What Constitutes A Healthy Ego ?

[Loreena]

Is there anything like a healthy Ego. And if it does exist or is beneficial for growth in life, then how should someone define it. 

What will be the characteristics of a healthy Ego ? And how should one cultivate it ?

[Prabhaker]

5 hours ago, Loreena said:

Is there anything like a healthy Ego

The whole Western psychology up to now has not come to the point of non-ego. It is still thinking in terms of the ego: how to make the ego more strongly rooted, centered; how to make the ego more healthy, normal, adjusted. 

 The East takes the ego itself as the disease; the whole mind is the disease. 

5 hours ago, Loreena said:

And how should one cultivate it ?

Leave this forum and listen to western psychology, otherwise you may be confused. This forum is about eastern spirituality, which teaches non-ego. 

Edited July 8, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Nahm]

6 hours ago, Loreena said:

Is there anything like a healthy Ego. And if it does exist or is beneficial for growth in life, then how should someone define it. 

What will be the characteristics of a healthy Ego ? And how should one cultivate it ?

Looking for a healthy ego is like an ant looking for a healthy anteater.

Think of ego as self; self esteem, self worth, self importance - We typically run the hamster wheel of bouying these illusions. When we let go of them and see that they are just concepts in our minds, then we are free of the hamster wheel and have peace of mind. 

[electroBeam]

8 hours ago, Loreena said:

And how should one cultivate it ?

Personal development -> Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, etc.

That's what personal development is all about, developing the biggest, grandest ego on the planet. 

 

[Loreena]

3 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

 

 The East takes the ego itself as the disease; the whole mind is the disease. 

 

So what problems does the East have to face due to this belief that ego is a disease ?

[Prabhaker]

@Loreena

The East has become too much concerned with the inner soul and has forgotten objectivity, matter, the world, all the great scientists have come from the west, you can see it all around – the poverty, the starvation. East is very poor outwardly.

Egolessness was taught in the east, but it is very difficult to achieve. The result was ego of eastern man was not very strong but except few people they were not ego-less , they have a subtle ego, which is difficult to drop.

 

[Loreena]

Just now, Prabhaker said:

@Loreena

The East has become too much concerned with the inner soul and has forgotten objectivity, matter, the world, all the great scientists have come from the west, you can see it all around – the poverty, the starvation. East is very poor outwardly.

Egolessness was taught in the east, but it is very difficult to achieve. The result was ego of eastern man was not very strong but except few people they were not ego-less , they have a subtle ego, which is difficult to drop.

 

Long ??...so what happened because of the subtle ego. 

[Natasha]

Benefits of the Ego (by Ralph Smart): 

- it's connected to our subconscious mind and serves as a survival mechanism during evolution

- it helps us learn about and appreciate contrast, without contrast we would never learn about onenness

- it helps us clean up filters and become more authentic

- it teaches us about our limitations, which makes us see the beauty of living in the heart space

- it competes, dominates, and controls, which helps us see these things as an illusion

- it divides, which helps us create unity and more love

- it connects us to the lower self and cheers us on to the higher self

- it helps us know ourselves by going into the wilderness and realizing that everything society taught us about who we are is a lie

- spotting ego helps stop letting it rule us and bring more wonderful and amazing people into our life  

 

Edited July 9, 2017 by Natasha

[Shanmugam]

@Loreena  Ego has defense mechanisms... Psychologically we can define what is normal and what is not in terms of defense mechanisms.

Let me quote from wikipedia to explain:

In psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms  are psychological strategies brought into play by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny, or distort reality in order to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses and to maintain one's self-schema.

The psychiatrist George Eman Vaillant introduced a four-level classification of defence mechanisms:[21]

Level I – pathological defences (psychotic denial, delusional projection)

Level II – immature defences (fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)

Level III – neurotic defences (intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)

Level IV – mature defenses (humour, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)...

So a healthy ego can be said as something that has level 4 defense mechanisms.. If you go to that wiki article, you can see that each one of those defense mechanisms have individual articles.

But, remember.. You are in a forum that deals with spiritual enlightenment.  It involves transcending the identification with the egoistic self altogether. Even if someone takes a therapy for resolving unhealthy issues in ego, many therapists will suggest mindfulness as one of the treatments. The same practice when done for extensive period of time eventually leads to awakening and defense mechanisms begin to loose strength.

