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Please note that the text below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic
(methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free. |
Ego
Ego: Metaphysics. Oneself, the
conscious thinking subject. Psychoanalysis. That part of the mind, which has a sense of individuality and is most conscious of self.
Self-esteem, self-importance; a person’s sense of this in himself or herself. Oxford Dictionary
Peter: The self, seemingly located in the head, is composed
of the rudimentary animal self which is then overlaid with the social identity imposed since birth. Who you ‘think’ you are. The ego is
wrongly assumed to be the total self, whereas it is only half of it. The other half, the soul, or who one ‘feels’ one is and felt to be
located in the heart, is given substance by the instinctual passions and subsequent hormonal surges. It is the soul that, up until now, has
been held as too ‘sacred’ to question, let alone dared to be eliminated.
The Eastern insistence on eliminating only half the ‘self’,
the ego, while giving full credence to the other half, the soul, leads to a narcissistic shift of identity whereby one can ‘realize’ one’s
true identity – the ‘Self’. Huge problems then ensue as yet another God or Goddess is realized, to peddle yet another ‘unique’ and
‘profound’ version of the same old God-story with the newly Self-Realized one as the latest star on the block.
The other foolishness inherent in the Eastern insistence on
eliminating the ego is that the source of malice and sorrow was wrongly imagined in ancient times to be evil spirits or wrong thought, whereas
modern research and scientific study has confirmed the instinctual programming of the primitive brain as the seat of fear, aggression, nurture
and desire.
This instinctual programming is experienced as emotional passion
and, at its core, is felt as the soul, or sense of being. It is feeling with its roots in instinctual passion that is the reason that humans
find it impossible to live together in peace and harmony – not thought as the ancients imagined. To hobble intelligence, as does the Eastern
practice of mindless dismissal of sensible thought, is to avoid the main issue.
It is only with the elimination of both ego and soul, the ‘self’ in its
entirety, can we be free of malice and sorrow and their fanciful, imaginary equivalents – Divine Anger and Divine Compassion.
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