulating the 10,000 things in a way to make itself feel better (less fearful). I hope this helps."

From viewtopic.php?f=13&t=29&p=49

Ego is mentioned in 2561 posts on the forum, so there is a lot of material here on this, but I suggest that you read the chapter on the ego written by Tom in My Big TOE.

Happy reading :)

Hi Willmeister, and welcome to the group.

Interesting posts, each provides a different window into the idea, like facets on a gem provide different but similar views into its little cage of light.

Here is the model I'm currently working with:

What we here call 'ego' is:

1) A whole cluster ('federation' might be a better word) of
2) Unvetted, ( so, taken for granted, taken as understood and unquestionable)
3) Belief Systems, both conscious and unconscious
4) About the self and, by extension, about other people and things in our lives
5) That function as "the map that gets confused with the territory"
6) And this map, this surrogate self actually comes to be perceived as more real and important and in need of support and defense than the actual self.

-Montana

A word that describes a toy that's missing an L because the L had an ego.

_________________
After all this is over, all that will really have mattered is how we treated each other.

http://www.malleablelight.net

Ahhh, Montana, howwww many times I've quoted 'the map is not the territory' in certain forums. Nice job !

An excellent explanation thank you Ted, I wish for my ego to take a permanent vacation! it's exhausting stuff!


Catharine

The best tip I can give is to read Eckhart Tolle´s: "A New Earth"
He´s really nailing the ego down on it´s knee or explaining how it´s "working".

I was working with meditation and doing all the stuff to know my self better.
And doing so for over a year a noticed that there is something missing "in my life".
When I read "A New Earth" i suddenly GOT IT!
After that, the missing pieces started to fall "right" in the puzzle.
Ego can be a very tricky one, who sneaks in everywhere!
Even into what seems to be a nice thing or a loving, caring thing.
A hidden agenda so to speak.

The main thing ego lives on, is that you believe that your mind or thoughts, are YOU.
If you believe that the voice in our head is the truth, then ego is in charge.
If you "have to" say you're point is the right one or "have to" convince others that you are right, the ego has you.

To see the ego madness or dysfunctional behaviour, there is only one thing to "do". (what I have learned)
Be present in the moment. Or be in a meditating state, free from chatter.
The lovely thing is that everything can be meditative. Even being offended by someone ;)

I'm not so god in the English language so hope the text I'm writing, is not having to high entropy. *laugh*

_________________
A curious child in PMR, which name is Alexa.

Favourite quote: " If you want to be enlightened - lighten up!"

This is either written by Tom or Ted, I don't know, but in my opinion this is the absolute best ego definition

The Freudian definition of ego is not quite as adequate as the following:

Ego (ego) -- the sense of self defined in terms of separation and differentiation from others -- is a result of fear.

The sense of self defined in terms of oneness with others is not called ego and is not a result of fear.

In our culture, a sense of self defined in terms of oneness with others and All That Is – is practically non-existent, both in fact and in concept, consequently, "ego" by common usage is the sense of self-defined in terms of separation and differentiation from others. And, the sense of self defined in terms of oneness
with others is not given a name since it does not exist in our collective reality.

This definition (the way I use the word, ego) subsumes the common psychological definition of ego -- the sense
of "I" as a separate individual.

The word "separate" logically implies "others", i.e., relative to, or contrasted/compared with, other individuals.

Ego is the "I" in counterpoint to "you" and "them". The ego describes unique individual existence among other unique individuals in terms of relationship to those individuals.

Ego is about me -- me in juxtaposition/relation to others -- thus ego is represented by an inward pointing arrow (pointing toward me). How does that affect me? "Me" is the subject and object of ego.

Love is about others.

Thus Love is represented by an outward pointing arrow (pointing toward others). Ego is fear based. The unnamed antithesis of ego is love based. Ego is generated in reaction to fear (me in contention with them).

Ego is a strategy, a device, to ensure that dealing with interactions with myself and others is positive for me - it is about what you get. Love is about what you give. Love, being about giving unconditionally to others, requires fearlessness. Conditions are needed to allay fears.

If it is about "me" (I love me), then it is ego, not love. Some fear and ego is more debilitating and dysfunctional than other fear and ego. Fear can even be "helpful" in some situations -- the fear of being caught and punished may prevent horrendous fear based crimes from being committed.

Fear of wasting your precious time during this experience packet may push you to improve your consciousness quality. Fear of generating even more fear (and a more debilitating fear) by dwelling on your faults and thus damaging your self-esteem (positive assessment
of "me") may lead you to look for what you define as the positive in yourself -- and you may call this "learning to love yourself" but it is all machinations of trying to transmute more dysfunctional fear and ego into less dysfunctional fear and ego in order to help pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Sometimes it is very helpful for leading in the right direction, and sometimes hurtful for leading toward greater dysfunction and greater and more destructive fear.

You are a complex being - the result of all previous intents and choices -- your day to day choices and strategies toward growth as you interact with others are not always so black and white and straightforwardly simple as the underlying fundamental principles.

That is why understanding consciousness evolution - e.g., love, fear, and ego is so intellectually easy but so frustratingly difficult to actualize in the present moment.

The fear of rejection is actually a fear of being inadequate, unacceptable, unworthy, and not good enough. One
fears rejection because one believes that one is inadequate and wishes to hide from that belief. The ego comes to the self's defense and convinces the self that it doesn't really want or need what might end up rejecting us and that those who might reject our self are flawed undesirable beings.

