The ego, as Eckhart Tolle describes it, is like a defense mechanism gone out of control, which eventually imperils our personal growth. Conscious Ritualing provides us with a safe way to lure the ego out of its comfort zone, so that we can accomplish more with our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In early childhood the baby begins to imitate the objects of its desires. By smiling, for instance, the baby becomes like its mother. When this happens, some of the powerful energy directed toward the mother becomes diverted into this new part of its consciousness, which we call the ego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ego gets good at imitating things, and even fantasizing about them. This is a great help, especially when the objects of the baby’s desires are not available: it reduces frustration. Diverting the energy of the baby’s instincts into itself<\/em> keeps the ego developing, and it is through this early childhood process that the individual begins to differentiate itself from the objects around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ego becomes quite adept at moderating this instinctual energy, even at older ages, when the child pushes the boundaries of \u201cright and wrong.\u201d At this time the ego identifies with the moral code of the community as well, further diverting and capturing the instinctual energies for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Of course, these instinctual energies and desires are known by the Freudians as the \u201cid,\u201d and the moral code of the parents and the community is labeled the \u201csuperego.\u201d The ego’s ability to become like, and to fantasize about, the objects of the id’s desires is known as \u201cidentification.\u201d It is simpler to sum up both tendencies, like Tolle, under the name \u201cego.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then we grow up\u2026and in the process we encounter crises of various sorts which the ego cannot fathom. Crises in our relationships, in our sense of who we are, and in our obligations to work and community. When this happens we are visited, usually in our dreams, by what Freud’s student, Carl Jung, called Archetypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Archetypes are symbolic instincts, instincts that have helped human beings through similar crises throughout our history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, the ego resists this form of instinctual energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The simple framework of ritual, however, invites the ego to play with the archetypes. Conscious ritualing allows these critical, unconscious instincts to express themselves in a safe manner. The ego, rather than becoming defensive and fearful, will find itself acting out with controlled spontaneity, enjoying itself, and opening up to the greater wisdom of the collective unconscious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is as if we have come full circle. We began with instinctual energy, which was progressively controlled by the ego and the community. Such control, while necessary, can eventually become harmful \u2013 especially when the community itself is not healthy. But here now we are presented with the possibility of a savior in the form of a new instinctual energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new energy is symbolic, intuitive, insightful \u2013 it is qualiadelic, which comes to us like manna from heaven. But it is also living inside of us. It is the living ideas, including (believe it or not) the ego itself, that reside in our brains and that make up our human consciousness which shall free us to live a good life, transform our communities, and save the planet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ego, as Eckhart Tolle describes it, is like a defense mechanism gone out of control, which eventually imperils our personal growth. Conscious Ritualing provides us with a safe way to lure the ego out of its comfort zone, so that we can accomplish more with our lives. In earlyContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-qualiens","post-3964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9QShd-11W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3964"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4586,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964\/revisions\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}