What’s all that fuss about ego?

So what's really going on?

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waechter418
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What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by waechter418 »

…..after all ego (Latin: I) is just a viewpoint, a reference term – which might irritate, when overly used - but so does “you know”
“Egoists, Egocentrics & Egomaniacs” stem probably from the need to project and label something beyond the I – at least it would explain why ego is supposed to be synonymous for self. But what is self? – certainly not I, otherwise psychologists, mystics & gurus couldn’t make so much ado about it.
To me the term self encompasses what I am – including my ignorance about it – which doesn’t bother me, since I am what I do & I do what I am – thus having no problem with my self, and no desire to be someone else, or to go to a monastery to get rid of my self – which in my opinion requires an ego much larger than I can afford.
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Dontaskme
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

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waechter418 wrote:…..after all ego (Latin: I) is just a viewpoint, a reference term – which might irritate, when overly used - but so does “you know”
“Egoists, Egocentrics & Egomaniacs” stem probably from the need to project and label something beyond the I – at least it would explain why ego is supposed to be synonymous for self. But what is self? – certainly not I, otherwise psychologists, mystics & gurus couldn’t make so much ado about it.
To me the term self encompasses what I am – including my ignorance about it – which doesn’t bother me, since I am what I do & I do what I am – thus having no problem with my self, and no desire to be someone else, or to go to a monastery to get rid of my self – which in my opinion requires an ego much larger than I can afford.
Last edited by Dontaskme on Tue May 03, 2016 6:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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waechter418
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by waechter418 »

SPLENDID !
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Greta
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Greta »

This "self doesn't exist" disappearing trick is constantly perpetrated in scientific and philosophical forums. Yet selves continue to shape the world. The self is fashioned by the shrapnel of the past and cannot logically be dismissed as unreal. The past does not disappear immediately to be replace by an all-consuming present as is commonly, and wrongly, portrayed. It takes time for the forms of the past to dissipate or transform, and during this temporary persistence the past forms the foundation of this "present moment", which is so prized by philosophers.

I do not dispute the beauty, power and efficacy of present moment focus but I dispute the idea that the past is entirely absent from the present moment, which is portrayed as all brand new, shiny and fresh. Meanwhile, the future is connected to the present in the form of potentials as set out by the starting states of emergent forms, eg. DNA.

The ego is is an evolved defence mechanism - the boundary we draw between self and others in order to preserve our current form (or grow it). The primary aim of the ego is to stay in one piece, to delay our inevitable physical dissipation into the environment. Without ego we are entirely open to the world, seeing no boundary between self and others. It's obviously a poor survival strategy, which is why all living things have some kind of defensive shield - be it armour, a tough thick hide, spikes, toxins, huddling, sharp senses, etc.

In human relations, our "armour" consists of wealth, strength, attractiveness/charm and ego. There is an internal conflict where we feel compelled to grow at all times. However, in order to grow we need to drop our shields and allow ourselves to be more exposed, just as animals must render themselves defenceless when shedding their skin to allow for growth.

People with certain personal issues tend towards hypervigilance and will find themselves stagnating and struggling in life due to an overly defensive ego that serves to separate them from growth promoting activities. This toxic effect of the hypervigilant ego would seem to be the source of the "fuss".
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Dubious »

Greta wrote:
The ego is is an evolved defence mechanism - the boundary we draw between self and others in order to preserve our current form (or grow it). The primary aim of the ego is to stay in one piece, to delay our inevitable physical dissipation into the environment. Without ego we are entirely open to the world, seeing no boundary between self and others. It's obviously a poor survival strategy, which is why all living things have some kind of defensive shield - be it armour, a tough thick hide, spikes, toxins, huddling, sharp senses, etc.
Agree completely. An ego are the bookends of the entity called "I". A well functioning ego knows when to attack or retreat, expand or contract. It will on occasion submit without feeling inferior but never renounce until the last moment when the bookends collapse.
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Dontaskme »

