This is ego run amok

[undergroundpanther]

Psychic Surgery: Behind the Mask
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

In case you haven't noticed, there's a lot of egomania going on out there; surely in the headlines, across our television screens, in our community and workplace, some in our own home. We all have an ego, of course. In the purest sense, here in incarnation, we need one to survive -- that sense of self that psychologists speak of -- and in that definition, I've always thought it better to have too much of one than not enough; life will chip away at the excess, so it's best to have some to spare. We all know people who seem too timid and withdrawn to be more than a doormat for other people's whims; some who are damaged and burdened by the past that seem unable to get out of their own entanglements of self-pity and victimization. The wounded ego is even more difficult a path than the pompous one; and yet both come from a misunderstanding of true Self and can rightfully be called egomania. We are each the center of our own universe; and we decide its trajectory.

Sigmund Freud initially considered the ego to be a sense organ for perception of both external and internal stimuli.
Coming to some sort of balanced ego involves what I think of as 'process,' the necessary adjustments of a lifetime that pare us down to a list of self-reflections, hopefully lengthy, and a short list of what we Absolutely Know; a line or two or three. That would be the chapter in our memoirs that indicates we've finally seen through the mind-fuck that tells us we ARE our ego; until we can do that, we haven't the necessary balance to push back the false face we wear to find the shining soul within. Ego is the loudest voice within our head; the one that takes offense, plans punishment and revenge, manipulates to get its needs met, justifies its every whim, protects itself at all costs and feels a burst of power when it 'wins.' There are a lot of ways to look at our ego-self; I prefer the one offered by A Course in Miracles. Ego is the tyrannical, insistent voice of our false self, identified with the body and its fears, competitions, attacks and defenses; it is, in essence, enemy to the actual Self, in justified terror that if it does not overwhelm its host and assure it's the only voice heard, it will disappear. In Course, there are two parts to this trap of density and illusion; ego and guilt -- we will look at the first, today, because it is the enormous lower-thought nut we need to crack and discard.Essentially, I think of the ego as the default spokesman for the outer world of appearances; the one that is a projection of our thoughts and desires made manifest, the one that has a set of pecking orders that, as we shift this era, we are suddenly unable to agree upon. It would be lovely if I didn't have to pick on the Republican minority so much, but their very purpose, as declared by the expired leader of their pack, William F. Buckley, is "to stand athwart history," delaying progress and protecting the status quo; this represents the very split in consciousness we're facing. The conservative movement is Poster Child for the old ways, and the old ways no longer reflect who we are; the new must shimmer with new resonance and expanded understanding if we are to love ourselves and our planet back into sanity.

If the scare tactics designed to continue unimpeded control by health insurers and Big Pharma rings hollow, the continued arrogance of the banking community that considers itself indispensible or the near-hysteria of the Birthers who want only to remove the threat to their power seems almost painful to bare, now, be assured this is ego run amok; this is Old Paradigm me-me-me'ism of the first water. And, even as it howls louder than good sense or good taste would dictate, its time has come and gone. Ego is the Father of war, the Mother of rage and the Jester that laughs at another's pain. It projects its own darkness out onto others, hiding behind righteousness. Now it has broken its own first rule of survival: stay hidden in the shadow of humanity's darker emotions -- now it reveals itself as the author of same, and as so many of us see that for the first time, perhaps we can begin to drop the mask of false self we have thought defined us.

In the world of appearances, fear is an ego concept; our true Self is unafraid because we sense our Beingness as eternal. Manipulation is an ego construct, since in order to win the game and empower itself, it must blindside its opponent into cooperation by any means at hand. It is a creature of contradictions: its fear of death can only be overcome by killing. It's defense is invariably an attack. It's verbiage is either/or -- either for me or against me; remember that one? Its inability to value other than its own self-interest is justification for sucking power from any that will allow it. And at the base of its misguided understanding is a constant thread of evaluation and judgment; if it is the arbiter of all things, it will happily come out on top ... always. It is terrified of most of the genuine, heart-inspired, soul-shaking and transformative concepts of love, equality and compassion; that is because as the originator of separation, it cannot genuinely consider the needs of anyone else lest its power dissolve, leaving it no longer able to sustain itself.We all have an ego on a sliding scale from feral to harmless; it comes with human territory, even though a careful assessment of the ills ego has produced across our history might make it seem more like Ripley's Alien. Creating a respectful distance from its ranting and raving takes determination, self-reflection and time. Ego is clever in that it plays pity-party almost as well as it blows hot air to scald and intimidate...

http://planetwavesweekly.com/resources/psychic-surgery-behind-the-mask.html#1

[RagAss]

1. Great post.

[Grey]

2. Really good post, Thanks.

So true.

[opihimoimoi]

3. Ego allows for DeLusional Fantasies to Accumulate then Devastate

Ego often comes with SelfCenteredness....empathy sometime by the wayside...