Ego versus Humility

[Taomeow]

Anger is one hundred percent justified -- and one hundred percent misplaced -- in the vast majority of cases.

 

I'm reading Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic by Bette Bao Lord (the Chinese wife of the former US Ambassador to China), and among many terrifying stories of inhumane treatment of humans by humans, cruelty difficult to believe on a difficult to believe scale (with hundreds of millions of participants at any one time during the Cultural Revolution), one story especially gave me a heartache that won't go away.

 

This man, who later became one of the party leaders and the only one people said had a human heart of all the cadres (after the author interviewed hundreds asking them to name one), was abused, humiliated and terrified during the campaign against "rightists" (one of many assorted campaigns that targeted this group, then that, with the perpetrators themselves becoming the next victims -- my parents' and grandparents' generations had undergone exactly the same drill in their own time in their own country, so it's nothing new to me). He learned to keep his head low, guard his every word (preferably keep silent), but he talked in his sleep. Since the living arrangements for him and others undergoing "reeducation by labor" were ten people to a brick bed, side by side, it became mortally dangerous for him to sleep, because in the morning someone always said he'd been talking in his sleep, and the man was afraid that he would blurt out his real thoughts while he was asleep and had no control over his speech. So he tried not to sleep at all -- after 16-hour back-breaking work days and on the most meager food rations just short of starvation. He was so weak, frightened, exhausted and desperate that he didn't know his own anger until one day he found a cat purring peacefully in his sleep at a spot where he used to sit after work. He grabbed the cat by the throat, flung him against the wall, and kept doing this until all that was left of the living creature was a bloody pelt. (A few years earlier, when he was just a kid, he hugged and held tight his own cat while a warlord's henchmen in the next room tortured his father with hot coals.)

 

The cat was not the source of his troubles.

 

But this is how people are. This is how ALL people ALWAYS are.

 

Whatever they do with their anger is inadequate. Because the anger is real, and the disowning of it by any which methods is bogus.

 

The trick is to not take out the anger on whoever is the cat from the story. But most people do.

 

So, I usually have only one advice for anyone who feels anger: take heart, it's a sign you are a bit healthier than those who don't. Don't be ashamed of it. Your anger is one hundred percent justified. Just make sure you don't turn anyone into its target who is not its real source.

 

And never stop looking for the real source.

 

And don't fall for the decoys.

 

This is the only purpose not only of anger, but of wisdom. Anger must be returned to its real source, and wisdom is what can stop one from doing anything else with it.

[Birch]

What Taomeow said ought to be pinned.

[Age Sage]

I don't think that ego and humility have to be mutually exclusive. It depends on your interpretation of "ego," I guess. The popular interpretation of "ego" is having a high opinion of oneself, but in the psychological or psychiatric sense, it just means awareness of self. "I Am" and "This is Who and What I Am." There's nothing wrong with that!

 

You can be very aware of who you are and have a very healthy sense of Self, and still be humble. For example, you could have worked very hard since early childhood to be a pianist, and have a natural talent for it which you augmented with very hard work and self-discipline, and attained a high measure of success. You KNOW you are a great pianist, and yet you also know that you could be better, and that as an artist you must continue to strive for the rest of your life. And, you can appreciate and admire other people's talents and skills and put your own skills in perspective with those.

 

Healthy ego is very capable of healthy humility!

[manitou]

Amazing that anger can hide in the muscles and psyche for so many years. and we're mirrors of each other - yes, it is always misplaced. It always goes back to self, to a frustration or unvented emotion from long ago where we tried to love it and it wouldn't love back; or we tried to fix our parents marriage when we were little kids and it just wouldn't fix. Everything's a trigger for everything else, and anger is always looking for a place to vent. And how wonderful we feel when the anger finally gets vented and leaves, or better yet - when the tears flow.

 

For these are the very two escape valves that are built into us that are constructive. Holding it in for years is terribly destructive to ourselves. During this crisis there have been tears cried for things so long ago - and these tears somehow feel thicker, in some sense, than regular tears. Like they came from the very bottom of my soul.

 

It is a surrender to my own helplessness; a relinquishment of any sense of control I ever thought I had. I am not the one making the decisions; I just thought I was. The words were understood by my head, it just took a lot of years for my heart to follow suit.

