Mindful Construct: Killing Your Ego Is Bad
Mindful Construct wrote a great essay on “Four Reasons to Kill Your Ego That Aren’t Very Good”. Some people over-interpret the contemplative traditions and conclude we should live a life without ego.
It is impossible to have perspective if you banish the object worthy of perspective. Mindful Construct dissects four very interesting flawed thoughts:
- “You are not your mind/brain”
- “You are not your thoughts”
- “You are not your emotions”1
- “You are not your physical body/an individual.”
The point is not to dismiss the sweep of contemplative tradition. That tradition should be celebrated. It offers profound insight into the concept and value of perspective. The perspective is how to be of the world. [See my post on How Culture Changes Our Mind And Brain]
The point is to examine these prescriptions for “mindfulness” to see if they accord with the physical / chemical reality of the world and our body. Accept reality, don’t deny it.
Contemplative tradition talks of transcending this reality. Transcend means “to go above” or “to move beyond.” Transcend does not negate “what was below” or “what was behind.” In fact, “to transcend” cannot occur without such grounding.
Mindful Construct’s money quote:
Be careful of the trap here — you can be an individual and still be connected to the collective, be it spiritual or social. So don’t believe that because you are connected to a greater source or a higher power — that you have to sacrifice individuality for that. You don’t have to sacrifice anything. If you are a part of God, then you already are — you don’t have to do or kill anything to regain what, according to spiritual principle, you can never lose.
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Without emotions, the very concept of consciousness or even “youness” would not exist. Our capacity to have a mental experience grow from the emotional response of our body to objects. ↩
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Reader Comments (2)
Cole, it's so great to see that you totally get what I was trying to say!
"The point is not to dismiss the sweep of contemplative tradition. That tradition should be celebrated. It offers profound insight into the concept and value of perspective. The perspective is how to be of the world."
I think you nail it when you say that transcendence does not negate what was below/ behind. (Great way to phrase it.)
Which is precisely what I see as being dysfunctional in many contemplative traditions, where transcendence is used as a weapon or an escape route rather than for peace. As I see it, there are violent consequences for waging war on Ego (i.e. the emotional self).
Even so, everyone has their own "readiness" level of how willing they are to go within and start taking ownership. I'm noticing so much of the self-help, personal development field is so compelled toward this crusade, where it has to strike down the Ego/ emotional self in order to succeed. It won't work in the long-run.
Thank you Cole for sharing your thoughts on the article!
Thanks for the kind response.
I feel I should offer a token of humility: the bit about 'to transcend' was the combination of reading the dictionary and innate glibness. Boy did it write well though :)