Ego

 "The ego is the part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation."

            For the sake of clarity I am defining the ego as the "separate sense of self." The ego is neither good nor bad. It is a perceptional process.  It is, however, the cause of all our suffering [see further down below].

            Freud first accidentally "termed" the word ego in his book The Ego and the Id which was really called The I and the It in German. It was mistranslated from Freud's German pronoun das Ich or "the I." Ego, or the Latin term for "I" was used instead.

            The ego has been given many names throughout history though. It has been called the critical mindset (different and distinguishable from critical thinking), monkey mind (Zen), nafs (Sufism), the proximate self[i] (Wilber) and "an optical delusion of consciousness" (Einstein), and the negative form of the ego (self-contraction/projection) is called the shadow in psychology.The ego can also be called the conceptual locus of our awareness because it is held in place by concepts, either accurate or inaccurate (mostly inaccurate).

            The neurological basis for the ego seems to stem in part from the left brain.

The Ego should never be confused with the left brain though.[ii] Our decision making process relies more on our prefrontal cortex. Read Montague in his book Why Choose This Book? talks about the decision making process in the brain.

            The mechanistic idea is that the dopamine burst takes down the information shield of the prefrontal cortex ("opens the gate") and lets the current information establish a new goal state. There is clearly some kind of competition process that goes on at this stage, pitting the current goal against the potential new goal, but this process is not understood. Dopamine bursts occur either for unanticipated reward-predicting stimuli or for some intrinsically rewarding event. This is exactly the right kind of signal to use to take down the information shield [of concepts] and let the prefrontal cortex consider another goal. It tells the prefrontal cortex that "something better than expected may be coming along" and sets the prefrontal cortex looking for the new goal or new representation[iii].

            Bear in mind that this process only describes the Upper Left Hand quadrant (objective). In the Right Hand quadrant (subjective), its letting our consciousness being open to new ideas, which is merely, "I think I will try the new ice cream![iv]"

            In psychology, the path is to move individuals "up to" a healthy ego development. In spiritual development, the process is to move individuals to see "through" their boundaries, and "transcending" the ego.

Perhaps you are still confused about what the ego actually is.

 The ego is, quite simply, our mental boundaries of consciousness. Ken Wilber talks about it in No Boundary.

            When someone asks, "Who are you?" and you proceed to give a reasonable, honest, and more or less detailed answer, what in fact, are you doing? What goes on in your head as you do this? In one sense you are describing your self as you have come to know it, including in your description most of the pertinent facts, both good and bad, worthy and worthless, scientific and poetic, philosophic and religious, that you understand as fundamental to your identity. You might, for example, think that "I am a unique person, a being endowed with certain potentials; I am a kind but sometimes cruel, loving but sometimes hostile; I am a father and lawyer, I enjoy fishing and basketball..." And so your list of feelings and thoughts might proceed.

            Yet there is an even more basic process underlying the whole procedure of establishing an identity. Something very simple happens when you answer the question, "Who are you?" When you describing or explaining or just inwardly feeling your ‘self,' what you are actually doing, whether you know it or not, is drawing a mental line or boundary across the whole field of your experience, and everything on the inside of that boundary you are feeling or calling you ,'self,' while everything outside that boundary you feel to be ‘not-self.' Your self-identity, in other words, depends entirely upon where you draw that boundary line.

            You are a human and not a chair, and you know that because you consciously or unconsciously draw a boundary line between humans and chairs, and are able to recognize your identity with the former. You may be a very tall human instead of a short one; and so you draw a mental line between tallness and shortness, and thus identify yourself as ‘tall.' You come to feel that ‘I am this and not that' and then recognizing your identity with ‘this' and your nonidentity with ‘that.'

So when you say, ‘my self,' you draw a boundary line between what is you and what is not you. When you answer the question, ‘Who are you?' you simply describe what's on the inside of that line. The so-called identity crisis occurs when you can't decide how or where to draw the line. In short, "Who are you" means "Where do you draw the boundary?"

