The ego, in its very essence, is our sense of being a separate self. It is our deeply held belief that we are separate from all other Beings, both human and non-human. It is the sense that I am in “here” and you are out “there”.
This belief developed from earliest childhood when we began to understand that we are not actually the same person as our mother or caregiver. We began to have a sense of being an individual, a “self”.
This is a beautiful and wondrous awareness…I am “me”…or simply…I am. However, being a separate self also comes with danger and risk. The human child is incredibly vulnerable. As children we sense our vulnerability and dependence and therefore we act in ways that will draw people to care for us and to stay in relationship with us. Simultaneously, the environment is sending messages about what is true about the world and what is true about our self. We take in all of these messages, some of them much more powerfully than others depending on our early experiences, and over time, we develop our own belief and understanding of who we are, what the world is, and how we find our place in it. The ego is completely devoted to maintaining these beliefs so that we can live safely and successfully in the world. In other words, the ego is devoted to keeping us beholden to the ideas that we developed about ourselves from a very young age.
It is our separate sense of self that leads to the fundamental belief that we are separated from other selves, the natural world, and ultimately from Love or God.
In our community we work with the ego psychologically by recognizing how it develops, how our own particular ego interacts with other egos and how our super ego (inner critic) impacts us with its ongoing judgments.
We work with the ego spiritually by holding one another in a container of love and connection. The experience of this field of love allows the ego to “relax” so that the unity inherent in our True Self can be experienced.
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