Vocabulary of the Soul: Part One - the Ego

We need to start our journey through the vocabulary of the soul with an understanding of the Ego – Consciousness.

It will become clear that our approach to the Ego and the Consciousness is quite different than what you may be used to. The Ego has received a bad rap over the last century. I believe this is due to an inadequate translation of Eastern concepts into Western Spirituality. We have condemned the Ego to something that needs to be destroyed or killed. This action has a devastating effect on the individual. Rather than killing the Ego, the Ego needs to be cultivated, and balanced. As we will see, it is the Ego that is the source of individuality. It is the Ego that is the key to personal freedom. To kill the Ego is to make the consciousness subject to the explosions of the personal unconscious. This removes any function of free thought. But, the Ego we are speaking of here is different than the idea of the Ego that is present in Western expressions of Eastern thought.

Ego is a term that has its root in the Latin word that means “I.” Consciousness is simply the state of being awake. Ego is the core of the consciousness, and the heart of all awareness. Thus, to train the awareness is to train the Ego. Think of the Ego as the spot-light of awareness. At the same time, we can see Ego as the primary Tool of Awareness.

If we are aware of having knowledge of anything, it is an act of the Ego. If we are to have accurate knowledge of anything, we need to have a strong Ego function. It must be said, however, that the Ego is often subject to the biases of the personal unconscious. Even though the Ego is the core of awareness, it is still a tool for the Soul.

Jung seems to have seen the Ego as representative of our personality as we experience it. The Ego is like a mirror that allows us to view ourselves, and our responses to both internal and external stimuli. In it we can experience our individuality as a center of the will, and of desire, and of action.

It can also be seen as the door to the consciousness. In this way anything that arises out of the unconscious or impacts us through external stimuli, and enters fully into our consciousness must do so through the Ego. Because of this, the content of our unconscious can only enter fully into the consciousness through the Ego. This is why the eruption of the contents of the personal unconscious is directed at, and will often overcome the Ego – function. The only way to withstand this type of eruption is to have cultivated a strong Ego, and mature consciousness. Said in another way – Self Control is the action of a Strong Ego and mature consciousness.

To understand the development of the Ego we need to address another term; the Self. We will cover the Self in detail another time, but for now understand this – the Self is both an archetype that is synonymous with our individual Spirit, as well as containing and interpenetrating the whole of the psyche and the soma.

Think of it this way – the Self (our Spiritual Self) transcends, contains, and interpenetrates every aspect of our individual lives. In a healthy Soul, the whole of the psyche, from the collective unconscious to the soma to the Ego acts as a tool for the Spiritual Self.

The maintenance of this state of healthy being is determined by what is called the Ego/Self Axis. The Ego/Self Axis is the mechanism whereby the Self communicates with the Ego. This mechanism can be damaged, and even collapsed, however. If this damage occurs, another part of the soul (usually in the form of a mediating and healing principle called the Anima/Animus – which I call the Mediator) is needed to clear the way. But this principle can be resisted and even shut down. If this occurs then the individual lives their life confined to the conscious and the personal unconscious. As we will see in a moment, this is a very small part of the individual soul. And such confinement leads to a very empty and often damaged life.

Individuation is the term used to describe the process of the growth and maturity of the Ego – consciousness. We can see this process as several stages of growth.

The first stage is characterized by an absence of awareness of the differences between the internal and external worlds, as well as the lack of awareness of being in that state. This is an initial state of wholeness, but it is un-evolved and ignorant wholeness. The person in this stage projects their own feelings onto the outside world, and is deeply affected by what occurs in the outside world because they experience the external as if it is internal. There is no differentiation between subject and object.

As much as this is an infantile stage of awareness, it can (and often is) carried into adulthood. The almost obsessive projection onto a valued object is an example of the continuation of this stage of growth. In this type of projection, damage to that object can be sympathetically felt by the subject. When the object has been threatened, mishandled, or damaged this can even manifest as sickness or physical pain. It can result in a form of trauma if the object is destroyed.