''We need not take the transient self-sense to represent who and what we truly are, but we can instead simply appreciate it as the creative expedient that it is, like a space suit worn to navigate a particular environment. We are not the costume, we are not the program, but we do need it in order to provide Spirit the necessary access to the physical adventure it desires to immerse itself in, and so provide Source with eyes and hands and feet to discover and enjoy Itself in this shimmering corner of It's dream of living light.''
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Greta
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Greta »

Dontaskme wrote:''We need not take the transient self-sense to represent who and what we truly are, but we can instead simply appreciate it as the creative expedient that it is, like a space suit worn to navigate a particular environment. We are not the costume, we are not the program, but we do need it in order to provide Spirit the necessary access to the physical adventure it desires to immerse itself in, and so provide Source with eyes and hands and feet to discover and enjoy Itself in this shimmering corner of It's dream of living light.''
I was enjoying your post until "Spirit" and "Source" - each being an assumption.

Is this "Spirit" perfect in essence, sullied in its journey to Earth but emerges from death clean, pure and perfect again once it's been released from its physical form and returns to the "Source"?
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Dontaskme »

Greta wrote: Is this "Spirit" perfect in essence, sullied in its journey to Earth but emerges from death clean, pure and perfect again once it's been released from its physical form and returns to the "Source"?
Last edited by Dontaskme on Tue May 03, 2016 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Greta
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Greta »

Dontaskme wrote:Every word to describe physical form is an assumption. What is form but emptiness in form. We've only got language to describe the ineffable. Without language, without the knowledge we have of ourselves which is not actually ourselves, there's just an invisible internal driving force that motivates or ''animates'' our physical body to do things.
That's all we know.
Isn't the animating force just food, drink and information?
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Dontaskme »

Greta wrote:
Dontaskme wrote:Every word to describe physical form is an assumption. What is form but emptiness in form. We've only got language to describe the ineffable. Without language, without the knowledge we have of ourselves which is not actually ourselves, there's just an invisible internal driving force that motivates or ''animates'' our physical body to do things.
That's all we know.
Isn't the animating force just food, drink and information?
Last edited by Dontaskme on Tue May 03, 2016 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Walker
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Re: animating force

Post by Walker »

Dontaskme wrote:
Greta wrote:
Dontaskme wrote:Every word to describe physical form is an assumption. What is form but emptiness in form. We've only got language to describe the ineffable. Without language, without the knowledge we have of ourselves which is not actually ourselves, there's just an invisible internal driving force that motivates or ''animates'' our physical body to do things.
That's all we know.
Isn't the animating force just food, drink and information?
Yes, but not just that, it's also the energy of our thoughts directed, including our words which act as powerful tools that can carry the power of life, everything of an intangible nature carries a certain energy with it...when we feed the energy, the energy grows, and we get the dramas of life unfolding according to where we direct our thoughts and feelings, when we don't feed the energy, it dies..as for things not of the mind, like green grass and nature stuff well that all grows by itself, it is unknown what directs nature, but we see that all life depends on the light of the sun. Without light there would be nothing at all.

So I guess everything is light which is energy, which is electrical in nature.

No one has ever seen the light, it is invisible. Also, I might add, that we can't see the light because we are it.



IMHO..but don't take my word for it.
With this in mind, all movement in the universe is to balance. Atomic motion, biological reaction to stimulus, human choice of thinking to seek food, drink and information, galactic motion, all this movement is to balance. Like water seeking the level, any motion is a balancing force that can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. Every particular manifestation from infinite potentiality is due to conditions aligning in accordance to the balancing effect of the ordering principle. Since every motion caused by balancing radiates ripples of subsequent balancing movements into the universe with an exponential speed and progression … into a radiating construct too complex for human linear 3-D thinking to track into all possible permutations, or backwards to original cause owing to the fact that the database is as large as the universe itself … then after one of the radiating ripples beyond which the interactions become intersecting ripples that muddle the puddle, the limitations of human thought falls back to perceiving chaos, and from this basis maintains that man himself supplies the meaning. In truth, what man calls meaning is only a limited perception of existent order.

