Spirituality Listen to the god inside you. The cultivation of a "strong ego".

[jayjay]

Honestly, if it weren't because I started paying more attention to what my dreams were telling me, I don't know where I would be today. Haven't it happened to you guys? I mean, dreams, thoughts, emotions, hunches, and all kind of things that come from a place where you can't just simply explain it. These are messages from your own unconscious, as I have analyzed from my own experience, every dreams contains a meaning that only makes sense in relation to your own internal psychological content, because the symbols that appear on it depends on what you have unconsciously associated to them. For example, for some people a dog represents a loyal companion, but for others it represents animal nature and instinct. So it depends on you to decipher these meanings.

Based on Jung's definition of a strong ego:
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(1) Flexible and Permeable: Knows that it is not the king of the psyche, but rather a competent administrator. Allows the contents of the unconscious (dreams, intuitions, emotions) to flow into consciousness without being overwhelmed by them. It is like a muscle that is strong because it can stretch and relax, not because it is always tense.

(2) Able to Relate to the Self: Recognizes a higher authority within himself (the Archetype of the Self, the “Avatar”). Does not try to control it (which would lead to inflation) or flee from it (which would lead to disconnection). Dialogues with it. Learns from it. Follows its guidance. This is exactly what the Avatar text describes: Aang learning to consciously enter the Avatar State.

(3) Humble in its Strength: Its strength lies precisely in knowing its limits. It knows that it is a small but crucial part of a much larger whole. A weak ego defends itself, inflates itself, or collapses. A strong ego can withstand the paradox, ambiguity, and tension of opposites without fracturing.

(4) Instrument of Individuation: It is the vehicle through which the Self (the Whole) expresses itself in the world of form. Without a strong and conscious ego, the totality of Being cannot be embodied; it would only explode in psychotic episodes or remain submerged in the unconscious.​

There was this very interesting conversation with @GGWP where we discussed what the "I" really is:

I continued with:
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My impressions is that the "I" as a psychological and language construct doesn't really capture real experience by itself, and should be employed with care, as it is a source of suffering. As I have investigated my life experience, there are actions that are performed automatically. For example, sometimes driving the car or studying my favorite subjects happens without "I" performing the action consciously, the so called "flow state". This I have wondered:

How can I claim that "I" did something when it was in a flow state, if the action happened by itself through causes and conditions that allowed it to happen without some "I" separate from causality?

Sure, it was me, or what you would call the body-mind that everyone conventionally agrees that it is me that performed the action, but "I" as a psychological construct actually did nothing, and this is the main point I want to drive forward:

The thing is that it is really curious to claim that actions that happen at the unconscious level are ours, because even thought it was our own body-mind the one performing the action, it is a delusion to think that "us" as a psychological construct performed it. It happened by itself through causes and conditions. One could take the analysis even forward and start analyzing the middle line between where this distinction drops may fade. The "I" as a psychological construct, the bringer or taker of suffering, much care to use one has to employ.​

Because at the psychological level, things function very different. The thing is that what we call "I" is just a construct made of interpretations of phenomena. If there are actions that happen by themselves, then I think from my point of view that one should be very careful of appropriating everything that has been done by what we call "ourselves". Here I again refer to this thread:
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There is no "Whitepill" to be found here. Everything that I wrote about above? Bullshit. If so, it should make you all be more pessimistic because our lives are constanly hanging from a thread stretched over the abyss although I guess this is pretty evident for you all by now. Identity is a fragile construct. Pain is a mechanism that encourages the emergence of mental narratives with the sole purpose of providing an explanation for why something is happening in relation to the past, and as such, it is what gives rise to neurosis purely propagated by thought. Therefore, personal history is an empty construct because it depends on pure interpretations given to memories, where interpretations form the so-called “personal narrative” that revolves around an “I.”

This was a psychological death, a mourning of the person I used to be before the illness struck. I think that happened was that two months ago I was still operating on the old psychological structure of the person I used to be four years ago. So given that I had changed a fucking lot psychologically, and that there was no way for the mind to connect who I used to be to who I am now, maybe there was this realization that the person I think I was is already dead. I m already operating under a new psychological structure (beliefs, experiences, and so on) completely different from the one I had four years ago.

Can you even say a optimistic thing about this?

Most people have the opportunity to enjoy a constant sense of self... but those struck by tragedy and pain, I don't think so.​

The more I study my own experince the more I realize that this "I" is illusory in the sense that it thinks itself as being the center of the universe. This cause of separation is the source of a lot suffering. The thing is that you as the interpretation you function better as a dynamic being, at the psychological level of course. The paradox thus becomes: How can you claim an action as yours if it was performed unconsciously (or in a flow state)?

It is a self-recursive process, you listen your own internal processes, changue identity. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.

Spoiler: tag

@newsincerity