The second stage of the growth of consciousness there is a certain level of differentiation of objects. Some objects become more important, and more closely identified with the inner world. The best example of this type of projection is that of a child on a parent. In this state, Mother is the source of all that is good, and Father is indomitable hero. Both are infallible. In the later years of youth, reality proves to the individual that mom and dad are just people and fallible. Like all collisions between the ideal of the projection and the reality of life, this is potentially traumatic.

In this second stage, there are a lot of objects that receive our projections. Because differentiation and individuation is so limited, these objects have a free hand in investing ideas, opinions, and knowledge directly within our consciousness. This is what occurs in childhood, where the child identifies and adopts the beliefs, habits, and opinions of the culture/group. At this point, it is the group that is infallible. Again, growing out of this stage is painful, and often traumatic.

It is important to note that groups which hold to inflexible ideas of the world will automatically attempt to arrest the development of the individual to this stage. This is the hallmark of all forms of fundamentalism. The transcendence of this stage is again often traumatic.

It is also at this stage where we tend to fall in love. It is not the person we fall in love with, rather it tends to be a projection of the anima/animus that we adore. Most of us have experienced this to one degree or another when the reality of the person we love collides with the projected ideal. This difference between the reality and the ideal is often the cause of divorce. “I don’t know you anymore,” is the refrain of someone who has experienced psychic trauma at the collision of the reality of their partner with the ideal. In fact, they never knew the other person to begin with. Rather, the other person was a fitting recipient for the projection of an ideal.

This type of projection also occurs with a parent for a child, especially a first child. The parent will project the archetype of the divine child onto their own child. This dynamic is fascinating, in that the child is susceptible to their own projections which are focused on the parent. What occurs is a mutually supported fantasy life. This can delay or damage the development of the child into adulthood, and the parent remains in the projected state.

In the third stage of development a level of distance between the subject and the object is attained. In this stage the individual starts to understand that the object is different than the projection, and the contents of the soul become abstract and symbolic.

At this point projections move from a concrete object to an abstract ideal. God, truth, law, political ideals become the new objects for projections. It is here that the physical world becomes less threatening, and less enchanting. There is a distance that grows between the experiences of the external world and the experiences of the internal world.

This is the stage of the inviolability of the rule of law, or the ideals of the group, rather than the group itself. The group – or rather the members of the group can be imperfect, but the ideal is perfect. This is often manifested in the idea of scripture or creed as infallible. This is a more advanced state of religious expression than the primitive projections of the second stage, but it too, lends itself to a fundamentalist ideology. In some sense this is a more negative fundamentalism, since the individual has no value in the face of the principle.

If the idea of a vengeful God is part of this stage of growth, then transcending this stage of growth is incredibly difficult. This difficulty is the product of the deep fear generated by the individual’s lack of value in the face of an unattainable ideal. The application of mercy or grace at this stage is only partially successful. The reason for this is that the simple idea of grace or mercy is either deficient (less than) or transcendent (greater than) of the current stage of growth, and thus has little actual impact on the individual’s internal world.

The fourth stage can be called the agnostic or atheistic stage. This is the practical stage, where external projections are almost non-existent. Everything that is part of the group is devalued as a construct of man. This includes Creeds and Scripture. This stage can often lead to depression, since everything that used to give the individual value no longer has any value to the individual. This is also the stage of moral relativism. Everything is a “maybe” or an “I’m not sure.”

What is actually occurring at this stage of growth is that the Ego itself becomes the object of the projections. This is a state of massive Ego inflation. It must be understood that Ego inflation is necessary for the growth of Ego – consciousness. The inflation at this stage, however, is extreme.

In this state of inflation, it is the Ego that determines what is right and wrong, and what is good and evil. In extreme cases of this stage of growth, megalomania occurs. This is the stage where, “I am God,” becomes the mantra, and the core of the personal belief system. This is where the structure of the world seems to be determined by the thoughts of the Ego, and life gives way to the creative power of the individual.

