THE EGO – Does it get a bad rap? (A brief argument in favor of the ego) “Get out!” they say, “Get out of your ego!” “Release the ego!” they cry, So, yes, we try, try, try. But humanity needs the ego; without it, without our egos, humans may have never formed the current neurological pathways that have taught us HOW to trust one another. Thus, without that portion of our mind — our reality checker; that conscious mediator which is most responsible for self-importance; The Ego! — then trust would not exist. No ego, no trust. This is important. This is you’m. Please stay connected, It matters not to who’m. Yet, to metaphysical experts, the ego assumes responsibility for all that is ill. Somehow, they have pegged the ego as “THE CULPRIT.” These folks keep singing bad raps about our egos and about us. They make us feel bad about, well… being human. Why do they continually pooh-pooh the ego? Why do they continually rap about its failures? Who knows? So let’s examine the best parts of our collective egos. Wide is to narrow, As narrow is to wide, Nobody knows your truth, That’s for you to decide. Our egos have permitted us to employ both deductive and inductive analysis of our fellow humans, especially while measuring our immediate assessment of trust and distrust. Some people have honed this skill so precisely that their assessments happen instantaneously, without conscious thought; that is, after the healthy ego has done its job assessing a spectrum of trust vs. distrust situations, then it transfers this honed evaluation to another part of the brain. We often mistake this as our intuition. Over time, we become so “intuitive” with every trust vs. mistrust situation that, once in a while, we get it wrong; we even get burned because we’ve forgotten the source of our trust. We can even burn ourselves, Our minds are but part ego, So distrust versus mistrust, Who’s your real amigo? Intuition notwithstanding, our collective egos have helped humanity more than they have hindered us. Sincerely! Without the many creative tools and devices that allow for “trust-development,” our fluid system of t~r~u~s~t~i~n~g would not exist. Yet, the ego is the most dynamic part of the human existence and, if I’m correct, then your ego, like mine, helped you champion your personal understandings of “trust versus distrust.” We all utilize various tools and devices to encourage our own trust development, but we rarely attribute this power of positivity to the ego…because, in part, the experts teach us that the ego is bad. “Get out!” they say, “Get out of your ego!” “Release the ego!” they cry, So, yes, we try, try, try. Some humans can oscillate between trust and distrust so rapidly that life seems erratic and disjointed; these oscillations tend to happen much too fast and this speed fools the mind. But… thankfully our collective human egos have devised a variety of skills that have helped us develop important trust-enshrined methods, which add to our abilities to draw conclusions. These skills have evolved into a set of neuro-plastic events (technical term: neuroplasticity) that assist us in distilling our truth from the dissimilar truths that surround us; that is, the ego helps us compare many interpretations of life to our singular perception of a universal truth. Day in and day out, second-after-second, trillions-and-trillions of times during a lifetime, the perceptions of our healthy egos teach us how to trust. As these perceptions gain knowledge, the ego evolves. Thus, in order to keep pace with the ever-changing times, the ego must evolve as the world around us evolves. Spit wads darting eye to eye, Sophomoric delusions The ego is I (or not?). Therefore, May Freud be damned. Marvelous advancements can be attributed to the ego, yet metaphysical experts and — even light chasers — keep poo-pooing the eye of the ego: which is you, which is I, which is they, which is us! A healthy ego somewhere in Madeira, Portugal, say… in 1547 would not be the same as a healthy ego in, say… Sacramento, California in 2014. No matter what generation populates this planet, if a productive amount of trust is to dominate our landscape then our egos need to stay connected, not apart. Thus, when we consider the following examples of HOW the ego assumes responsibility for the development of trust, we might actually bow in awe beneath ingenious methods like: “critical peer reviews of scientific publications,” and “cleverly devised double blind studies,” and “a multi-branched system of political checks and balances.” Ponder these complex methods. In one way or another, egos devised these methods, and they did so in order to achieve a well-trusted goodness within our species. Wow… I gasp… Hip Hip Hooray… for the