Speaking of perceived permutations, wasn’t that the crux empowering Herbert’s mentats in the Dune series? I read it a long time ago before the movie but as I recall, with a boost from the Spice and a boost from the essence of the Worm, among other things, Paul's hardwiring transformed so that he could instantly extrapolate all permutations of the present instant into an infinite future, which gave him the capacity to predict everything and thus control all reality even though he had no physical eyes. He was a mentat's mentat.
dontaskme wrote:We've only got language to describe the ineffable.
Communication also happens in silence.
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Greta
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Re: animating force

Post by Greta »

Dontaskme wrote:Yes, but not just that, it's also the energy of our thoughts directed, including our words which act as powerful tools that can carry the power of life, everything of an intangible nature carries a certain energy with it...when we feed the energy, the energy grows, and we get the dramas of life unfolding according to where we direct our thoughts and feelings, when we don't feed the energy, it dies..as for things not of the mind, like green grass and nature stuff well that all grows by itself, it is unknown what directs nature, but we see that all life depends on the light of the sun. Without light there would be nothing at all.

So I guess everything is light which is energy, which is electrical in nature.

No one has ever seen the light, it is invisible. Also, I might add, that we can't see the light because we are it.
In standard physics that EM force is not fundamental because 13.8 billion years ago gravity, EM and the nuclear forces were a single composite, before the various forces split off. Also, what is energy without information. Based on your interests I suggest you have a good read about the nature of information and systems.
Walker wrote:With this in mind, all movement in the universe is to balance. Atomic motion, biological reaction to stimulus, human choice of thinking to seek food, drink and information, galactic motion, all this movement is to balance. Like water seeking the level, any motion is a balancing force that can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. Every particular manifestation from infinite potentiality is due to conditions aligning in accordance to the balancing effect of the ordering principle. Since every motion caused by balancing radiates ripples of subsequent balancing movements into the universe with an exponential speed and progression … into a radiating construct too complex for human linear 3-D thinking to track into all possible permutations, or backwards to original cause owing to the fact that the database is as large as the universe itself … then after one of the radiating ripples beyond which the interactions become intersecting ripples that muddle the puddle, the limitations of human thought falls back to perceiving chaos, and from this basis maintains that man himself supplies the meaning. In truth, what man calls meaning is only a limited perception of existent order.
Nice. We try to boil everything down to fundamentals but the result tends to be about as satisfying as analysing movies and coming to the conclusion that the fundamental unit of a movie is the actor. In truth, the interest lies in the dynamic interactions of individual actors, the circumstances and the settings in a journey towards relative balance and/or disruption.
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Greta wrote: In standard physics that EM force is not fundamental
Correct. Electromagnetism is an emergent property of matter and matter did not come into existence until AFTER the big bang.
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Re: animating force

Post by Dontaskme »

Walker wrote: With this in mind, all movement in the universe is to balance. Atomic motion, biological reaction to stimulus, human choice of thinking to seek food, drink and information, galactic motion, all this movement is to balance. Like water seeking the level, any motion is a balancing force that can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. Every particular manifestation from infinite potentiality is due to conditions aligning in accordance to the balancing effect of the ordering principle. Since every motion caused by balancing radiates ripples of subsequent balancing movements into the universe with an exponential speed and progression … into a radiating construct too complex for human linear 3-D thinking to track into all possible permutations, or backwards to original cause owing to the fact that the database is as large as the universe itself … then after one of the radiating ripples beyond which the interactions become intersecting ripples that muddle the puddle, the limitations of human thought falls back to perceiving chaos, and from this basis maintains that man himself supplies the meaning. In truth, what man calls meaning is only a limited perception of existent order.

Speaking of perceived permutations, wasn’t that the crux empowering Herbert’s mentats in the Dune series? I read it a long time ago before the movie but as I recall, with a boost from the Spice and a boost from the essence of the Worm, among other things, Paul's hardwiring transformed so that he could instantly extrapolate all permutations of the present instant into an infinite future, which gave him the capacity to predict everything and thus control all reality even though he had no physical eyes. He was a mentat's mentat.
dontaskme wrote:We've only got language to describe the ineffable.
Communication also happens in silence.
Last edited by Dontaskme on Tue May 03, 2016 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What’s all that fuss about ego?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dontaskme wrote:The ''What Is'' can never be what it isn't
Deep.
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