            All answers to that question, "Who am I?,"Stem precisely from this basic procedure of drawing a boundary line between self and not-self. Once the general boundary lines have been drawn up, the answer to that question may become very complex-scientific, theological, economic-or they may remain most simple and unarticulated-But any possible answer depends on first drawing the boundary line.

            The most interesting thing about this boundary line is that it can and frequently does shift. It can be redrawn. In a sense the person can remap her soul and find in it territories she never thought possible, attainable, or even desirable. As we have seen, the most radical re-mapping or shifting of the boundary line occurs in experiences of the supreme identity, for here the person expands her self-identity to include the entire universe. We might even say that she loses the boundary line altogether, for when she is identified with "one harmonious whole" there is no longer any outside or inside, and so nowhere to draw the line.

                        -- Ken Wilber, The Simple Feeling of Being

            Whenever we say something is "a part of us" we mean that in a quite literal sense! What we identify with constitutes our self-identity, as opposed to "what is not apart of us" or what we choose to not identify with. However, the only thing that "separates" us from others is concepts. Whatever we think of something as "a part of us" it is thus allowed inside our concepts, and thus constitutes part of our self-identity. We think that our identity rests solely in our body, but this is an illusion. Our identity rests in whatever we identify with. Whether we identify with our bodies, (or not, as some people don't), our family, our nation, our world, or the universe; these are all objects in consciousness.

            Why do we focus on transcending the ego in spiritual development though?

It is because we are not the ego. We are not the ego because we are much more than our perceptional consciousness, the self-contraction. The ego's reality, as a separate self, doesn't exist. This is also why it's called an illusion. You are not separate from reality, and quantum physics proves that we are all linked through a quantum field (of entanglement).[v]

            There are some people who confuse themselves with the ego, and so they think that it is their self-identity. As such they are frightened when they believe it "has to be destroyed" in spiritual development. This is an incorrect interpretation. The ego doesn't have to be "destroyed." It just has to be integrated and "transcended". Truly spiritual development focuses on expanding the individual's sense of identity in the world.  Whenever the ego is spoken of negatively in spirituality, it is always talking about the "contraction" of the self. This self-contraction is the cause of all our suffering.

            This self-contraction is when our ego or conceptual boundaries are "injured" and we thus contract our boundaries, to not allow anything in them (even ones we've previously accepted.) The ego goes in defensive mode and sees everything as an enemy!

Whenever someone has a "big ego," what people really mean is that they have a small ego, whose boundaries have become "airtight", but also contract. This is a fear based response. Fear based responses contract our boundaries, while love based responses expand them[vi].

            Whenever we make our walls of our ego too rigid and inflexible, and when we do this, reality comes along and pounds against those walls! This results in a shattering of our illusory walls, and often there is some depression and integration until we redraw our boundaries, hopefully a little more further, and a little more inclusive of reality. Human beings travel along a spectrum of consciousness, in which each new contextual boundary (holon) transcends and includes the previous spectrum.[vii] As such, the ego is also a developmental fulcrum.[viii] As it expands it develops a new sense of self-identification.[ix]   

            "Transcending our ego" or going beyond the self-contraction lies at the heart of spirituality. Some of the techniques included are love, forgiveness, compassion, surrender, mindfulness and being in the present moment (i.e. the power of Now).

It also manifests in expanding our context (the search for truth) in science, Integral theory, and just getting more information. The most direct method though is getting in touch with the observing Witness.

            In meditation or satori, sometimes our boundaries become transparent for awhile in a state of "no boundary" or a state of oneness. Then our conceptual mind comes back, but when the conceptual mind comes back, we realize that "we are not our boundaries" and often we enlarge our context because of this. The state of Enlightenment is a state where the ego seems to be permanently "dissolved" or transparent and is one of the hallmarks of the term "Enlightenment."

