The Ego

[Lento]

So, recently, I decided to read this book called; "Demeaning The Self (or the ego)" from the Islamic scholar called; "Ibn Al-Jawzi", which is a very respected scholar in the Islamic mainstream world. He died almost 800 years ago. I think he's at stage Orange, because his style of writing is very rational and he uses logic and the mind as the utmost authority besides religion. Most of his books are alike in the structure, from the index, to the chapters, to the subjects, to the individual concepts, and eventually to the quotes he uses. In the preface, he expresses his overall opinion on the matter, and then he demonstrates hints of evidence for why his opinions are valid. In the beginning of each chapter, he demonstrates his opinions on the chapter in general, and then he breaks down the chapters into subjects, which he calls 'doors', and each subject is broken down in the same way. The evidence he provides is mainly logic, which he considers to be the consequence of being a good Muslim, and then he provides quotes from other scholars which support his ideas, and he throws in some old poetry as well, and his most important evidence is "hadith" which is the quotes from Muhammad himself, which are in his opinion, infallible.

Enough with the introduction...

The reason why I decided to read that book is because I am doing shadow work and trying to integrate my past. Actually, I did read that book once when I was a Muslim, and I was like "yeah, that's totally true! I should do this and that, etc...".
This time, at first, it was very disturbing, and I was completely shocked! Then I calmed down and started viewing it from a meta perspective.

The way he views the self or the ego is very different from the way we learn about it today. To him, survival and self-image are not selfish at all, the hierarchy is very important. What other people think of you is very important. In short, everything that serves the collective is very important. In contrast, finding and following your passions are egoic, following your heart against your mind is egoic, preferring instant gratification to the long-term gains (which are in the afterlife) is egoic, suppression is good and expression is egoic. In short, anything that promotes your individual identity is egoic.
Still, the basics of ego to him are more or less the same as they are right now, i.e. anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, desire, indiscipline, etc...

The way I see it is that from a stage Orange vantage point, he's got some very good points. However, from a stage Green vantage point, his views seem very limiting.

To him, ideology is not egoic, and non-ideology is egoic. To him, it's completely backwards!

Interesting thing is that right now I've become able to detach from the way we usually view the ego. It's apparent to me right now that it's just a mental construct, and that we can modify it however we want. So, he's not right nor wrong, neither we are. Yet, the most important thing is that I have captured the essence of the ego, as paradoxical as it sounds, it's that which does not serve its own agendas. It's whatever you want and are not able to get.

Why does the concept of ego even exist? To apply awareness on what's holding you back. You demonise the ego in order for you to move towards it. Whatever you resist persists. The more you demonise it, the more you become it! And the more love you give to it, the faster it dies! Such a beautiful and paradoxical creation!

[MrDmitriiV]

6 hours ago, Lento said:

800 years ago

If a book has been written this long ago, it's not his words anymore. Various human translations, interpretations and neglect over hundreds of years will shape the book to possibly drastic changes.

 

6 hours ago, Lento said:

I think he's at stage Orange, because his style of writing is very rational and he uses logic and the mind as the utmost authority besides religion. Most of his books are alike in the structure, from the index, to the chapters, to the subjects, to the individual concepts, and eventually to the quotes he uses. In the preface, he expresses his overall opinion on the matter, and then he demonstrates hints of evidence for why his opinions are valid. In the beginning of each chapter, he demonstrates his opinions on the chapter in general, and then he breaks down the chapters into subjects, which he calls 'doors', and each subject is broken down in the same way. The evidence he provides is mainly logic, which he considers to be the consequence of being a good Muslim, and then he provides quotes from other scholars which support his ideas, and he throws in some old poetry as well, and his most important evidence is "hadith" which is the quotes from Muhammad himself, which are in his opinion, infallible.

Sounds like he's Blue to me.

Use of logic and rational doesn't make you necessarily Orange. Because people can use their rational to back up blind beliefs, aka religion in a nutshell.

And again, how do you know it's a quote from Muhammad himself? Many generations of interpretations from barbaric humans will 100% make a change on the original words. 

6 hours ago, Lento said:

Why does the concept of ego even exist? To apply awareness on what's holding you back.

You've got it backwards. Think about this one:

Why are you holding back on more awareness? Because there's a concept of an ego in your way.

[Lento]

2 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

If a book has been written this long ago, it's not his words anymore. Various human translations, interpretations and neglect over hundreds of years will shape the book to possibly drastic changes.

This is like not believing in mitochondria because I haven't seen them directly. There's a certain procedure that the books go through in order to verify them; It's explained by the reviewers (which are scholars as well) who produce the books. The reviewers don't claim infallibility, they actually admit that they may make mistakes, and that the manuscripts can be damaged sometimes, and that they try to complete them on their own. There is so much to this procedure. I don't either have the time, neither the capability or enough understanding to explain it. But I believe that it's pretty much good.

