How your ego's health determines your quality of life
Are you ready to let go of your ego and meet the person you truly are – regardless of your self-image, your assumed identity and your beliefs? Your ego is connected to your family system and a healthy developed ego brings you quality of life.
What is your ego?
Your ego makes you experience that you are part of life in the world. The ego represents the part of you that is tied to your self-image. Your ego, as I see it, includes your identity, your assumed self-image and the associated roles. Including your set of thoughts, opinions, beliefs and the resulting emotions. So your ego identifies with your self-image and your emotions; your ego thinks it is the self-image or the emotion. However, beneath this identity of your ego is who or what you essentially are. So the ego is not who you are. The ego often carries a negative image from a spiritual point of view. It is generally portrayed as something bad for you and getting in your way. However, to survive in the world you need an ego. The ego is even necessary to take your place and way around in society. You feel what is important to you and what belongs to you. This way you can experience and monitor boundaries. The question is whether you then guard ego-desires and ego-needs, or whether it concerns your pure self.
Can you see your ego as a 'separate part' of your personality?
I don't think your ego is a "separate part" of your personality. It's a matter of definition. Your personality includes everything, including your values, your taste, your idiosyncrasies, etc. Where this overlaps with your ego, I don't find that interesting. Much more relevant is that you realize that you perceive your ego through your consciousness. Thus, you realize that you are not your ego, but that you have an ego. If everything is taken from you and there is almost nothing left (for example on your deathbed or in difficult living conditions), you will always have 'yourself', who you essentially are. You can then experience undisturbed inner peace. If the ego were completely gone, who and what you essentially are would remain. That state of being is calm, you experience inner peace and feel balance. You are then able to feel a higher consciousness that goes beyond the realm of dualities, where all is one again.
How does your ego play a role in your family system?
Your ego and with it the assumed identity of your self-image is imagined. It comes from conditioning, your personal conscience about 'good and evil', where you were born. And from character traits and inherited properties of your family system formed by 'nature and nurture'. Your ego is therefore partly formed by your environment, of which your family is a large part. Your family system is the inseparable link with all your family members. I use the fountain metaphor to indicate your place in your family system. Systemically, if you don't stand "in your own place in The Fountain" well, you become needy.
What is a healthy ego?
Imagine a fountain with several tiers irrigating each other. Each tier represents a generation and your place is always in the child's box under your parents' box. There you are listed in order of birth with all living and non-living (half) brothers and sisters. In your place, you pick up the flow of the fountain that is so essential to feeling fulfilled, recognized and fulfilled. You can read how you can find your place with your inner attitude in my book 'The Fountain, Find Your Place'. If you stand firmly in your unique place in the fountain, your ego will be 'still' and healthy. A healthy ego recognizes that you are no more or less than anyone else, at most different. However, if you are not firmly in your place in the fountain, but for example have risen above your parents to take care of them or because you have a judgment on them, your ego will become too big or too small. Not only will you suffer from this, but also those around you.
When can your ego get in the way?
If you're (too) preoccupied with chasing recognition or approval, or if you're always worrying about whether you're good enough, your ego may be "playing up." These are ego wishes. If your behavior is dominated by your ego, you are insufficiently able to tap into a deeper level of being, ie. who you are in essence. You will learn and grow less than you have in you potential. Also, your contacts with others will be less pure and disinterested. Because the other must mean something to you, no matter how humble and submissive you behave. You are then less able to really connect with the other.
Food for the ego
The ego essentially wants to confirm and reinforce the image it has of itself. The ego's greatest fear is that it will "fall out" and turn out to be superfluous. The ego is afraid of disappearing and having no identity or form anymore. The ego therefore feels insecure and starts to fight for its place. It convinces itself that what it thinks, feels and experiences is true. If the ego were to recognize that what it stands for is not reality, it makes itself redundant. So ego thoughts must be fed, willingly or unwillingly. The ego is fully convinced that it needs energy from outside and will therefore manifest itself in all kinds of ways, whether or not at the expense of the space of the fellow man. Fortunately, despite the hidden agendas of the ego, many good things also come about from those motives. Such as with large social projects that are initiated out of a need for recognition.
Why is becoming egoless not the highest achievable thing you can achieve as a human being?
Wanting to be enlightened is precisely a wish of the ego. Who or what you essentially are has no need at all to be enlightened. If you take yourself too seriously, your ego will have the upper hand. The more you let go of your ego, the more you let go of what is not true (including your self-image, your assumed identity and your beliefs, etc.) which brings you more to yourself. The motivation is therefore not to become enlightened, but to let go of what turns out not to be true. However, when you let everything go, you are one in spiritual terms; without distinction between you and the other. That is not convenient for the practical side of life. Your ego, despite the inconveniences it sometimes brings, is a useful vehicle for moving around in the world. The trick is to learn that the ego can be 'quiet'.
