Having a healthy ego, is that even a thing?

[Omario]

Hello aliens

I recently finished, Nathaniel Branden's six pillars of self esteem, he talks about how some people go on a journey to dissolve their ego but that its the ego in a healthy sense is exactly what they failed to attain, meaning that these people fail at developing a healthy ego so they try to remove it.

 

This idea got me thinking and poses a few question : what even is a healthy ego? is there a thing of such? if there is, why is renouncing it considered the alternative to failure of acquiring it? How do i go about developing a healthy ego or should i not bother and just stick to removing mine?

Please share your thoughts with me, i need a little help on this one.

[pluto]

A healthy ego is one who is whole with the higher mind and not disconnected from it. A healthy ego lives and knows of a loving nature and not a fear-based one. When the ego forgets and has the illusion of losing its connection to the "whole self"(if you will) it adopts fear-based lifestyle as it thinks its alone and this life is its only existence thus goes in full survival/defensive mode to keep as far from death/surrender as it can no longer see whats beyond. Where when connected to the whole/higher mind/self it can see as a (whole) thus what many call the Enlightened state(so to speak)

You cannot remove ego and exist in physical reality at the same time, you need it to be here or you cannot focus your personal experience.

The best formula i have found is to just be yourself, find what you are passionate about and what brings you most joy and what excites you the most at any given moment and ACT on that without any expectation of how the outcome should be.

This works better than meditation(for most people) as it is meditation in itself because if you are really doing what you love you are in that moment, you cannot be anywhere else and your highest joy/excitement is interlinked to your natural state of being.

Sure Meditation is effective tool but if you are still doing it forcibly and you are not enjoying yourself, you are (in a sense) resisting the natural flow of creation and your personalized natural state of evolution. By doing what you love instead, you are allowing the natural flow to be the natural flow thus your expansion of consciousness will be most efficient for your being as doing what you love is INTERCONNECTED to your natural state and flow.

This formula will help you accelerate the most efficient and effective way for your own personalized consciousness and the more you do what you love the more you embody and reconnect with the "WHOLE SELF" as one. The ego will naturally fall into place.

The Ego does not need removal, it needs Unconditional Love.

Edited July 18, 2018 by pluto

[Nahm]

@Omario All methods of waking up and realizing the falsities of selfishness, doubt, hate, fear, evil, etc, and ultimately the illusionary separate self. Ego’s a word often used for that, not an actual thing, just thoughts, “veils”. 

[Xenomorf]

Yes ! Love it unconditionally !

The mind is the single thing in this Universe you absolutely and fully possess. 

Let it possess itself.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Xenomorf

[YaNanNallari]

A healthy ego, well you know. The ego is a fantastic tool in our lives. So what a healthy ego is in my opinion, is an ego that fits your current situation well. My path has very much been having a healthier and healthier ego.

I do not see the issue with spirituality to be not being able to go deep enough. I think that we should follow intuition and things like that, leading us to what we really want to do. But obviously to try and live this way you need to have had a considerable amount of progress already. And you might get lost.

The amazing awareness that is there will come to us once we are "trying" to improve our lives, which for me means trying to follow intuition. But it will come when our situation and surroundings are good enough. Not when we try to go too deep too fast and just end up feeling things we're not ready for and that we don't need. With a healthy ego and a life of building up positive things (acceptance) we will imo do much better than by trying to reach cool states. So how I do it is not trying to force a deeper state, but being aware of what is in my awareness already. Then when I'm ready my mind will naturally bring up new things that I need to accept

[Leo Gura]

A healthy ego is something like you see in Barack Obama. An unhealthy ego something like you see in Donald Trump.

An unhelathy ego is very insecure, clingy, greedy, closed, manipulative, dishonest, and well... self-centered. A healthy ego is the opposite.

Braden's work is a great way to move from unhealthy to healthy ego.

But it will not lead to ego-transcendence. That requires deeper teachings.

[stevegan928]

greetings 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2018 by stevegan928

[Rilles]

should i have a healthy illusion or an unhealthy illusion?

[Elena2]

@Leo Gura 

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

But it will not lead to ego-transcendence. That requires deeper teachings.

What would be some deeper teachings? 

[Brittany]

Shadow work gives you a healthy ego.

Zen devils are people who can access the void, but don't do shadow work.

[Leo Gura]

On 7/20/2018 at 10:09 AM, Elena2 said:

@Leo Gura 

What would be some deeper teachings? 

I have spoken about nonduality A LOT at this point. Go see the Enlightenment video category on the website.

[Widdle Puppy]

Nathan does mention this. It's a bit of a paradox for me but I'm ok with accepting that and not knowing right now. I think that for some people including myself are so deeply entangled in gordian knots that you need to start unraveling your complexes on a more gross level because you simply just won't be able to build up the qualities or understanding necessary to do some really deep enlightenment work. Or it's all actually just a distraction. I don't know. I do know that 6 pillars was a very helpful book for me though so why not do both? Why not practice and learn from Nathan and do your enlightenment work even if they do in theory contradict? Nothing wrong with doing both and accepting that they are different and being ok with that and trying to benefit from the positive qualities of both.  

[Leo-Tzu]

It depends from what levels of consciousness you're operating from, but even in the lower ones the ego can be constructive or destructive. The goal is to get rid of the ego but here the tricks begin to unreavel because the first nondual question that comes is "who wants to get rid of the ego"? 

[RabbitHole]

Do high dose of psychdelics, kill It for few hours and after that ask yourself again: "Do I wan't to get rid of It?"

Only way how you can exist in this material plane is with ego, so you keep It, but rewire thinking patterns, habits, beliefs etc. It's not easy, but If you're staying here in human world then that's what you do. You make It consciouss and control It, not It controls you.

[kingroboto]

Is there more that one aspect of ego? The ego that I've come to understand is the tantrum throwing child that wants all the impulsive pleasures, seek emotional triggers, and having a very narrow field of view. In fact that is how I visualize it in my head to help me separate myself from the ego. It's like we are a dysfunctional siblings stuck inside the same head and there's not enough room up here. 

[Sashaj]

I think a healthy ego is one that acts as a suitable vehicle for your “journey” to enlightenment