Living in Joy with Ego

What is the ego?

According to Buddhist thought it is simply self-referencing, or in other words, thinking about oneself as a separate being.

According to Freud, the ego is the executive center, as opposed to the id representing our instincts, and/or the superego representing learned behavior from society or culture.

In the Buddhist paradigm, egotistic thinking or self-referencing can lead to suffering since we are not recognizing the oneness and connectivity of all things including ourselves. Thus by separating ourselves, we create conflict and great difficulties in life such as jealousy, arrogance, dissatisfaction, not enough-ism and more.

In Freud's paradigm, we actually want to strengthen the ego. We want a stronger and more centered executive center to provide us with an effective foundation for a good life. Thus, when a thought pattern that does not work well for us, (which may be from the id, superego) takes over, then life is much more difficult.

What's the common point behind these two ways of thinking about the ego?

When we are overrun with thought patterns that are not serving us well, then our life is not joyous.

Also, in both ways of thinking, the ego cannot go away. So how can we use the ego to live a joyous life?

In both ways of thinking, we must accept the ego and work with it.

In the Buddhist paradigm, we must accept that we will have self-referencing. At the same time, let’s honor the connectivity and oneness of all things and make sure to move from this perspective.

In the Freud paradigm, when a conditioned thought pattern takes over, we can learn to recognize this, see it, and refocus our thoughts to be at our center.

There are a variety of techniques to accomplish this including Voice Dialogue, Mondo Zen®, The Demartini Method®, and more.

So let’s not think that we can be without ego and just live joyfully with the ego.