ego
Nearly every problem we face, whether it’s anxiety, conflict, addiction, insecurity, political division, or even the suffering passed down through generations, all comes from one mistake: we think we are the mind. We mistake the voice in our head for “me,” and then spend our entire lives defending, protecting, validating, and obeying it. The mind... See more
Damien Echolssubstack.comThe ego, in Zen terms, is the habitual tendency to stand apart from experience and say, “This is happening to me .” It’s the narrator, the manager, the one trying to secure control, meaning, and permanence in a world that refuses to provide any of those things.
The problem isn’t that the ego exists. The problem is that we believe it’s who we are .
The problem isn’t that the ego exists. The problem is that we believe it’s who we are .
The Backyard Buddhist • The Death of Ego and the Persistence of Self
One of the hardest things to do as a counselor or therapist is to get clients to separate their Egos from their emotions without at the same time repressing the emotions. There is a really good psychological exercise for doing this that can help; it’s called focusing, originated by Eugene Gendlin. We ask our clients, when they sense the onset of
... See moreRobert Moore • King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
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.
Modern Zen teachers often emphasize how liberating this is. When the ego loosens its grip, there’s no longer a fixed self to defend. Praise and blame lose their sharp edge. Fear softens. Compassion arises naturally, not as a moral project but as a consequence of intimacy.
Shunryu Suzuki put it simply: when we let go of self-centered practice, our... See more
Shunryu Suzuki put it simply: when we let go of self-centered practice, our... See more
The Backyard Buddhist • The Death of Ego and the Persistence of Self
The ego, like consciousness, also transcends and outlasts the particular contents that occupy the room of consciousness at any particular moment. The ego is a focal point within consciousness, its most central and perhaps most permanent feature. Against the opinion of the East, Jung argues that without an ego, consciousness itself becomes
... See moreMurray Stein • Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction
“Against the opinion of the East, Jung argues that without an ego, consciousness itself becomes questionable.”
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 shadow is that which has not entered adequately into consciousness. It is the despised quarter of our being. It often has an energy potential nearly as great as that of our ego. If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as an overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us; or we have a depression or an accident that seems
... See moreRobert A. Johnson • Owning Your Own Shadow
The center of our conscious life is called ego. It has two concurrent characteristics: It is functional in that it is the strong grounded activating principle by which we make intellectual assessments and judgments, show feelings appropriately, and relate skillfully to other people. It can also be neurotic when it becomes attached, addicted,
... See more