Within the framework of a highly structured society, the personae (the designated roles of that society) are to become the personal identity of the individual. A warrior IS The Warrior, a priest IS The Priest, and an outcast IS The Outcast. There is no room for individuality – the individual must conform to a designated social role. In regards to religious or spiritual life, the individual must become the teachings, must submit to the Dharma. In this type of society, the community plays the role of the ego. The individual ego is repressed, and the persona is embraced and reinforced until there is total possession of the ego by the complex that is the persona.
By contrast, in a society that respects the maturity and personal growth of individuality, when someone identifies too closely with their role, they are considered boring and “up-tight.” When someone comes out of the first social structure and enters the second, they suffer great insecurity, and sometimes even mental breakdowns, because they no longer have the support of the communal social structure. On the other hand, when someone comes out of an individualist social structure and into a communal structure, they will often feel suppressed and claustrophobic, and will become depressed, rebellious, and sometimes have a mental breakdown because of the weight of the communal social pressure which demands conformity.
How is this related to spirituality, and how is this directly related to my earlier statement, that the “killing of the ego is the result of a misunderstanding of Eastern concepts, as translated to a Western social context?”
Unless you live in a communal social structure, purposefully damaging the ego can be psychologically catastrophic. Within a communal social structure, the individual conforms to the structure. This conformity is the strength of the structure. Within an individualist social structure the structure supports individual innovation and advancement. This requires continually challenging the structure itself in order to understand where the structure could be improved in its support of individual freedom and growth. In a communal structure, freedom is fully embracing your role. In an individualist structure, freedom is becoming something new and different.
Spiritually speaking, a communal structure supports spiritual growth through regimented discipline, and conformity to pre-discovered psychological and spiritual terrain. An individualist structure supports free experimentation. In this structure psychological and spiritual growth is a process of self-discovery and expansion, rather than conformity. In a communal structure, the individual serves the tradition. In an individualist structure, the tradition serves the individual.
The major complication is this:
The pattern of our personal unconscious is developed in accordance with our personal context. This personal context is made up of our inherited-natural tendencies, the familial group we were raised in, the social group we were raised in, and the cultural group we were raised in. It is our interaction with these groups that pattern our personal unconscious. If these groups were highly individualistic we will have a comparatively weak persona, and strong ego. If these groups were communal in structure, we will have a strong persona, and weak ego.
To attempt to embrace a tradition that is structured around a context that is different than our internal pattern is to set our-selves up for failure or even damage. Now let’s take the person with a strong ego who genuinely wishes to embrace the spirituality of a tradition build for those with a strong persona. The psyche of this person is not patterned to receive adequate support from the community, nor is the persona well developed enough to compensate for the breaking of the ego.
If this person succeeds in the breaking of the ego, this person will no longer be able to function within the framework of an individualist society. In this person, their weaknesses have not been built up enough to compensate for the loss of their strength. They will, in essence be psychologically crippled. As long as this person remains within the community structure, they will be fine. But when they are removed from that supportive structure, and are expected to make their own way in the world, they will usually break.
Most (but not all) Eastern spiritual disciplines are built with the communal context in mind; thus the idea of “killing the ego.” Usually, this isn’t much of a problem. Most of the time, the Western individual has a strong enough ego, that their attempts to kill it, are really efforts to ensure the humility of the ego in the light of the Self. And this is proper approach. The drawback for those who are in this position but wish to develop deeply, is that they will never be able to make use of the deepest disciplines of this type of tradition without significant alteration of the methods of the tradition, since it is built on a foundation that is foreign to the pattern of their personal unconscious. Most people will make initial headway, simply because the strangeness of the discipline will ensure the ego’s collision with new ideas of reality. Which as we have seen causes ego growth.
Now, this is not only the case for Eastern spiritual practices. Western spirituality which was developed within a communal context also will be unsuited to the individualist pattern of the personal unconscious. Most of these traditions can be altered to suit the individual, but the semantics need to be dramatically changed. Instead of “kill” the ego, we need think of it as “humble,” or “redeem,” the ego.
The reason semantics are so important, is that when you reach a place of real psychological and spiritual depth, ideas have greater impact. If you have the idea of killing the ego at depth, the energy released to do so will be greater than having that idea at the surface. However, if we have the idea of humbling the ego to the function of the Self, then at depth, the greater energy will be mobilized to ensure that outcome. Even though the basic intension (when translated) is similar, the semantic code used is remarkably different. The first causes effort comparable to chopping off your own arm; while the second is comparable to using resistance training to strengthen and discipline the arm. One causes damage, the other causes growth. At depth, this is a real danger.
There are disciplines which cultivate the development of the individual, as well as being deep and well rounded. These disciplines tend to run in opposition to the dominant communal ideals. These disciplines also tend to be demonized by the dominant communal structure. It is my opinion that the difference between the communal ideal and the individualistic ideal is one of the primary sources for the tensions (and maybe even hatred) between the proto-orthodox forms of early Christianity, and the heterodox forms of early Christianity.
But that strays wide of this lesson’s focus.
What is remarkable is that most of the time, the disciplines that cultivate individualist growth use the same basic methodology as the communal disciplines. However, the attitude and language of these methods will have been radically changed. You see this in both the East and the West.
Doing Gnosis is a discipline that is individualistically focused. It is this reason that the cultivation of a strong and expansive (although humble) ego is necessary. It is also for this reason that we must strongly resist the tendency to condemn or demonize any aspect of our-selves, even when our previous traditions told us to. One of the primary goals of this discipline is become aware of even those parts of our-selves we have condemned and repressed. Self-knowledge of the scope we are working towards requires radical self-acceptance. We cannot practice radical self-acceptance if we are busy condemning parts of our-self.
I hope that I have clarified enough for those who asked for clarification. If not, let me know.
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