Ego and integral.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/3/03 12:21:49 AM,

Chinese Medicine writes:

 

<< Optimal health has a lot more to it than just 'ego'. At the root are

belief systems and negative thought patterns, which you may say

are 'ego' orientated but are quite separate. People seem to pour

scorn on the ego, but we need it to live, although we can then move

on from that to a higher realm but we will always have our ego.

 

The core value of the human race has of course, progressed since the

time you mentioned. Our world is a constant 'purer' expression of

our innerselves. >>

 

Lon: Well, it depends on what you consider " ego " to be. From a psychoanalytic

sense it can be defined as the core facility that organizes all our various

cognative and psychological processess. In that sense yes, we will have an ego.

In the spiritua sense however ego can be defined as " the false sense of a

separate self. " The arising of a self reflective " self sense " conferred

selective

advantage on homo sapiens 100,000 years ago over all the other homos

(erectus, neanderthals) that didn't make it. That self sense was linked to fear

and

desire (the heart/kidney axis) and thus samsara (literally the cycle of birth

and death=ignorance) was born. Ego can also be defined as a filter that lets in

only as much reality as you can handle at any given time?

Ego *did* confer selective advantage but it no longer does so. With 7

billion egos on the planet all wanting what they want for themselves right now

we

have an issue of sustainability. In fact, It is ego that now threatens the

existance of the species on the planet. Interestingly, it is ego that *has* to

die *if* one is ever to embrace integral consciousness. Many people have an

*intellectual* understanding of holistic and integral systems theory but very

few have jumped to the next tier where they manifest integral consciousness.

That is, to have consciousness integrated to a point where they are " One without

a second. " In other words ego as filter is removed and the true and right

relationship of all things is revealed (arjuana and krishna in the chariot in

the

Bahagavadgita for example).

Ego is, in fact, the basis of *all* negative thought patterns and of all

beleifs that are not congruent with reality. Reality itself is not *relative*

but is *absolute*. The absolute nature of things is immeadiatly perceivedd

when ego, my sense of how everything narcississistically realtes to me is

removed

from the picture. Yes many people *talk* about holistic and integral but its

another thing entirely to realize the evolutionary implications and spiritual

implications of what integral consciousness really implies which are no less

then the recognition of ego as a vestigial part of mind and the whole hearted

commitment to evolve now for the sake of the whole.