3 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

Sounds like he's Blue to me.

Use of logic and rational doesn't make you necessarily Orange. Because people can use their rational to back up blind beliefs, aka religion in a nutshell.

Of course, he has a Blue component. But if you read his books you'll see why I think he's mostly Orange. He believes in Allah because he thinks it's logical. He uses logic as the ultimate authority. He has a theme that is present in pretty much most of his books, which is; the mind is above history, and history must follow the mind.

However, he might be Blue as you suggested. I don't really know.

3 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

And again, how do you know it's a quote from Muhammad himself? Many generations of interpretations from barbaric humans will 100% make a change on the original words.

There's a certain procedure for this too. And the reviewers demonstrate which hadiths can be trusted, and which ones cannot, according to that procedure.

It's explained in depth here if you're interested; en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith

Here's a hint of the procedure (and there's more to it in the link);

"According to Bernard Lewis, "in the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet." To fight these forgeries, the elaborate science of hadith studies was devised[93] to authenticate hadith known as ilm al jarh or ilm al dirayah[94]

Hadith studies use a number of methods of evaluation developed by early Muslim scholars in determining the veracity of reports attributed to Muhammad. This is achieved by

the individual narrators involved in its transmission,

the scale of the report's transmission,

analyzing the text of the report, and

the routes through which the report was transmitted.

On the basis of these criteria, various classifications were devised for hadith. The earliest comprehensive work in hadith studies was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's al-Muhaddith al-Fasil, while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's Ma‘rifat ‘ulum al-hadith. Ibn al-Salah's ʻUlum al-hadith is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies.[20] Some schools of Hadith methodology apply as many as sixteen separate tests.[51]"

3 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

You've got it backwards. Think about this one:

Why are you holding back on more awareness? Because there's a concept of an ego in your way.

I'm sorry. But I think my idea wasn't clear enough. I was trying to explain how the concept 'ego' came into being. This is difficult to communicate, because there isn't actually an ego. It's just a made-up concept. And the same thing goes for awareness. I mean for a dog, there's no such thing as an ego or awareness. We, humans, have created these abstract concepts to help us achieve certain things. The concept 'ego' helps us move towards something. Because when we demonise the ego, whatever it is, we try to move away from it, but in trying to move away from it (by resisting it) we actually move towards the end goal of it. So, for example, when we say that the ego is preventing someone from getting laid, that someone will suppress (resist) their ego in order to get laid. That's one example.

[MrDmitriiV]

@Lento Seems like you're really deep in into that stage Blue literature. Wonder why? 

There are much more distilled and cleaner texts, check out Leo's booklist. 

58 minutes ago, Lento said:

So, for example, when we say that the ego is preventing someone from getting laid, that someone will suppress (resist) their ego in order to get laid. That's one example.

Never heard of ego preventing one to get laid. As you might've hopefully heard, women like jerks,  which do have quite an elaborate ego.

Males with small ego are bad at survival, females don't wanna mate with such partners.

[Lento]

8 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

@Lento Seems like you're really deep in into that stage Blue literature. Wonder why?

I grew up in a stage Blue society. And thanks for the suggestion, but I'm intentionally going back there to integrate my past. For all I know, that's how shadow work is done.

8 hours ago, MrDmitriiV said:

@Lento 

Never heard of ego preventing one to get laid. As you might've hopefully heard, women like jerks,  which do have quite an elaborate ego.

Males with small ego are bad at survival, females don't wanna mate with such partners.

Lol! Okay. Let's say if someone is acting out of fear of rejection, that's ego. The advice to those people usually is to act more authentically, which means more detached and less neurotic/fearful, which means less egoic. The guy must suppress/deny/resist/etc... his fear of rejection in order for him not to be rejected. It's a painful process, a sacrifice, for achieving a certain goal. This is the paradox.

As for your example; well, being jerk or nice is a judgement that the nice guys create. They think that they don't get laid because they're 'nice', and they see the 'jerks' getting laid. So, in this case, "being nice" (whatever it actually means) becomes the ego from the nice guys' perspective, and therefore it gets repressed, and when it gets repressed, they get laid. There isn't actually a solid thing called ego. It's something we create to achieve certain goals. For the nice guys, they're usually occupied with victim mindsets, so they judge the 'jerks' and create excuses for their own inability to get laid, one of which is that the jerks are egoic and that they're nice and not egoic. The smart move is to flip sides, and to take responsibility. That is when they start viewing their 'nice guy' traits as egoic. Therefore, a goal gets created, ego gets repressed, and then eventually they get to have sex.

I hope now you'll get what I mean by ego. It's not what you think it is. That's why you think I've got it backwards! This is one of the deepest insights I've ever had, and that's why I shared it here. Otherwise, I would have probably just kept it to myself.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Lento