There are two kinds of egoic-egos in different shapes and sizes and most of us have them both more or less with polarities shifting in time. The positive „Donald Trump“, „over-achiever“, „i am the greatest“, the attacker kind and the „i am worthless, a „no-good“, a looser, a victim, „Woody Allen“ like type, who is doubting him/her -self, including everything else.
While one wants to conquer the world, the other wants to change it (usually for a seemingly good cause) or dreams of destruction.
Both types are destructive by nature and feed on pain and resistance.
Similar to physics, where matter consists mostly not from other matter, but from so called „binding forces“, which in essence is energy, the egoic-ego consists mostly not from our personality, thoughts ,individuality or appearance, which in sum is our non-egoic ego, but from such binding forces like resistance to our present moment/situation, our life, our self, our emotions, thoughts, our surrounding and the tight holding and attachment to believes and over-expectations, which too create resistance towards presence.
For example many judge laziness and addiction within themselves or in others and try to overcome it. Of course it is good to fight for our health and well-being-ness. The question here is, will it be better for us to do so, when we hate our self or when we love and accept our self first.
From therapeutic experience, people who want to change them-self, from an intention of self-hatred, mostly experience constant drawbacks and yoyo effects; But even when they manage to become healthier and better, they still often lack deeper self love and wisdom. What actually happens is, that by changing something from self-hatred, we only outsource our problems to another part of our self.
For example if we don’t like our weight and train hard, eat less, make diets and so on, we may change and even keep it that way, but the self-hatred will usually still be there, if we didn’t worked on it. We will still judge others, be closed hearted and minded towards them and ourselves.
We may win more self confidence but not automatically more self-awareness and self compassion .
Usually the self hate will show itself through other ways.
Sometimes, surly not always, it may come as a heart attack or diabetes or any other autoimmune sickness.
Our judgment comes from our „Über-Ich“ (Übermensch) , which is the equivalent to the spiritual-ego. It is not our higher self, but a ego-filtered version of it. The higher self is the part of us, which does not judge.
It is a certain idea how we should be and how we shouldn’t.
It is a picture in our minds, of a heroic self.
When we hold this picture tight to our hearts, we miss out to see that laziness, addiction and other seemingly negative traits are not only bad for us, but also serve a purpose.
Actually they are our Masters, who can teach us humility (through humiliation), surrender, simplicity, ordinariness,(self)-empathy, letting go of our egoic perfectionism, physical attachment to the body, mind, to how we look and even our attachment to being healthy, the desire to live forever and selflessness.
If we would always achieve our goals and get or become what we want, we not necessarily will be better humans, but defiantly better control-freaks.
Trying to be present, is too, a way of control and usually ends up to feed our egoic perfectionism.
To acknowledge presence, within this very moment, is the way of zen practice
Jion M. Blonstein
