ego
But ego is not a thing. Ego is a process. Ego is the ongoing act of identifying with thoughts, memories, desires, and fears. When this identification stops, the ego vanishes instantly. There is nothing to kill, cleanse, or battle. There is only a pattern of thinking.
Pollution: karma, ego residue, and the illusion of spiritual contamination.
When you don’t know that you are the Tao, you start looking for completion outside yourself. You tell yourself, “If I could just get this job, this relationship, this recognition, then I’d be at peace.” But no matter what you get, the sense of lack remains, because the one who is craving is built on lack. The ego is like a hungry ghost in Buddhist... See more
Forgetting the Tao: why ignorance crestes misery
The ego was never meant to be our master. Its role is to serve as a container for the divine flame within us - a temporary vessel through which the source can experience itself in countless forms. This separation is the alchemical “solve”, the breaking down of unity into billions of fragments so that each can be refined and transformed before... See more
Damien Echols (@damienechols)
dreams present a fresh perspective. The dream maker’s views can differ radically from our conscious mind’s opinions and values. Jung said dreams are “invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand.”
Joseph Lee LCSW • Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams
the “I” in the dream is usually the least trustworthy part. Often at night our dream ego—the “I” in the dream—is confronted by figures that frighten, denigrate, or frustrate. Upon awakening, we tend to side with our dream ego and assume that the figures that have crossed us in the dream are mistaken or threatening. Usually, however, the new
... See moreJoseph Lee LCSW • Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams
This aspect of Sol niger can show itself when consciousness becomes unconsciously critical. Alchemically, the heat is turned up too high, and the ego's skin is burnt, blackened, or tortured with stinging criticism, producing shame and threatening bodily integrity. Hillman describes a similar process of mortification-when the ego feels trapped or
... See moreDr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
Does the ego require a dying process, as the themes of myth and alchemy suggest?
Dr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
In the classical and developmental psychologies, the unity of the healthy ego is the essential structure of the psyche. The question of the dissolution of the ego or Self is almost always seen as regressive and detrimental, a fusion, or a return to the mother. Some analysts, however, have raised a different perspective, one that has challenged ego
... See moreDr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
Jungian analyst David Rosen's work Transforming Depression contributes to our understanding of such a death process. In that book Rosen coins the term "egocide" to describe the symbolic death necessary to the transformative process, a process in which the psyche is pushed beyond its defenses. He states that symbolic death "leads to a ... greater
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