the beautiful ego

Is the ego really all that bad?

Is is something that we must throw out as a toxic byproduct of our socialization here on Earth?

Can it actually be used to further our own Insights that lead to our own greater realization?

Can it be used to create and to open itself up as a means of greater exploration?

To summarize, in almost all religious or spiritual studies, the ego is considered bad.

Its at the very least considered a distracting force and something that must be quickly dumped at the earliest convenience.

As everyone knows, it is something that most people consider to be evil or bad, and along with it the people who exercise their big egoness as well.

For a moment, let’s exercise a bit of philosophy.

While I wouldn’t consider our minds perfect, certainly we wouldn’t keep much in our minds that we didn’t have some use for. Even if the file is particular self destructive, we wouldn’t have it there if we didn’t want it there.

This particular file could be the habit of smoking, or being overweight, or greedy or whatever. Needless to say, if its in our mind, we want it to be there.

To contrast, do you rent your mental space to the plight of young giraffes in the Sahara? While that might seem like a silly example, realistically we only put in our heads stuff we find useful in some way.

Now let’s bring it back to the Ego.

The Ego is equally something we find useful. In Freud’s writings, he considered the ego to be the balancer, between the Id, and the Superego. It kept things in check.

While this is Freud’s definition, I would extend the ego’s popular definition to mean anything that relates to conscious thought, or the I am therefore I am. Or basically, anything you don’t like about another person. 

Since we are creatures who like to exhibit some sort of control over our environments, it may be that this ego mind causes us a bit of disturbance, as people would be far easier to control as altruistic superego minded people, completely devoted to the thought of service, and of course acquiesce to others.

So what’s the point of all this?

I can’t say with honesty that the ego is really so bad after all.

It is part of our pop culture phenomena to try to rid ourselves of our ego, our guilt, or fear, and anything we conveniently attach to the title of ego, but realistically, none of these things are all that bad. Why?

In reality, its only our thinking that designates something as bad or good.

Isn’t this so?

If you think white bread is bad, as opposed to whole wheat, then you will have a natural affinity towards whole wheat. Because, as any health conscious person knows, wheat is far healthier for you, and you only eat the white bread of death if you are brainwashed by multinational conglomerations, who tell you it’s good for you.

As you may deduce, our minds and self interest know no bounds to what we can convince ourselves is good or bad for us.

To make a quick list, here are some personal examples (based on what has filtered through to my mind):

Religion is bad vs. Spirituality is good
Overweight is bad vs. Fit is good
Dumb is bad vs. Smart is good
Ego is bad vs. Higher Consciousness is good
Devil is bad vs. God is good

Our self interest governs what we determine to be good. We cannot imagine ourselves as doing something bad, or being associated as bad, so we will rationalize anything as being good, even if it contradicts our experience of it.

So all of this boils down to?

How can something be inherently good or bad?

Do babies inherit good or bad designation because they are born?

Do we beat ourselves as being good or bad just to make sure we can continue to venture down the ‘good’ path?

With the constant labels we slap upon ourselves, does it make us naturally more good or bad?

All of this is created by our thinking making it so.

Our thoughts are so powerful, they can even designate the thinking mechanism itself i.e. the ego as being bad!

Isn’t that amazing?

So when we question, is this really as bad as I think it is? Is fear really as bad as I think it is?

Is there much of a benefit as labeling and creating energy around something as bad?

Especially our prime thought generating mechanism?

That is something I propose to you to ‘think’ about. Are we, in our conscious state mind, really made of such ‘badness?’

Is there any purpose to creating badness around our basic means of thought?