ego! Ergo, I say, The ego today, By its very nature, Induces a healthy dose of nay, nay, nay. I imagine a substantive type of trust that is borne from the ego. It rises from the observations and lessons learned by a network of connected egos, not from the isolated fear that is experienced by disconnected egos. Substantive trust behaves like electromagnetic radiation, like light. The behaviors of this substantive trust – in all of their forms – radiate from humanity evenly, in at least three dimensions, and those 3-D rays of trust have evolved methods that allow instantaneous changes to exist with within us. So, sometimes, simultaneous doubts and fears confuse us like a navigation system gone haywire; in a split second your “trust development” makes you behave, as you do, not your ego. Your ego only helped you reach these behavioral conclusions, via a process. Thus, not unlike the fluctuating luminescence, temperatures, and pressures that surround you, so too is your shroud of trust, flittering about…and yes, YOUR ego helped YOU build it. So always keep your ego connected. A full spectrum of connected healthy egos Seeks not fractionation, or proportionality, but saturation. Reversing our egos’ inertia — decelerating it Salvages all parts, good and ill, those been peeled away. May your ego be not meek, but be thoughtfully active, Thoughtfully connected. Here’s the trust development process as I envision it. If I’m incorrect in this assessment, well… um…. darn…. do me a favor… just blame my ego, or Oedipus’ or Hamlet’s or God’s). But, pensively, I think that I might actually be correct about this. First, your ego induces you into a fleeting distrustful state, only momentarily and often undetectable, before a logical series of thoughts and questions arise. Prior to any egotistical thought, your instincts confront each situation. Anything — anything at all — can stimulate your ego. Your reptilian brain exercises its mechanism of fight or flight only milliseconds before the ego acts as our cortical triage nurse; it assesses everything around us first. Initially, your ego places you into “A Distrustful State of Trust.” In turn, this distrustful state of trust results in YOU testing and retesting. Humans weight the breadth and depth of every experience, and our egos begin this process. So, as you test and retest life, you start by synthesizing the pros and cons, examining the truths or consequences, sniffing out the let’s make a deals, and calculating whether or not the prices are right. Sorry folks, but this is why we need game show hosts, to keep our egos in check, to keep our egos connected. Yet, the absence of these game shows is the sole reason why a disconnected ego will rot the soul, from the inside out. Every ego must stay connected in order to remain healthy. Secondly, during this healthy genesis of distrust, a connected ego tends to propel us into a method of fantastical analysis, which transitions us into feelings of “intermediary trust.” Intermediary trust, as I pretend it to be, is basic confusion. Whenever you are confused about something, I believe that you are in an intermediary state of trust. This middle trust (your confused state of not trusting your pseudo-intuition, your ego) precedes the final stage of full-blown trust. In this intermediary state, the ego collapses into confusion because — as you’ll agree — the ego wears a social mask and it only imitates your intuitions, not truly living them but pretending to live them. The collapsed ego tries to fool you while it teaches you; this is the great paradox of the ego. The healthy ego works diligently to maintain homeostasis. The ego knows the pathway to trust: it registers, it assesses, it shuffles, it doubts, it questions, it boasts, it redistributes, and it contradicts. The ego is human. It is a mechanism of action that, when connected, is beautiful. We switch the channel often, We turn the ego dial, Clockwise, counterclockwise, then clockwise again. In this way, we keep the ego connected. So embrace it, nurture it, Nevermore give others the power to assign a bad rap to a healthy ego. Go ahead! Tell us what we think experts; Tell us what we feel! We’re not listening because we’ve Learned to trust by learning to appreciate the methods of ego. Finally, and I do mean finally, as long as we do not allow our egos to retreat into the darkest recesses of our being, then the pathways that lead from distrust to trust will remain healthy and vibrant. A distrustful state of trust — when openly explored — will always lead us into our final stages of full-blown trust. * wink * “Do ya trust me?”
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 14:13:18 +0000
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