Rejection (feeling pain because of being rejected) is simply ego feeling sorry for itself -- such an ego will create convenient beliefs to prevent rejection from happening again.

Fear often does boil down to an avoidance of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. For the most part, fear is a reaction to an imagined pain (imagined negative circumstances). That makes it doubly interesting that fear is the direct cause of almost all emotional and spiritual pain and is the major contributor to most of the world's
physical pain as well. Consequently, it is our fear of pain that creates almost all of our pain.

Fear has the unusual property that it manifests itself into physical form. What you fear generally comes true sooner or later. For example, the fear of being unlovable or inadequate tends to make you act in such a way as to make you unlovable and inadequate. The stronger the fear the more likely that what you fear will manifest in
your reality. The power of negative thinking.

Love has the same power.
That is why the more you give, the more you get -- and the more you take, the less you have. The lower your entropy, the more satisfying, happy, and joyful your life becomes. The higher your entropy the more miserable, unhappy, and unsatisfied you are.

When I said: "the more you give, the more you get -- and the more you take, the less you have". I was not talking about love directly but indirectly. Within this context, giving to others is an expression of love. The loving intent expressed as giving reaps its own rewards whether love is returned or not. The arrow of your caring is pointed from you toward others. Likewise, within this context, forcibly taking, tricking, demanding, wanting, or needing something from others is an expression of ego. Ego is an expression of fear. The arrow of
your caring is pointed toward you from others.

Needs and fears are a fact of our lives. Some have their utility and serve a useful function within our imperfect world. All of us would be better off if we and the situations we have generated for ourselves found no utility or useful function for the fear in our lives.

The fear, needs, wants, and requirements of our ego as well as our embedded entanglements with the fear, needs, wants, and requirements of others is a large part of our daily lives. This is the stuff out of which our opportunities to be better flow.

Simply rejecting your fearful self and surroundings and entanglements is not the solution, or the way of growth. Applying your intention and free will within the ego soup you improve your own quality of consciousness and to provide an environment that helps others improve theirs is the way of love.

One does not succeed by dropping out, but by dropping in. One does not grow by disengaging from the fearful world or disentangling from the limited reality of others -- one grows by interacting wisely and lovingly within the environment one has created for oneself.

The fears and needs of our everyday existence represent the challenges we have to work with - one should not
think of them a negative, evil, or bad things to be avoided, rather as challenges to be met. Dealing effectively
with them, reducing them, and overcoming them for ourselves and for others define the PMR virtual reality game we are enrolled in. The point of being here is to learn and grow - not to be perfect. Feeling flawed or guilty because you are not perfect is counterproductive, useless and silly. That you have fear, needs, wants, and ego is not nearly as important as how you deal with them - how affectively you learn and grow from the opportunities they represent.

Specific ego issues and specific fears belong to the experience packet that generated them and thus disappear when one leaves that experience packet. However, one's consciousness quality is more or less continuous from one experience packet to the next. The level of that quality from the last experience packet generally determines
how prone you are to developing new specific ego and fear interactions within the next experience packet.

_________________
Love is the answer!

Daghda,

Flattery will get you nowhere. I did not write that. That must have been written by Tom. I wish you could cite the source. Please edit your attribution.

Ted

The experience of being aware without it will define it for you.

_________________
Shut up and meditate

The quotes are from this thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2971&p=6573&#p6573

They are contained in several of Tom's post in that thread.

Daghda,
Excellent post.



Very true




I can find no flaw in this. Only to elaborate, I would add that upon realization of the interconnection of ALL things, you realize that to do harm to any person is to do harm to ALL, and to do harm to yourself as well. In South Africa it is called "UBUNTU", in India and Eastern Philosophies it's called "Karma", in Christianity it's called "The golden rule".



Looking for the "good" within yourself is (IMO) the easy part. We must also look inside that dark place within ourselves. That shadow place where it is difficult to see. Once we understand and accept our OWN darkness, it's easier to understand and accept the darkness in others. This is how LOVE turns anger into compassion.



The path of awareness lies INSIDE, as well as outside of myself. Interacting with our environments both INTERNAL as well as EXTERNAL. Becoming aware of awareness and becoming conscious of CONSCIOUSNESS is a journey, NOT a destination. If we focus on where we WANT to be or where we think we should be will cause frustration. The process is always happening in the present. Right here and right now. We decide WHO we are every moment and with every choice we make, every day. I must always be aware of my random thoughts and be conscious of my every action. Because I am CREATING not only MYSELF, but also my entire reality with every thought I think.

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

I love this quote because it is so simple and so "deep".
If you are quiet in you're mind and present enough, the "Ego" will speak and reveal itself and how its "working".

But I think that requires a great awareness, so you can detect it so to speak.
When I started my journey I think I wasn't so aware, that I could understand the ego and how its operating.
My path was to read Eckhart Tolle´s definition of the Ego. After that I could "se" or here the ego´s voice more and more.
When I had the instruction manual of the ego (Tolle´s bok), it became much easier. ;)

But a side question is: Is ego only connected to the virtual experience only? (Body-PMR-NPMR)
Or Is ego only an representation of a high entropy Consciousness? If so, maybe consciousness began as only an ego thing, decided to follow the evolution contract, after a beer in the first virtual playground?
Who knows.

_________________
A curious child in PMR, which name is Alexa.

Favourite quote: " If you want to be enlightened - lighten up!"