🌊 Redefining Ego

+ River roundup

Here’s Winston looking very thoughtful…but really he just wants snuggles. 💗

Some philosophical reflections for you today…

I used to think of “ego” as basically an inner control freak.

My ego mind, bound up in identity and conditions, cares very much what other people think of me and how things go.

By contrast, when I can access the broader perspective of mindfulness, I can simply observe my experience in the moment, with curiosity and openness. Ahhhh—so much calmer.

Or, in verse form:

Ego cares how things go.
Big mind just rides the flow.

  Ambition wants to get things done,
  then Stress and Violence join the fun,
    and Ego tells a tale of woe
    because it cares how things go.

Big mind feels, but makes no claim;
observes, but does not play, the game.

-- "E" from my "Alphabet Meditation Verses"

Now, however, my view of ego has become more nuanced.

Here’s my current working model:

Yes, ego is a control freak—but not just out of arbitrary backwardness or “natural depravity” (a brilliantly hilarious phrase in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins).

Ego is the mind’s social defense system. It’s what develops during the socialization of childhood and adolescence, as we leave behind the simple creature-level existence of playing, moving, and feeling, and we begin self-consciously shaping our presentation to others in social self-defense.

But that’s only the emotionally healthy childhoods.

In childhoods with insecure parental attachment and other sorts of developmental trauma, children have to start developing egos—social self-defense systems—much earlier than they naturally would.

They learn to carefully shape their presentation to others (most of all, their parents/family) to maximize their chances of getting needs met and to minimize their chances of receiving scorn and other abuse. So their egos become supercharged with deeply ingrained layers of hyper-responsibility, shame, blame, and other fun add-ins.

Those of us with these special Ego Plus subscriptions may require extra help for the work of shifting from ego’s “little mind” (for us it’s “little” as in young!) to the “big mind” perspective of mindfulness.

Specifically, the work involves engaging our “big mind” to re-parent our “little mind.”

Here’s an example from one of my recent-ish “Serenity Splash” poems:

You’re clinging, nerves wringing,
to an illusion of control.

You can let go, little ego.
Take my hand. We're here and whole.  

Practicing this sort of self-soothing and self-coaching is being very helpful for me!

How’s your relationship with your mind’s “ego” going these days? 🩵

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River Roundup

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