What is the ego really? A Course in Miracles defines
the ego as a death wish, the desire to create yourself and your world.
The ego identity is what the body symbolizes; a person, an image, a
self-concept. This alter ego is the replacement of abstract love, our
true reality. The ego is an idea in the mind, a false thought system
protected by ego defense mechanisms of which we are largely unaware. Our
minds are not separate from each other, nor from God, and so ego’s
strength is an illusion. The way out is observing the ego, experiencing
the pain of having chosen the ego, exposing our thoughts and feelings,
and, through forgiveness, letting go of the beliefs in sin, guilt and
fear in our minds which underlie the ego’s thought system. The idea of
separation from God is horrible in all its aspects, but what could be
fearful about something that is simply not true? The Son and the Father
are eternally One.
A Question
I’ve had a terrific problem – in the very limited amount of reading I’ve done in the Course – with this concept that seems to be presented of the ego as a sort of an evil thing, as opposed to all my – also limited psychological reading – which says, ‘We’ve got to have a strong ego, we must invent a personality’ and all that. And it’s a real conflict in my comprehension. So, you sound like you’re well prepared to deal with this.
An Answer
Well we’ll talk about the ego. Let’s unveil the thing, let’s go right at it. The thing about the ego is [not attempting] to fight it or combat it because it loves a fight. The Course is just saying just look at it. Once you can really look directly at it… the only reason fears seem to be maintained is because we try to look away from them.
Have you ever had a dream where you’re being chased by something? You’re having the same dream all the time and you don’t want to turn around and look at it. And basically Jesus is just saying, ‘It’s not fearful at all. We can look right at it and it’ll be gone like a puff of [smoke].’ But to address your question about the ego strength and to integrate … When I studied psychology and started going through that, that was pretty much a psycho- analysis, which is basically saying that, between the “id” (all these unconscious forces) and the “super ego” (the voice of morality), that the “ego” in that system is kind of like a mediator. And in that sense, if it’s a mediator between these two combating forces that are in the mind, then that’s where the idea of ‘ego strength’ comes in; of wanting to build up ego strength. But what Freudian psychology really never got at was that it was just describing the dark side of the mind. It says, ‘Yes, there were these inter-psychic forces and there were these moralities and everything,’ but that was all. All the pre-parts that were described; the “id“, the “ego” and the “super ego” were all part of ego.
And then there is another part of the mind which Freudian psychology really didn’t get into ,which is spirit. That’s one thing when I was in psychology, it was kind of like, I kept looking for ‘Where’s the spirit’? Or, ‘How do we integrate religion or spirituality with psychology because they seem to be antithetical.’
Or science; a lot of times when I would go into science I would wonder ‘Where does science fit into all of this?’ Then I got into reading quantum physics and some of the quantum physicists started talking in terms that sounded awful psychological [about things such as] perception [and] that there’s no reality in the world apart from what you think. And experiments with particles where they try to do double-blind experiments and they try to take the experimenter out of the experiment and they would find that the thoughts [in the mind] of the experimenter were moving the particles, and that they could [in] no way remove the mind of the experimenter from [the experiment]… So it’s like… all these things start pointing to… It’s subjective, that the mind is influenced…
That’s what I really started to see, [that the] whole thing about psychology wasn’t really helping. It was very pessimistic that there had to be another part of the mind… When I started reading… eastern philosophy… reading books about this “Higher Self“ [there was a sense that], “Yes, that resonates, there has to be a Higher Self as opposed to just this small self.” So that gave me a sense that there was something beyond that.
A Course in Miracles' take on what is the ego
“The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego’s teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were thought merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego’s thought system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. Yet because you and the ego cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. Such is the ego’s version of immortality. And it is this the ego’s version of time supports. “
A Course in Miracles Text – Chapter Fifteen – The Holy Instant – Section 1 – The Two Uses of Time
There is a deep fear of divine love below the subconscious beliefs that tells us love is fearful. Most would say I love love, but when looking closely at the mind you see there are many blocks that we have covered over to stop us from seeing that we are afraid of real love. How to transcend the ego? We must hold on tightly to the desire for peace and allow all the emotions, fears and doubts to arise to our awareness and allow ourselves to be washed of all darkness. We really don’t know what is the ego until we can look with a calm and quiet mind and not buy into the thoughts that leave us spinning and unable to be at peace.