As intense as this stage of growth is, it is also fragile. It doesn’t take a whole lot of collisions with the external to challenge or damage the assumptions of this stage of growth. This is where self-deception will often manifest. The individual thinks that if the world does not change in accordance with his thoughts, then he is simply not thinking hard enough to impact the world.

Because of the nature of this stage of growth, it is often demonized by the more fundamentalist ideologies of stages two and three. At the same time, the lack of enchantment is often difficult for people to accept. Resistance to growth is common at this stage.

A healthy individual should reach the fourth stage of growth in the first half of life (prior to age forty). This is why many mystical traditions (especially when they are socially engaged) have an age limit on initiation into their mysteries. The levels of growth after the fourth stage are all primarily spiritual in nature.

At the end of the fourth stage and the beginning of the fifth stage the individual becomes increasingly aware of how little control they have over their own thoughts and actions. Even with a strong Ego, we begin to understand that the Ego is the door keeper to the Soul. A strong Ego will be able to contain a constellated complex to a limited degree, but the Ego, without further unification with the power-house elements of the psyche (the archetypes of the collective unconscious), will never gain ground. Prior to the fruition of the fifth stage, the ego is imprisoned to contents of the unconscious. It requires a conscious, determined unification of all aspects of the psyche with the core of awareness (which remember, is the Ego) in order to shift the rulers of the psyche from limitations to elements of focus.

The fifth stage begins the process of reconciliation of the archetypes. This will almost always begin with the contents of the shadow, then move to the complexes of the personal unconscious. Because of the state of projection in the fourth stage, the archetypes are seen as “other” since they were being projected onto the Ego. The fifth stage (the stage of initial descent, and subsequent ascent to the Father) is where the separation between the awareness of the “I” and the contents of the unconscious is bridged.

This stage of ascent requires the re – unification of the Ego with the Archetypes of the collective unconscious. The primary difference between this stage and the initial infantile state of wholeness is the recognition of the differentiation between the parts of the soul. This is a Unity rather than a Singularity. The infantile state can be seen as an initial, un-evolved Singularity. The fifth stage of growth is the evolved state of Unity. There are several more stages of the growth of consciousness, but those are beyond the scope of this discussion.

By the time of the fifth stage of growth a healthy Ego will seem to touch every aspect of the being in some way. It can be seen as a web that anchors itself throughout the whole of the being. It is in on and through the Web of the Ego that we can interact with the whole of the conscious, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. In this way we can bring true awareness to our Spiritual Self. In fact, most spiritual growth at this stage and beyond can be seen as bringing the Ego to the Spirit, saturating the Ego in the Spirit, and allowing the Ego to shine the “Light of Anointed Awareness” onto all other aspects of the being.

One of the ways to guarantee that the Ego develops in a balanced manner is to keep in mind the two modes and four functions of the Ego. The two modes are introversion (focusing inward), and extroversion (focusing outward). The four functions are sensation (a response to external stimuli), intuition (a response to internal stimuli), feeling (the emotional response to sensation and/or intuition), and thinking (the intellectual response to sensation and/or intuition).

In the two modes we have a tendency of focus, as well as a source of psychic energy. Generally, someone who is introverted will find that they “recharge their batteries” while being alone and focusing inward. They will also tend to find that their resources are taxed by being around a large group of people. The extrovert will find that they “recharge their batteries” through social interaction. They tend to have difficulty being alone for long periods of time.

Sensation and intuition are uncontrolled reactions to stimuli. While feeling and thinking can be cultivated and balanced. Feeling can be cultivated through an observational or experiential understanding of sensation and intuition. This is primarily developed through various forms of mindfulness training. Thinking can be effectively cultivated through a full understanding and embrace of the disciplines of philosophy, and their application to sensation and intuition. The combination of these disciplines provides a method of balanced development. This balanced development lends itself to a level of stability throughout the developmental process. And this balanced development can be embraced early, at least to a limited degree. This becomes very important as we move into the realm of the complexes and the shadow.