Check out this link:

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=iboTrtb3QIAC&lpg=PA80&ots=5GuWmsPlGB&dq=observer self cbt&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q=observer self cbt&f=false

Edited July 9, 2017 by Shanmugam

[Leo Gura]

A healthy is ego is one that is willing to agree to annihilate itself, and does so of its own wisdom, without being prodded into it.

An unhealthy ego is one which is unwilling to acknowledge its own unreality and its own shenanigans.

[SOUL]

Our ego feeds on our experience for it's identity so as we fill our life experience with healthy patterns and perspectives the ego reflects that.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Loreena Where even though you lack ego you're not a zombie, weirdo, or a renunciate either.  Some of the enlightened people I see on the Internet (not here) seem to be autistics that have fooled themselves.  And I'm not against enlightenment either.  I'm on the path myself.

Edited July 9, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Prabhaker]

4 hours ago, Loreena said:

So what problems does the East have to face due to this belief that ego is a disease ?

Unless you have a strong ego, how can you survive? Life is a struggle; if you are egoless you will be destroyed. Then who will resist? Who will fight? Who will compete? So, India was invaded again and again by foreigners, they couldn't defend themselves.

Ego is all that you go on accumulating through education, manners, civilization, culture, schools, colleges, universities. As egolessness was taught eastern man was not as sophisticated , civilized, clever as western man.

In the past the East has come very close to creating all the technology that exists today, but they stopped. For example, the printing machine was first developed in China three thousand years ago. Gunpowder was also developed in China three thousand years before, but they never used it. They listened to Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzu. Without an strong ego they were not competitive, aggressive. 

In the ancient Indian medicine, there are such accurate descriptions of all kinds of surgery -- brain surgery included -- but they stopped, they said, "All these things are going to lead man more and more outward. It is better, before man has gone too far away from himself, to stop. That is how a egoless civilization behaves.

India accepted foreign invasions, poverty, diseases because they do not have a strong ego. There were no revolutions against establishment/ rulers even when people were suffering, everything was accepted without fight, resistance.  

 

[Shanmugam]

@jimrich  I think these defense mechanisms are useful to know about for seekers as well, because they can help them to notice a lot of their unconscious reactions and how ego uses these defense mechanisms to rationalize things or defend the self image. But it has to be simplified and made easy for everyone to understand. It can be made as a part of the teaching itself.

When I read Osho, his talks helped me to notice just this; what ego does to protect and enhance the sense of separate self. I learnt basics of psychology using authentic text books last year, and I saw that a lot of those themes are present in psychology as well. I think two topics that can be simplified and included in spiritual teachings are some of the important defense mechanisms and cognitive biases. What do you think?

Edited July 9, 2017 by Shanmugam

[SOUL]

11 minutes ago, jimrich said:

Yes, that is the short story of conditioning and programming.  Healthy thoughts, behaviors and role modeling will become a part of the (imaginary) ego's character so, based on that concept, even the most damaged, evil egos can, theoretically, be RE-PROGRAMMED as healthy egos.   Good luck with that!

Whatever you want to call the phenomena it doesn't matter to me but I am living proof that through the present moment our life experience can transform the whole self....Yes, ego included because all of it is the product of experience. It's as simple as the primitive axiom of monkey see monkey do but a little more complicated in how we express it.

[Key Elements]

@Loreena The ego by definition is fiction. It is something else other than peace/peacefulness/peace of mind because you are the peace/infinite peace/a whole person already and nothing else. Anything else is just a "fiction." For example, an emotion such as sadness or anger or excitement is considered ego. It's a fiction. It's only temporary. If the emotion (ego) comes, just let it pass by like a train. Don't hold onto it and go for a ride. Just see it passing by. Yes, the human body is also the ego.

[Toby]

Healthy ego? Egos that are altruistic, loving, caring, can set clear boundaries and say no, are honest.

[Prabhaker]

32 minutes ago, jimrich said:

It's only a "struggle" for an unhealthy/weak ego. 

Buddha was a prince, he renounced his kingdom and became a beggar, 

What kind of ego he had ?

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, jimrich said:

What's your opinion of that story?

Certainly he's not having a healthy ego !

[Key Elements]

@jimrich Why should I? I'm only defining the ego. I was answering the original post. I didn't say that I want to become a counsellor. Even if I did, that's not what a counsellor would say to a victim. A victim is not ready to hear such a definition. 

Do you look at yourself as a victim or do you feel empowered? The first step is to work toward feeling empowered. Sooner or later the victim will have to let go of the past and move on. Believe it or not, some people don't look at themselves as "victims." They could move on immediately, as if nothing happened to them. This is an exception, not the majority.