David Hoffmeister
A Question
I’ve had a terrific problem – in the very limited amount of reading I’ve done in the Course – with this concept that seems to be presented of the ego as a sort of an evil thing, as opposed to all my – also limited psychological reading – which says, ‘We’ve got to have a strong ego, we must invent a personality’ and all that. And it’s a real conflict in my comprehension. So, you sound like you’re well prepared to deal with this.
An Answer
Well we’ll talk about the ego. Let’s unveil the thing, let’s go right at it. The thing about the ego is [not attempting] to fight it or combat it because it loves a fight. The Course is just saying just look at it. Once you can really look directly at it… the only reason fears seem to be maintained is because we try to look away from them.
Have you ever had a dream where you’re being chased by something? You’re having the same dream all the time and you don’t want to turn around and look at it. And basically Jesus is just saying, ‘It’s not fearful at all. We can look right at it and it’ll be gone like a puff of [smoke].’ But to address your question about the ego strength and to integrate … When I studied psychology and started going through that, that was pretty much a psycho- analysis, which is basically saying that, between the “id” (all these unconscious forces) and the “super ego” (the voice of morality), that the “ego” in that system is kind of like a mediator. And in that sense, if it’s a mediator between these two combating forces that are in the mind, then that’s where the idea of ‘ego strength’ comes in; of wanting to build up ego strength. But what Freudian psychology really never got at was that it was just describing the dark side of the mind. It says, ‘Yes, there were these inter-psychic forces and there were these moralities and everything,’ but that was all. All the pre-parts that were described; the “id“, the “ego” and the “super ego” were all part of ego.
And then there is another part of the mind which Freudian psychology really didn’t get into ,which is spirit. That’s one thing when I was in psychology, it was kind of like, I kept looking for ‘Where’s the spirit’? Or, ‘How do we integrate religion or spirituality with psychology because they seem to be antithetical.’
Or science; a lot of times when I would go into science I would wonder ‘Where does science fit into all of this?’ Then I got into reading quantum physics and some of the quantum physicists started talking in terms that sounded awful psychological [about things such as] perception [and] that there’s no reality in the world apart from what you think. And experiments with particles where they try to do double-blind experiments and they try to take the experimenter out of the experiment and they would find that the thoughts [in the mind] of the experimenter were moving the particles, and that they could [in] no way remove the mind of the experimenter from [the experiment]… So it’s like… all these things start pointing to… It’s subjective, that the mind is influenced…
That’s what I really started to see, [that the] whole thing about psychology wasn’t really helping. It was very pessimistic that there had to be another part of the mind… When I started reading… eastern philosophy… reading books about this “Higher Self“ [there was a sense that], “Yes, that resonates, there has to be a Higher Self as opposed to just this small self.” So that gave me a sense that there was something beyond that.
A Course in Miracles' take on what is the ego
“The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego’s teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were thought merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego’s thought system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. Yet because you and the ego cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. Such is the ego’s version of immortality. And it is this the ego’s version of time supports. “
A Course in Miracles Text – Chapter Fifteen – The Holy Instant – Section 1 – The Two Uses of Time
There is a deep fear of divine love below the subconscious beliefs that tells us love is fearful. Most would say I love love, but when looking closely at the mind you see there are many blocks that we have covered over to stop us from seeing that we are afraid of real love. How to transcend the ego? We must hold on tightly to the desire for peace and allow all the emotions, fears and doubts to arise to our awareness and allow ourselves to be washed of all darkness. We really don’t know what is the ego until we can look with a calm and quiet mind and not buy into the thoughts that leave us spinning and unable to be at peace.
David Hoffmeister
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