ego
we might regard ego from soul's perspective where ego becomes an instrument for day-to-day coping, nothing more grandiose than a trusty janitor of the planetary houses, a servant of soul-making.
James Hillman • The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire
Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to re
... See moreRobert A. Johnson • Owning Your Own Shadow
In our waking life, the ego is like the sun—it illuminates everything but it also blocks out the stars.
Connie Zweig • Meeting the Shadow
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
... See moreDr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
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 na
... See moreDr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
Our ego spends so much energy creating a fragmented identity—constantly categorizing, dividing, and keeping us trapped in dualistic thinking. Jung called this “directed thinking” (CW 7, para. 483), where the mind separates everything into binaries: self and other, good and bad, light and dark. This way of seeing the world reinforces our sense of is... See more
Jennifer Leela • Carl Jung’s Path to Spiritual Awakening: A Journey Toward Wholeness
The ego is a “subject” to whom psychic contents are “represented.” It is like a mirror. Moreover, a connection to the ego is the necessary condition for making anything conscious—a feeling, a thought, a perception, or a fantasy. The ego is a kind of mirror in which the psyche can see itself and can become aware.
Murray Stein • Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction
Process-oriented thinking gets around this problem by defining the ego as one of our possible observers. The ego is, to begin with at least, the "I" which identifies itself with the doings of the world.
Arnold Mindell • Working on Yourself Alone
Here Jung defines the ego as follows: “It forms, as it were, the centre of the field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness.”2 Consciousness is a “field,” and what Jung calls the “empirical personality” here is our personality as we are aware of it a
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