 

Ego is truly necessary, without it we'd be driving into oncoming traffic. I think it becomes a question of just how much of it we want to rule our actions. If a person acts egotistically, it's covering up a deficiency, a feeling of less-than. I think when a person goes to the trouble of trying to remedy those undesirable traits, that the ego shrinks out of necessity. It's been deflated by acknowledgment of the defects. and it deflates naturally because the need is no longer there for it to be so sizeable. Then, we gain mobility of action and decision. If ego is ruling, we will always have to act in an opposing fashion to the stimulus, an equal slight, or an equal physical action, an equal reaction in kind. But if the ego is limited, we are capable of swallowing pride when it's needed, whether for the good of self or the good of All. A dimished ego, I am told, frees up our ability to act with a 360 degree circumference; as opposed to a mere 180 because we're reacting in kind.

 

It is through diminished ego that wu-wei can be achieved. If we're acting out of reaction, we're acting limited. He hates me so I have to hate him back. He flipped me off so I have to flip him off back. Unhealthy ego - limited range of mobility ego. One performing wu-wei on a situation must learn to do it from a position of transcended ego. It would be called the Peace that passeth Understanding in Christianity; the Power of Silence in Castaneda-ese. The ability to Not Do, because one has learned to step aside from self and not react to the situation, regardless of the length of time it takes.

 

Maybe ego and self-esteem get interchanged, too. Self esteem is true love of self; at the end of the road, the realization of the One. Ego, as it's used, has mixed reviews.

Edited July 19, 2012 by manitou

[Christian]

I treat my ego like it is water. I can make it solid, liquid, or let it vanish. If someone flips me the bird, I make the ego into vapor. If my plans are interrupted by an accident, I make the ego liquid. If someone threatens my life, I make the ego solid like ice. When the ego is not needed, it joins the waters of the world.

 

Anger is just frustration that tells me I not using the ego tool correctly.

 

The ego is the most useful illusion the Dao has ever conjured up.

[Brian]

I would love to know if anyone else struggles with their own behavior....

 

 

Only after I recognized that I do a lot of stupid shit.

 

 

 

[manitou]

I treat my ego like it is water. I can make it solid, liquid, or let it vanish. If someone flips me the bird, I make the ego into vapor. If my plans are interrupted by an accident, I make the ego liquid. If someone threatens my life, I make the ego solid like ice. When the ego is not needed, it joins the waters of the world.

 

Anger is just frustration that tells me I not using the ego tool correctly.

 

The ego is the most useful illusion the Dao has ever conjured up.

 

A perfect analogy - treat the ego like water. So useful, those metaphors - I am going to add your metaphor to my bag of tricks too. Thanks, Christian. Actually, I did find myself flipping the bird back to someone that I cut off in traffic a couple weeks ago when I was impossible to be around. Normally I chuckle at those things, I haven't flipped anyone off in years. But a couple weeks ago it was virtually impossible to just let it go - the flip-off occurred without my permission. Just showed me how very foul I can still get, which isn't a very comfortable place at all.

[suninmyeyes]

I treat my ego like it is water.

This reminded me of a saying , often given as advice for healing and wellbeing:

 

'Keep your water clean.'

 

-coming from old Slavic traditions

Edited July 20, 2012 by suninmyeyes

[kevincann]

The much maligned ego...

 

We all play this game, where we think that we are 'making progress' by 'shrinking the ego'.

 

As a matter of fact, 'spiritual progress' is often equated with the 'shrinking of ego'.

 

Yoga makes this huge fuss about 'the ego', without even understanding it.

 

One of the things I like about non-yoga traditions, is that they do not necessarily demonize

 

the ego, and in fact some give 'the ego' it's due.

 

The fact is, that it's the Self which generates 'the ego'. Not only is it not despised,

 

it is mandatory. Not just for survival. Not just for 'lower plane necessities'.

 

As a matter of fact, 'the ego' is the main tool which the Self uses to accomplish a great many things.

 

Now something that usually happens with spiritual seekers, is that they 'eat spiritual energy',

 

which puffs up 'the ego'; the very 'ego' they have been pretending not to have so much of,

 

as you know, we all wish to be seen by our peers in the most positive light.

 

It's this 'subtle loathing' of 'the ego' which makes it the very monster that it actually is NOT.

 

I thought I'd share this thing which many of us know, in case it might be of benefit.

 

Love,

 

Kev

[Marblehead]

I thought I'd share this thing which many of us know, in case it might be of benefit.

 

Love,

 

Kev

Even if we thought we knew it the reminder is never out of place, IMO.

[de_paradise]

To Manitou. The antidote to anger is full honest deep surrender. Imagine yourself in the yoga "child's pose" surrendering your with point of view, your logic, your hurt, etc, to the other person or the universe. Equanimity is the result. Suddenly the ego has nothing to hold on to because you have surrendered it. The pain that the ego causes you disappears. To go from anger to indifference one first surrenders.