The Importance of Ego

There are many spiritual aspirants who focus on the elimination of ego.  Personally, I was one of them.  I remember when I was at a gathering with the SelfDesign Graduate Institute and was speaking with Fleurette Sweeney.  I mentioned overcoming ego, and she was a bit horrified.  "We need our ego!"  she said.   That stuck with me for quite awhile.  Something to think about for sure. 

This was such a shift from everything I had heard through a number of spiritual communities, and yet the more I contemplated this, the more it rang true.  Of course we need our egos if we are to navigate this social world and make sense of our role in society.  We can transcend our egos for some time, explore all the possibilities of the non-dual infinite universe, but eventually to participate in this human drama, it is useful to come back down and find our place in the world.  Personally, my mission is to help people uncover their spiritual gifts, help them awaken to their higher selves, and learn to love themselves as God sees them.  To do this I need my ego.  I have to navigate quite a few of the social structures if I choose to be involved this way.

The key is to develop a mature ego. A mature ego has transcended the attatchments to the lower vibrational states.  A mature ego is seeking for higher goals.  A mature ego is flexible, patient and aware of the bigger picture. It is able to disidentify with thought, emotion and even the physical body. When this distance is created,  it allows for the higher or larger self to intercede or intervene in complex situations.  It also protects from many of the personality disorders so rampant in our society today.

Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D. writes, "Fundamentally, the Ego has a set of psychic functions able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. It organizes thoughts and makes sense of the world. The Ego represents reason and common sense (Siegfried, 2014). Freud regarded Ego as a coherent organization of mental processes. Ego death represents a complete loss of subjective self-identity."

I am coming to believe that narcissism is a form of complete identification of self as ego: A constructed and projected image of self.  This identification leaves no room for the I AM to participate, resulting in a disconnect with the higher self.  This is why so many of the spiritual community say we need to drop the ego: that ego death is the desired state.

As much as I often disagree with Freud, I find it interesting that he considered Schizophrenia connected to narcissism.  He states that the schizophrenic has "a regression of the ego into primary narcissism".  This interests me because of the connection between spiritual experiences and the psychotic break.  The psychotic break is a separation from this 3D reality.   Are these psychotic episodes the immature ego being blasted open from spiritual experiences?  Such breaks can be drug induced, or happen through traumatic, life-shaking experiences, such as death, life challenges, trauma, anything that causes , one to question their reality and identity.  An immature ego, or a narcissistic ego, will have a hard time with this process because they do not have an anchor into their deeper I AM self.  They will flounder about in the spiritual realm with no where to turn.  They are subject to demonic influences, and all the elements of the unseen realm.  Without a guide, these souls will struggle to find themselves.

This is why I have always felt that the work on the self, coming to know and love oneself, is the critical componenet in any spiritual path.  This is not the narcissistic self love of the ego, but the love of the divine spark of God which has been embodied here.  Once I can connect to the presence of God within me, this is my anchor.  I will no longer be tossed around by the storm, but steady in my connection.