Ego, Being, and our Mythology

Ego, as I will be using the word, is in its context meant to suggest a state of
consciousness with an associated identity/perception of self, and other, through a series of
interconnected mentally projected images of the ‘ideal self’. I’ve heard it coined as being
an egocentric disposition… and I rather prefer that. We all come to use the word ‘ego’
these days and I ask you what we mean when say something is acting too much out of
ego? We mean to imply that this person, for whatever reasoning, has become somehow
different – they’re actions and behaviors have changed in a way we find most unsavory.
Sometimes when one makes a mistake in hindsight they may say, “I acted out of total ego
and I’m sorry...”

A lot of us are familiar with what egocentricism is and if not then it is simple. Just
imagine a long rectangular table with a teddy-bear placed in the center and two spectators
viewing the object from dualistic ends of the table. At one end of the table the teddy bear
faces the viewer and at the other end of the table the teddy-bear has its back to the
viewer. Now if both viewers were asked to write down what they see the data would be
different. Yet both would be correct and most likely both would argue against the other.
So simply put, egocentricism is the inability to look outside oneself and is rather the
accumulation of distorted mental views/ideas of the self, its worth, and how others
perceive it. It says “I am center of my world and the way I see things are merely
reflections of imprinted ideas that stem from long into my childhood. There’s no
changing who or what we are! The way I see me is the way everyone sees me or ‘should’
see me.”

And it is precisely this kind of thinking that fuels the negative self image and the self
defeating personality. This is the kind of mental mechanics that distorts and often stunts
self growth, individuation, and self actualization. Why? Because this is quite literally
creating a schism of our psyche and as result we are, poetically speaking, left beside our
self ever questioning – who is this other sense of ‘me’ that I cannot stand? Where does it
come from? And is there anything my local/loco spiritual counselor can do to help me?!

Only these days we don’t have the resource of spiritual or philosophical bandage. Instead
we go on to seeking psychiatric help which we all know is a fancy way of saying “screw
this, give me a pill to make it better!” Studies coming out now (2010) are now suggesting
that more than half our nation is on some sort of psychiatric prescribed medication. I
estimate the numbers to be more into +85 percentile. Sometimes I wonder what we would
all do if we woke up tomorrow and all the pills were gone? How did we ever survive our
history without medication? I can only wonder 

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So we experience the duality and the bipolarity. We go up and down in our emotions. We
cling to things and tend to dramatize their material reality in sake of our mentally
projected ‘ideal’ thing or outcome. We stop to smell a flower but the last thing we will
ever smell is that flower as it really exists, because the moment we see the flower our
minds begin racing to identify and sort of pull the file on this ‘thing’. The mind says, “ah,
this is a rose… what a beautiful rose! I remember the first time I saw a rose like this…
and I remember the last time I was given a rose…” The mind identifies the flower, it
names it, and it has a small understanding of it. But on a subconscious level, even, the
mind is working in a sort of memory pulling service where one guy pulls while another
weighs the content to its relativity. In the process some things get lost in translation and
what we end up with is distortion of reality. It could be falsely exaggerated dreams or it
could be a situation where one hears a story and forgets that it was a story they heard and
instead begins to tell the story as if it were their own (personal fable). A lot of us do it
without ever even knowing it. We get corrected often at family gatherings when someone
is remembering a story and an older sibling says, ‘that’s not how it happened!”

The ego exists in time. It has a past and a future, but it doesn’t have a now.

What does that mean?

It means we few this sense of self through our incessant thoughts but that is not to say
that thoughts are the enemy or that thoughts need to be ceased.

If you watch your thoughts like a cat might watch a mouse about to peak out of its hole in
a wall you will notice something interesting. Try it. Pretend your thoughts as a whole
represent the mouse and you are merely consciously witnessing it all. So wait for the
thought to come………. Look into your mind – wait for the thought – look for the
thought.

So what happened? Did you last longer? Did you notice a shift in how reality felt in that
subtle moment? Explore the mind. Know thy self. This is ancient knowledge yet it is also
everyday kind of knowledge, at least to some people. But not everyone sees the point.
They figure that we grow to a certain age and a certain level of intelligence and that is
it… and that it’s all just simply down hill from there on. And this is saddening to me
because again this kind of perception and this kind of thinking is what snuffs the candle
light burning in all of our hearts (timeless passion and appreciation to be alive, here and
now – no matter what seat, it’s a great ride).

Alone we are merely a single flame but unite us with just one other flame and we become
a larger more vibrant flame. And if we are wise enough to combine our love then it is like
taking many flames and combining them to produce a roaring blaze.

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If each one of us represents a log in the fire then imagine what happens to a nice fire
which contains several logs and only one log gets taken away. Not much happens, does
it? The fire might be smaller but even the log that was taken awaken will still burn, for a
while at least. And when you remove a log that is burning bright from the group the other
logs remain burning bright – the contribution has been made – grace and powerful is the
now this roaring blaze! We take note of the contribution of the log and its flame. Without
it this roaring fire could not be as fierce, dynamic, and serving.

Underneath the ego, and all of its distorted thoughts, exists a fabric of identity and
commonality amongst our species. I believe it was manifested in our genetics as a way of
leaving bread crumbs for us – leading us back to reality when we are lost in the woods,
high in the trees. In my light, a mythology is a guiding story for us as an individual and as
a collective race. There are so many different myths yet such similar structures and
formulas in correlation… it would seem that our species has been attempting to tell the
same story since before the birth of our recorded history. I’m of course speaking of the
stories painted on ancient cave walls, long before our species had officially created an
accomplished language.

In the beginning was the experience which gave birth to something inside that begged to
be given expression to the outside and that is something I know most of us here can relate
to. After all, we’re writers, poets, and artists. Our talents are focused on pointing beyond
that which cannot be seen or said. And just like our ancestors 20,000 years ago we too
use symbols and symbolic thought to give testament to an inner vision. Let us become
aware of awareness itself.

Life is fleeting, glad to have known you ~

Love & Light,

David Powers

© www.LucidWindows.com
February 21, 2010