As we grow up, we become aware of our being a separate, self-contained individual. This sense of ego can be a positive thing as with self-development of personal skills, or self-reflection on inner feelings. The trouble is there is a risk that self-occupied thoughts can also lead us to:
- Seeing things from only our own perspective
- Having pride in our own ideas
- Pleasing ourselves,
- Self-indulgence,
- Wanting to get our own way,
- Being judgmental of others,
- Wanting to get our own back,
These are examples of the ego getting out of hand. They partly reflect a fragile sense of selfhood. What are seen as personal slights may seem trivial but they can have dangerous consequences. Impulse to fight back, to avenge the damage to our self-esteem. Grudges may develop. Feuds or violent reactions.
We can be in situations where the right path to follow is not black or white. We can spend time asking ourselves if our difficulty is a result of our ego wanting to take charge, or if there really is a problem with, say, the integrity of others. (Becky Jarrett, Swedenborgian minister)
The Frog’s Ego
This story about a frog illustrates how the ego can be harmful. There lived a little red frog in a tiny pond. The frog had no idea about the mighty rivers that flowed through the land. It was content to be the king of the pond which it believed was the largest body of water in the world. On one occasion, a mighty downpour hit the region which lasted several days. The rivers overflowed. The floods caught up a blue frog that lived in a lake and hurled it into the small pond.
“Where did you come from?”, asked the red frog of the newcomer. The red frog took two long hops, then turned to the blue frog and asked: “Is your pond as big as my two hops?” “It is bigger”, was the reply.
Jealousy gave way to suspicion. “Surely, this newcomer is a confirmed liar”, thought the red frog.
This time, the red frog took three long hops. “Surely, your pond is not larger than the distance I covered in my three hops”, asserted the red frog. “It is much, much larger”, said the blue frog. “It is larger than a thousand of your ponds”.
The red frog was frothing at the mouth. Suspicion gave way to anger. “What more evidence do I need to confirm this intruder is a big liar? I have known all my life that my pond is the biggest”. Seething with anger, the red frog lunged at the blue frog and chased it away.
Alternatives to ego
Are we sometimes like the red frog? Don’t we need to better understand why a change is needed in our own conduct? Surely this involves acknowledging where we are going wrong and taking responsibility for the negative consequences.
Had he ever changed for the better ‒ instead of being jealous, suspicious, and angry ‒ the red frog would have:
- Tried to see things from the other frog’s perspective
- Had a humble attitude to learning from others.
- Considered that there might possibly have been something sensible in what the other frog was saying and this would have calmed his natural indignation.
- Been willing to share rather than greedily wanting the whole territory for himself
Ego-identification with consciousness
I inwardly hear a new melody and naturally assume it is due to my creative imagination. I feel an impulse to click on an advert showing a scantily clad woman which suddenly shows on my screen and I believe this is me wanting to do so. After all, it is in my individual mind and not somebody else’s. Surely the thought or feeling I am conscious of must originate within me. To believe otherwise would seem inconceivable to some people. So we all usually assume the constant stream of consciousness is part of ourselves. We take credit for good thoughts and blame ourselves for bad ones.
So when we self-identify with our mind, we attach our sense of self-worth to its thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. We identify ourselves with whatever is going on in consciousness. Having worthy beliefs we assume we are worthy. Having bad thoughts we jump to the conclusion we are bad. Such assumptions can become self-fulfilling prophecy.
Illusions of the ego
Much of the literature on meditation, as well as esoteric spiritual writing, says all this is an illusion – albeit a powerful one. Even our language reflects this mistaken assumption. We say “I am angry.” But we are not necessarily angry; we just have an angry thought and feel an angry emotion at this moment. We may say, “I am depressed.” No, we are not necessarily depressed; we just have a depressive thought and feel a depressed emotion at this time.
Whatever we identify with at once has power over us, and the more often we identify with something, the more we are slaves to it. (Maurice Nicoll, esoteric writer)
As I have said, people who meditate soon appreciate that their mind is not their own. Knowing this one can more easily learn to disown any fleeting thoughts and fantasies. However, the process of learning to disengage from identification with the contents of consciousness is gradual and requires ongoing practice and self-reflection. The result is stilling the mind and distancing oneself from all intrusive contents of consciousness. By not identifying with what is negative in one’s mind, one learns to be calm and free of its entangling thoughts.
Can you likewise recognise that there is a false sense of self that is talking in you and communicating its thoughts to you and stirring up at the same time a particular kind of negative emotion – it could be indignation, fear, or envy? When we learn to disown such thoughts, we do not for a moment take this negative ‘I’ as ourselves but see it as something in us apart from ourselves. As a result what it says does not get power over us, because we are separate from it.
Origin of conscious thoughts
Emanuel Swedenborg was an eighteenth-century writer who is recognized in some quarters as bringing mystical as well as intellectual rigor to religious thought. He had an open curious attitude towards many things in the natural world and later in the inner world of the mind. One unique value of his books is his vast and detailed testimony as to why our minds are not our own. It explains why the contents of consciousness do not start with ourselves.
From his own experience, Swedenborg described clear visions of an invisible world inhabited by people each alive in a spirit body. It’s very hard for us in our world dominated by consumerism and the natural sciences to accept that we each have a nonphysical spirit body. Or that we can survive death each as a spirit. I understand that most of us, who are not psychically gifted, do not see this realm. We are too easily distracted by the physical world of our bodily senses.
Inflow from spirit
In his mystical state, Swedenborg discovered how all the contents of his mind flew in from human spirits present with him. If it is difficult for us today to accept that spirits exist, it is even more of a challenge to accept that some of these spirits share their thoughts and feelings within our minds. However, he was adamant that these thoughts and impulses did not originate in himself but from outside of him. According to his observations, the spirits share their thoughts and desires within our minds. Also, neither they nor we realize that this sharing is going on. In addition, both the spirits and we tend to identify with the shared contents of consciousness. In other words, he was describing how the spirit dimension has both positive and negative influences on us.
According to this view, the good and bad stuff that people get up to on earth over the generations builds itself into the realm of spirits. Their different states inflow into our hearts and minds. This both beneficially and adversely affects all aspects of the general state of humanity: for example on one side inflows virtues and altruism, and on the other, vices and an attitude of the inhumanity of man to man.
Swedenborg’s extraordinary experience of the presence of spirits gives us a rational understanding of why we need not identify with the contents of consciousness.
Copyright 2023 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
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