ego
The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as "I." Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come
... See moreSteven Pressfield • The War of Art
The Ego is that part of the psyche that believes in material existence.
Steven Pressfield • The War of Art
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... See more
Jennifer Leela • Carl Jung’s Path to Spiritual Awakening: A Journey Toward Wholeness
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.
As the psychologist James Hollis puts it, “Your ego prefers certainty to uncertainty, predictability over surprise, clarity over ambiguity.8 Your ego always wants to shroud over the barely audible murmurings of the heart.” The ego, says Lee Hardy, wants you to choose a job and a life that you can use as a magic wand to impress others.
David Brooks • The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
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
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
... See moreDr. Stanton Marlan • The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology Book 10)
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
... See moreMurray Stein • Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction
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
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