Many of us are already those who, at least, suspect that the cause of the problems that afflict us is not outside of us but in our own interior. But even so, in my opinion, there is still a misguided belief that there is an enemy to overcome, also hidden now, in the unfathomable and inescapable depth of our own psyche. And according to this popular belief, this internal enemy to be eliminated is our own ego.
And it is in this nuance that I think that our gaze is also limited by the meaning or interpretation we give to things, including words. It is important to define the ego when establishing conjectures since its meaning may vary depending on who applies it.
My personal definition of ego is closer to its psychological description as "the individual self, considered in its conscious aspect." Today, for me, the ego is nothing other than the mental entity with which we normally identify ourselves and which is evolving throughout our walk through life.
From this definition we would always be looking from the ego. Right now I would be speaking from the ego, that is, from the vision I have of myself at this moment.
In my case, for example, the ego would be this idea that I have of myself with all its different facets, which I collectively call Alberto and that I normally describe based on his sex, place of birth, occupation, moral, attitude, qualities and supposed defects, your personal history ...
From this perspective the ego (or mental entity) with which we identify ourselves and that we use to move in a practical way through life, does not have to be something negative that we have to get rid of, but rather something that we must first accept and even to get to love (as I myself began to do in his day) from a comprehensive and patient look. The ego would be like a child who is in a continuous process of transformation and as a child sometimes rebels, especially when he feels rejected. Some compare it to the famous inner child that so many people intend to rescue.
The "inner child", in psychological terms, is that part of us, or rather, of our mental entity, that we have rejected and locked in our subconscious because we were ashamed of it, usually because we have been rebuked, accused or punished as children . It is said that to heal our psyche we must embrace that inner child who looks forward to our acceptance and our love. I believe that, in reality, there is no difference between our inner child and the badly known ego. I think that the inner child is nothing more than a childish version of the latter. So it would be illogical to try to heal one while we continue to mistreat the other.
Our inner child has grown but is still tried and convicted almost daily, many times harder even than in the past. But its most severe judge is no longer the social and cultural environment where we grew up. They are no longer our well-meaning parents, educators or acquaintances. They were only those who implanted the seeds of self-criticism in our subconscious that subsequently spread through our habits of thinking and perception of reality. Over time we ourselves have become our most implacable judge, swelling the continuing chain of propagating victims of more victims that affected us in the first place.
Do we complain that the world needs love and understanding? How to pretend to love others if we cannot love ourselves? How to forgive others if we are unable to forgive ourselves? How to understand others when we do not even understand who we are closest to, ourselves?
I really think that the real problem is precisely our inherited need for perfection, for which we do not admit mistakes in our behavior, simply because we have not yet come to understand that these errors are nothing other than natural patterns of learning and maturation.
The dictionary also defines the ego as the "excessive appreciation a person feels for himself, " and this is often judged as a sense of superiority. But love and self-esteem, if it is not based on comparisons with third parties, is not equivalent to the feeling of superiority. On the other hand, from my point of view, appreciation of oneself or others can never be excessive. In any case, that excess of appreciation or assessment to which the dictionary refers, can occur when we apply it to the characteristics or abilities that we may or may not possess (handsome, smart, friendly, hardworking ...), but never when it is addressed to the self central holder of these qualities, because I think that each of us is much more worthy of love than we can ever imagine.
Yes, I have been able to verify that those who are incapable of accepting a certain image of themselves, seeing that others proclaim it, immediately classify these as arrogant or fraudulent, or on the contrary, extraordinary beings, beyond the commons of mortals, when In truth, what happens is that they are unable to see themselves that way. Again, the problem lies in one's own perception.
Others identify the ego with the "shadow" or evil that supposedly exists in us as opposed to our "light" or goodness. We have taken all the qualities that we consider negative in us and we have united them by creating an inner monster with them. We have carried the duality we used to see outside inside, and we have become our own enemies.
Also, with time and experience, it has been proven that attacking the shadow does not benefit us at all but rather makes it even more powerful. Which has been attributed to the fact that being the shadow, like light, an inherent part of the human being is impossible to destroy. I instead attribute it to what the Law of Attraction holds, that everything we pay attention to gives it power.
As a result of this impossibility of destroying the shadow or negative ego, many suggest accepting it, in order to be able to at least integrate it, thus avoiding that it is he who controls most of our psyche. Something like saying "what are we going to do, that is what we are, we will have to accept it or it will end up destroying us." In my opinion, that approach benefits us except in the part “that is what we are”, because in this way we do not get to the real root of the problem, under this look, we still consider it something “real” instead of a simple error of perception And what is even worse, we now consider it a part of us, an inevitable part of our own in dual nature theory (with all that this entails) and therefore we still identify with it.
With all my respect and affection towards the good intentions that these comments surely promote but, in my opinion, accepting and loving the shadow or the ego because it is part of us, it can cause some peace temporarily by ceasing our resistance, by finally diverting our attention and our demonstrative approach to something else, but I will not finish solving it.