How do you define having a 'healthy ego' and how can this bring the flow in your life?
Someone with a healthy ego can see the essential human being behind the ego (including himself) and feel equal to it. This creates space for who and what you essentially are and what wants to manifest through you, instead of ego-driven wishes and motivations. Then you realize that every person has their own view of the world and that your way of looking is only a way with which you give meaning to your life. The more you let go of your ego, the more you can follow the natural flow of life. Your ego no longer pushes you in an unnatural direction. You are also better able to listen to others and you are better able to see them. You then observe how they enter the world based on their level of consciousness and ego and how they give meaning to their lives. You let go of your own perspective more and more, which creates space to really see the other person. After all, how many people complain about not feeling seen. So ask yourself if you can really see the other person before you blame the other person for not being able to see you.
Are there exercises that help you develop a healthy ego?
There are plenty of exercises, but that's a bit too easy for me. You don't "suddenly" have a healthy ego. Developing a healthy ego is a process and it takes time. It is a process of letting go of what is not true (your self-image, identity etc.). It helps you enormously to stand in your own place in the invisible fountain, so that you can take your place with a natural flair and individuality and allow the other person his or her place. Without feeling threatened or more or less worthy as a result. You descend into the fountain by answering the question 'what is mine and what is the other's?' You let go of what is not yours. You cannot solve what is not yours. If desired, you can give feedback to the other person and set your boundaries. For what is yours, you have your responsibility to bear. No one but yourself can bear your fate. You look at what is yours and formulate an answer that you apply in your daily life. It is necessary that you process your themes and issues on both a rational and emotional level, by dealing with your primary emotions. I also describe how you can do that in my second book 'The Fountain, Make Wise Choices'.
When do you know if someone in your immediate environment is too often in his/her ego and thus also affects you in an unpleasant way?
A big ego makes itself big, superior and tries to impress. The big ego considers itself better and more important than others. Other people are used as food for the ego and are less seen in their own uniqueness. This does not necessarily have to be expressed in a screaming way, but it can be. Big egos compete and seek conflicts that you can easily get sucked into. Criticism is often ignored by a big ego, because it could affect the self-image. A large ego wants to maintain the idea that it is infallible. The effect of an (too) large ego is that other people can feel uncomfortable and intimidated. If the other is insufficiently anchored in himself, this confirms his feeling that he is less. And that again fits seamlessly into the frame of mind of a less developed ego.
An ego that is too small
A (too) small ego always wonders whether it falls short. You also often say that you are so insecure and have little self-confidence. This makes you lose contact with others. You are too busy with yourself then. On the outside, however, this can look very different, because often you are busy pleasing the other person. Being submissive is one way of making the other person owe you something. This creates an emotional dependency and it gives you a sense of influence. If you ignore yourself, are quiet and give a lot, you secretly hope that the other person will need you and will make up for the surplus with reciprocity, commitment and love towards you. The interaction that then arises may arise from a sense of duty because the other person feels guilty, because your balance of giving and receiving has been disrupted.
How do you help someone who is stuck in his/her 'ego'?
Out of survival mechanisms, a human is sometimes taken over by the survival control system. Repetitive, not always constructive behavior arises, which they do not always realize. Giving feedback on behavior in a loving way can make someone reflect on their own behavior. Feedback is an investment in the relationship. Basically you say, “I think you are so important that I take the trouble to say this to you. If I didn't find you valuable, I wouldn't go to that trouble and ignore you.” If someone is trapped in their ego and lashes out at you from that side, there's a risk that your ego will feel unrecognized as well. Before you know it you are in a "fight" and a downward spiral. If you observe in yourself that you take your ego with your self-image and roles very seriously, that insight alone provides space and distance. Then you can stay awake and with a high degree of quality of presence in the here and now. From there you can observe what is happening more clearly. And as an observer of yourself, the sharp edges come to you less than if you have been sucked into the situation by your ego.
One last piece of advice?
Many people have a need to control and often experience resistance in life. Control and resistance are always related to fear. That fear often has a connection to the fear of death. That is the ego's fear of disappearing. That's why you want to be in control, but that's why you don't let life move you. You have resistance. Embracing your own mortality and learning to let go allows you to live your life. Then you can be fully in the moment. You only have it now. Don't let it be "polluted" by images from the past and about the future, which come from ego fears. You alone can live your life. Your ego and who you essentially are are both available to you. And only you decide how you shape your life with it. Have fun with life and don't take yourself too seriously. Just leave your ego at the door!