EGO

Fighting against the Ego.

A word can be an old word with an old meaning and then I think you get wise if you discover the old meaning, because that is what people meant with it when the word was formed.  Or at least we can go back in time and come as near the formation as possible.

In this case ego just means I, which especially in Indian wisdom is not something to get rid of. Rather something to develop towards Aham prema = I am love.

A word can get it´s meaning from peoples´ opinion about it and hopefully people agree.
It was C G Jung who invented this tricky use of the old word for I. So the new meaning of the word kind of belongs to him and if we want to know what it is we can read about it and learn it.
Without Jung the word ego would not have been used in this way.

Then we have the New Age where people "believe" in a conflict between Ego and Love, very much in the same way as people in earlier times believed in the fight between God and Devil. 
They have just changed the words because of this old need to fight about good and evil and feel that they belong to the safe space behind "being right".
I cannot feel high from being on the right side if I don´t have other people who are on the wrong side.

In old times people got accused of being with the Devil and today they are told that they "have an ego".

And it is also used to "win" in discussions: "What you say just comes from your ego! I can feeeeel it in my heart!" It is also used to put other people down:  "Her problems just come from her ego".

Some people seem to be in troble because they feel that they are not allowed to themselves because then "they have an ego". Jung seemed to mean the opposite: Be how you want to be and the ego will help you with that. Then, later, when you have managed to be who you are the ego has done it´s job and calms down.
If you start with denying your ego it will just dream of revenge.

C G Jung invented a whole glossary of his own and these words and concepts are not words that exist in all languages. They belong to the language of Jung.

We all have an old word: egoistic. 

Why not use this word?

Everyone knows what it means and the problem disappears. 

It works better also because it is an adjective and not a noun. 

It is something that you can stop being by changing your mind and behaviour. 

A noun being something that you "have" and then "have to deny" or "get rid of" just makes it difficult to handle or even understand. It is similar to a fight where you think that you have an "evil spirit" in you and then you have to cast it out (without knowing how to do!)
It can easily create a conflict where you feel as if you do not have the right to be yourself and in the same time you have to "find yourself". And the more you indulge in such a fight the more you can get trapped in it and then you have created something that in the beginning did not even exist..

"Ego" has become a  word for identity, it is what you identify with.
But even if you do not identify with anything in this world you would still say Aham prema: I am love.
And Jesus seemed to have identified with God.
If you use the word I or not depends on the grammar of your language.


If you find a good, old shaman from some tribe you can always ask him what ego is - but if he has not studied Latin or Jung he does not know.
Most likely he uses his own words in his own language and he can not translate them properly to English so you would not really be capable of knowing the absolute right meanings of them.
Philosophical words are not really "translatable" between languages that are not closely realated.

But if he speaks English he probably knows what "egoistic" or "greedy" is. Or "wanting to be big" or "to have power" or "to be best" or "to be cruel" or so...
If we just know what we mean we can take it down to easy words and get the same meaning.
Back to reality!

The more you use a tricky language the more you can get payed for giving lectures where you explain your tricky words.

One reason to be wanting to be big and powerful can be that you have been denied as a child. Maybe they told you that you were nothing - and now you want to show people that  you are something.

As far as I remember C G Jung said that the ego has to do it´s work so it might not be the best to deny it. But also not to overdo it in a way that hurts other beings. Of course.

In Latin the word ego is not written if it is not "blown up" (emphazised).
I am = sum
IIII am!!!! = Ego sum
We have the same in Italian.
I am = sono
IIII am!!! = Io sono!

As they don´t have this in German Jung can have chosen the word ego out of this reason. Ego is an I that is blown up.

Ego is also related to our defense mechanism and we have to defend ourselves, but not too much everywhere and not against everything.

To create big bombs is when the defense mechanism has grown too much and has turned into a dragon.

In the old folk legends it was not the ego that was eating up everything and sleeping on a heap of gold: it was the dragon.

St George came and killed the dragon and the Christians tried to kill the Devil by killing the people that were supposed to be his servants.
Today even quite peaceful people are being told that they are being possessed by an invisible monster called Ego. We use the word "have" instead of "being possessed" but the meaning is the same.

It would actually be better to say that we all have a little dragon inside and we should not let it take over.

This metaphoric story should be seen as a reflection of our inner qualities. It tells about the result of greed and a never-ending hunger and to be more precise it is a warning against feeding the "endorphine brain" because it never gets enough. It just grows and grows (the receptors close down) and creates heavy dependency.
This is the old part of the brain that we share with lizards. It is just concerned with the basic survival techniques like sex, food and defense. If you take away this part of the brain you will die.

When Jung wrote about the Ego the instincts and their ways in the brain were not yet discovered so Jung knew nothing about these functions of the brain.

Your defense brain will always work but you can educate it to behave in a good way. Most likely this is also a warning against those foods and chemicals that trigger the endorphins. Such things can be used in ceremonies to boost energy but not every day just for the fun of it.
It also depends on how sensitive you are. Some people easily get sugar addicted (and so on) and I have got the impression that people who are genetically "hunters" have a more sensitive and reactive nervous system.
Can be good to know that wheat is activating the endorphins so it acts in the same way as heroin (but not so strong).

St George must be a symbol for the Higher Self or the Real I, the one I am. When he shows up the dragon looses it´s power.

Continues