The ego does not need to be overcome or controlled, it needs to be understood, it needs to be revealed.
No. From my point of view, the shadow or the negative ego is not an intrinsic part of us. It is, like everything else, just an illusion. There is no evil in the dark, just to know it. What scares us of the darkness is that we cannot see it, we do not understand it, we are simply afraid of what we can find, what we still do not know. I think that, metaphorically speaking, all that exists is Light, Love. There is no evil in us or anywhere. Duality, evil is an illusion. It only exists in our perception, in our eyes. We are a process. We are this Light (not dual) discovering itself.
The light casts no shadow. And when we are aware that we are Light, we immediately stop casting shadows.
It is we who give the power to the ego by defining it in one way or another and identifying with it. We are not what we think we are, but we act based on what we think we are. If we think that our ego is inadequate or even evil we will act improperly or evilly or suffer from terrible temptations and feelings of guilt and, of course, low self-esteem. If, on the contrary, we think that we are kind and worthy of being happy, we will act and consequently we will also live in this other way. But in reality nothing s bad exists in us, everything is a problem of perception. In truth the labels of bueno or malo, we put them with our interpretations and prejudices learned. In any case and forced to choose, everything that exists will be good from the perspective that everything, in the short or long term, benefits our learning, our development, our evolution.
I have no doubt that our ego or mental entity can be, and in fact is, not only a positive agent in our evolutionary process, but it is also indispensable. After all, our ego is the vehicle through which our true essence, whatever it may be, moves through life.
No, we cannot eliminate the ego, in any case we can transcend it, or at least its unwanted aspects or attitudes. In the first place, stop seeing them and combining them as a dangerous independent entity, and simply recognizing them as a natural effect of our own maturation process. In the second place, ceasing to identify ourselves not only with its negative part but with the totality of that incomplete image of ourselves that is our mental self.
Transcending the ego does not mean on the other hand ignoring it, stop being interested in it, stop trying to understand it and much less love it. It means trying to see it as a, we could say, `` conscious concept, temporarily necessary and in continuous expansion, which will never cease to evolve, through which we will continue gradually knowing ourselves more, discovering ourselves more and more every step we take through him, discovering thanks to him our true identity, our self only I, the one who observes behind our gaze, the one who hides under our illusory disguise.
Today I consider that Love for oneself is the best treasure we can possess and also share with the world.
Today I feel in love with this Alberto thanks to which I experiment, learn and move. We could perhaps compare it with the love that a fervent and passionate Role player can feel for the character with whom he participates in his games. And I also feel in love with the other characters that populate my life, Mony, Sylvana, my family, my friends, my neighbors ... I also feel in love with those characters that I still don't know and even those that, having met, at some point I could feel hurt as a result of our relationship. I feel in love too, as incredible as it may seem, even those who are generally considered harmful or harmful to the rest of society. Well, when I look up I can see their path, where they come from and where they are going, I can see their sometimes slow but always steady progress, I can see their suffering and their joys, their failures and their successes, their mistakes and their successes. I can see that in reality, like me, they are doing the best they can from the point of view they are holding at all times.
Yes, in order to truly love others, we must first begin by loving ourselves. And that ourselves not only includes our, for many of us, wonderful true Self or Inner God, but also and necessarily our limited but in constant progress, my mental, our ego.
Loving the character through which that original God or Essence expresses itself ... Alberto, Mony, Carlos, Luisa ..., we are all wonderful. Wonderful because we have appeared blind in this world without knowing who we are or where we are going or why, and yet we continue trying to do our best with the little understanding we have. Wouldn't that raise us even above the praised angels, who in theory know firsthand everything there is to know and have God's presence at their side all the time? Or, with no intention of offending anyone, would that not elevate us, as far as merit is concerned, above even the almighty and infinitely wise God? So who is not "good"? So who is not wonderful? So who is wrong? We have the merit of us, the human beings, the egos, the avatars that here we are that without having the most remote idea we keep moving forward, we continue loving and having hope. That deserves at least the best of recognition.
Maybe a day will come when we can all see the beauty and wonder that we really are, and that day the shadows will end, or rather we will have stopped seeing them in others and around us because we will have stopped seeing them in ourselves. .
Today I definitely believe that the peace, joy, happiness that we seek in our Path for Life, is a product of the balance that Love produces, is the harmony that arises when the opposites disappear. And these opposites can only reside in a look that conceives them, in an illusory reality where our limited mental entity can create anything, even the illusion of duality.
The duality that originates the disharmony we reject is found only in our eyes. But we can choose to achieve a new look, a look in harmony, in harmony with the true essence of the Universe.
A look of love.
A big hug from the heart to all the egos of the world.
Alberto
Source: http://www.conlaluzenlamirada.blogspot.com/2011/12/una-mirada-de-amor-al-ego.html