[i] Wilber also calls the ego the ego, but in his book Integral Psychology he states, "What each of us calls an "I" is both a constant function and a developmental stream" " For it is the proximate self that is the navigator through the basic waves in the Great Nest of Being." [italics his]  We can see that the awareness of the ego goes through a spectrum of consciousness, in which it "transcends and includes" further levels of being (see also David R. Hawkins work). The ego itself is basically a holon, in which we identity with some things (I or "me" ) versus things we don't identify with ("not me").

The constant function of our ego is to keep those boundaries in place, and the developmental aspect of the ego is the expansion of understanding context (whether or not that implies words), which results in the expansion of the holon (i.e. expanding our boundaries and "self" conception.)

[ii] Confusing the Ego with the left brain is a vast and inaccurate oversimplification. It is a vast simplification because it confuses domains. The ego is a concept, which is a left hand domain (subjective) in Integral theory, while the brain processes that correspond to our thoughts are a right hand domain (objective). [See Wilber's Integral Psychology for more details] I am fully aware of Jillian Bolte Taylor and her Ted presentation. At the end of it though, she presents us with a false choice: either the left brain ego or the right brain "enlightenment." This is false choice. Whereas, I can live without my ego, I can't live without my left brain! It is true though, however, that higher consciousness becomes more right-brain dominant. [See David R. Hawkins Truth vs. Falsehood]

Enlightenment is a real phenomenon, with neurological correlates, the details of which aren't fully comprehended. [I may blog about this later.] Nor does this doesn't mean that "God is all in our heads." A spiritual person can just as easily say, "Of course God is all in our heads, because God is All-that-Exists (Omnipotence) Reality!" God is in our heads, our hearts, the sky, our garbage, etc. God is energy, but can't be accurately described by the laws of energy (i.e different emergent layer). But of course, one cannot point to a single exclusive thing, like ideas or human consciousness, and say, "this is God." The name God is just the finger pointing to the moon, before we fall off the branches and splash in the waters of Cosmic Consciousness. Spirit transcends and includes everything!

[iii] This hypothesis is still currently untested.

[iv] The current conception is that our brains control us, when in fact, our consciousness, has the ability to change our brains and our neural pathways. This is known as neuroplasticity. Instead of the machine running us, we are the controllers of the machine (but not if we don't know how it works, or didn't read the instruction manual!).

[v] Quantum physics idea of "nonlocality" which has been proven numerous times in experiments. There is also theories of holographic connections, superstring connections, and a field medium (as in Lynne MagTaggart's The Field.)

[vi] Fear and its derivative emotions (anxiety, anger, denial, guilt, apathy, shame) shrink our boundaries, while love based emotions (courage, acceptance, willingness, commitment to truth, compassion) expand our boundaries.            

[vii] See Ken Wilber's work or David Hawkin's work on models of the spectrum of consciousness, or also the theory of Spiral Dynamics. There are many different versions of the spectrum of consciousness, or that measure different qualities of consciousness. Some of these are - (Piaget) Sensorimotor, Pre-Operational, Concrete Operational, Formal Operational, Vision-Logic; (Gebser): Archaic, Magic, Mythic, Mental, Pluralistic, Integral; (Graves)-Survival, Magi-Animistic, Power Gods, Truth Force/Absolutistic, Strive Drive/ Multiplistic, Human Bonds/ Relativistic, Flex Flow/ Systemic, Global View/ Systemic, ---

Along with Sri Aurobindo and Abraham Maslow to name a few.

[viii] Each "spectrum" has a different value orientation to it, so when the locus of awareness (ego) seeks out a new level, it "dies" or dis-embeds from the previous level, and starts identifying itself with the new value orientations of the new level. David Hawkins calls these "attractor patterns." [see also Wilber's Integral Psychology]

[ix] From egocentric, to ethnocentric, to worldcentric, to kosmocentric.