What is ego? (exerpt from Victor Mgazi's thread)

[deci belle]

Victor Mgazi recently started started a thread called What is ego, which seems to have begun to level off at 66 responses. I consider his and many of the responses to be of high quality. I'm putting my response (the fourth in his thread) here in Self-Actualization Journals, as it contains a general overview of practical concerns applicable to Victo Mgazi's original topic relative to defining the context of self-refinement in terms of ego-function, it's inherent limitations, as well as its true nature being the access-point by enlightening activity.

My response to his OP:

Dang, Victor [an excellent topic and OP]! Ego is the creative nexus of attach-ability, yes~ but to say it is attachment… or to say without ego, there is no attachment …ok, certainly we can arguably posit that, in a qualified sense (in terms of habitual use of ego) To be precise, ego is a modality. It's a type of pattern awareness, which can be sub-classified as everyday ordinary conditioned consciousness. So if ego is a modality of perceptive functionality, what constitutes its employment? Isn't ego in charge? If not, who is? What constitutes the person? Who, or what isn't the person? How about this: without awareness, there is no person, nor ego. Ego isn't a thing any more than enlightenment. The point is, and especially in terms of the nature of awareness (which is enlightenment), there is no ego. Creation is filled with points of illumination. Enlightenment is illumination. Ego is actually a point-source without a point (on a good day). Enlightenment is itself a selfless intention, yet it has no point. How wondrous is non-attachment? Our nature is awakeness.

It would be a higher clarification of consciousness which brings to light an underlying non-psychological basis of identity which can eventually obviate the hopeless intellectualism caught in the broken record of rationalistic dualism that perpetuates the dead words constituting any kind of intellectual discourse encompassing ego-thought consciousness. What ego is, just isn't (so to speak).

We really don't have egos, as ego has (is) the personality (function), without exception.  Nevertheless, there is an underlying aspect that hardly ever makes it to the table (with good reason). Unless one actually knows ego's original and selfless function in terms of one's enlightening potential, one's strategic application of ego-functionality falls short of accomplishing inconceivable spiritual adaption and transformation by skillful means— or, rather (without getting all buddhist), as ego's tacit functionality (primal duty, really) reverts to its unified functional purpose as enlightening potential's corollary, is what taoist spiritual alchemy calls the efficacy of the sciences of essence and life. These are two, yet one. As well, psychological awareness and nonpsychological awareness are two, yet one. Ego's true purpose is in administratively aiding in truly selfless and spontaneous transcendent activity by virtue of one's innate enlightening potential. Therefore, enlightening activity isn't the person, but it isn't not the person. Either way no one knows. And who might that be? There, that didn't sound very buddhist.

DLH presented a conclusive summary of the created psychological apparatus, without failing to omit the body, adding~ "neither good or bad."

That kind of insight has no limit of application in terms of non-resistant penetration into the heart of the matter of life and death.

Could habitual patterns of attachment being the matrix of webs of collective psychological momentum through eons of ego-consciousness be something that is being left out of the analysis? It stupefies statistical analysis, yet… "We're all one"— isn't that what we say in our altruistic (self-reflective) moments. Actually it's all one (the creative, karmic aspect we find ourselves in). It really doesn't have to be about us, at all, because, in terms of Reality, which isn't even created, much less subjective relativity (sorry, Einstein!), it's about IT. It's utterly a complete whole for those who actually see potential. In looking at it selflessly, (as it is, not as we are), what are we looking at? What are we getting at? It's us; we're not it.

Now there's an ego-check.

What constitutes ego-attachments? Ego per se, is pretty helpless, it seems, in terms of its own conditioning; it's own psychological momentum, utterly attached (bound, as it were) as a mere discriminatory point-source of the collective unity. How free is that? So what constitutes that which directs or binds ego to… creative process? Ego isn't a thing, actually. The person being the headlong evidence of a mystery unfolding until… one grasps the import of there being no intrinsic reason or causality underlying the created (or the uncreated, for that matter). How can one be so sure? One can't say— that's for sure, but it IS a mystery first and foremost. There is no explanation. Ultimately, there is no reason, as sure as there is no thing.

  Quote

 Ultimately, there is no reason, as sure as there is no thing.

In terms of its function as the (creative's sameness within differentiation) nexus of attach-ability, you might conceive of ego as being naturally aspected of creative being in terms of its adherence to karmic law, law of the creative's realm… by virtue of the unitary aspect Creation itself, wholly becoming, as the conditional singularity it might be considered to be.

Neither good not bad, it can be intentionally turned around and used as a tool (that's what it really is, after all). But I asked earlier, "who puts ego to use?"

The true human with no status, is the taoist term. It is one's inherent enlightening potential that lies dormant mostly, yet, from time to time, arises of its own accord. Who doesn't know that much? The endless task of self-refinement is the process of "turning around the light" of creation (ego), that gradually results in the efficacious restoration and permanent stability of nonpsychological awareness as the true human with no status evidencing one's awakened enlightening potential realized as a partner of creation, never again to be bound by its former karmic affinity, now actualized as affinity with the primal aspect, as opposed to the conditional. "Turning around the light" is the teaching of reversal; the reversion of the conditioned and the restoration of the primal.

Ego isn't what, it's rather that which is bound in creation and liberated in potential, that is, the Unborn, or the un-created. That's not so woo-woo. Why? Awareness isn't created. So ultimately, accessing potential is a matter of seeing. That's the essence of awareness. But there's a catch which I touched on above. That is to say, it's you; you're not it. When you see it, to the degree you see, it becomes you, as it were, all along, perpetually aglow. The aspect of ego being elemental in terms of its potential for self-transcendece is itself the "gateless gate", which anyone familiar with mind only teachings of buddhism has heard of.

Ultimately, who knows?