It is time for some longer reflections now. Some thoughts on ego and self. I have been thinking that everything we do are connected to our egos in on way or the other, either we are doing our daily work, building friendships and parttaking in family- or social life. Even our spirituality is very much a part of our ego and our ego identity.

I have also been thinking, probably inspired by Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, that our ego has different parts. In my layman-way-of-thinking I would separate the ego into 3 parts: the smaller ego, the bigger ego and the hidden ego. Let’s first talk about the bigger ego.

The smaller ego (persona, Carl Jung) is the person I see myself to be in my daily life. This is the ego I try to, want to, pretend to and dare to show the world. I started out thinking this was the bigger ego. But off course it is not. You will understand when I continue.

The bigger ego is everything I know myself to be and has developed into at this moment. So in a way the bigger ego includes all knowledge of my history and past experiences too. I hide some of the things in my ego to the world, and maybe no one gets to see everything. Maybe that is not even possible, even if I wanted to be 100% transparent. The ego parts I hide from the world, are the things a believe not to be of value, not acceptable, yes even shameful or sinful. The ego I hide, which is part of my bigger ego, is not the same as the hidden ego which I will explain next.

The hidden ego is close to the understanding of shadow in the way it is explained by Carl Jung. The hidden ego is not something I consciously hide, but it is hidden even from me. This is the ego I catch glimpses of when I have I strong reactions to something or in a situation. I do catch glimpses, and sometimes even more of this ego is revealed to me. Whether I will include this revealed ego in my bigger ego depends on whether I accept this as part of my ego or not. It is also a question of maturity, fear and love. As we grow in self-love I do think more of the hidden ego in us shows itself to us, it tests us almost, and asks whether we are ready or not to include more of ourselves.

Maybe now then when I have explained these 3 ego parts in a very simplified way, we are ready to name a fourth ego? As our ego includes more and more since we grow in acceptance and tolerance, and grows in flexibility, we grow into our total ego. I don’t think you’ll find your total ego during a lifetime, but maybe you can get close. The more of ourselves that are integrated, and the more we individuate as Carl Jung would say, the more we see of our total ego.

A lot of self-help literature talks about these ego parts, sometimes not even the total ego, and tries to encourage us to believe in a part of our ego. A repeated message is “you are enough”. I do believe that as we grow in self-acceptance, our ego becomes easier to live with for ourselves and for others, so eventually a flexible ego is quite enough to handle life and live well. But there is more to it, if we seek it. Here comes some more background information, before I explain further.

This is actually the more exciting part. This is one of the main reasons I am blogging about the contemplative life. Our mature egos will get us far, but I really do believe we are more than our ego. Part from Carl Jung, another inspiration of mine is Michael A. Singer who wrote the very wise book “The Untethered Soul”. In this book he explains that we are something other than our thoughts. In one sense we are the ones that can observe our thinking mind, therefore we are not our thoughts. These truths are part of my background for saying we are more than our egos. Another source is the Bible and the words of Christ that talk a lot about how we are one with God, yes, there is an oneness that includes more than our ego. And Father Richard Rohr says something like, everywhere is the presence of God, it is only our awareness that is lacking. This is truly exciting!

There will be a day for most people, very often in midlife, when we realise that the phrase “your are enough” does not comfort us anymore, it doesn’t satisfy our heart. We need to dig deeper, in order to breathe and go on living. Please continue reading the second part of this text which is in the next blog post.

Peace!