ROLES OF EGO AND RELATIONSHIPS

ROLES OF EGO AND RELATIONSHIPS Psychointegration Session 23/JAN/2006 By Jorge Raul Olguin One says when one speaks about the roles of ego: - Yes, I do realize when I see a person with ego. He/She is a pedantic person, a narcissistic being, a person who stands up on a pedestal and behaves arrogantly. Am I wrong? No. You're not wrong. A pedantic person is an egotistical person; a narcissistic person, an egotistical individual. Generally, a narcissist is narcissistic because he/she has low self-esteem. That’s what the first Freudian notions of the early twentieth century say. People who hide their inferiority complex with a superiority complex. The thing is that transpersonal psychology dug up a little deeper. It’s not that one covers up an inferiority complex with a superiority complex, as the Freudian theory says, it goes beyond of that! Suddenly I, ‘subject A’, have the need of approval because I feel like nobody has ever set her eyes upon me and I have had always a bad luck with the opposite sex. Or I believe so, although in reality I had neither good nor bad luck because I didn’t have the courage to face a person of the opposite sex. Or those who are afraid that the other person says ‘NO’. I particularly have talked to people who are kind of womanizers and they say: - Oh! But they have said to me NO 50 times, what happens is that I've jumped to the pool 100 times and I won 50 times. It's that simple, it’s a matter of numbers. So, he has achieved only 50% of success. He’s not a complete winner, but since there is plenty of courage in that person achieving only 50% is a lot. What happens to that guy who never had courage and feels down when he’s on a party and he keeps a low profile? That person can create a stage through roles of ego. That person make-up, dresses, becomes striking. Perhaps, that little costume brings some successful outcome. Then the person starts believing that he has a winner’s spirit with the opposite sex or winner in business because he had a small success and turns to the opposite sidewalk from where he was. The person believes he’s invulnerable, thinking that he always wins because he's had a couple of results, but he does not realize that the role of ego has turned him a success-oriented person. I'll talk about a practical example: It’s like those football fans whose team has won 4 straight games and the team is the best team on the planet, but then the team loses a match and it becomes into an ordinary team which would have to go down to the B class. They become success-oriented. They forget the aphorism that says, "Do not let that a failure defeats you, or a victory conquers you." Many people are reluctant to criticism and some of them have learned that being reluctant to criticism is a role of ego, from that moment on the criticism slides away. They have overcome the ego! But they still need to learn the second part: "Do not let that a victory conquers you." They are prey to flattery. - Oh, how great you are! How you've grown up! What a blast! I love your lines And the person gets swollen like a balloon. That is also ego. Beware of flatterers. There are many people who flatter to take advantage and there are many who flatter to be right with that person just in case, if the day of tomorrow that person becomes important to be at her side. Then, do not allow that a failure defeats you. There will always be criticism. Then we must take it as such and pay attention to constructive criticism. Not like those politicians who criticize and criticize and never give a solution, what I call, a valid alternative, which is the best thing that a human being would have. I Criticize, perfect. What is the viable alternative? Then, if I receive a criticism of anyone and it has a valid alternative on how to address specific problem, if I'm not a fool or if I'm not an idiot, I'll take that alternative. But if I only receive criticism for the criticism itself, I will discard it. But I will also be sufficiently wise and prudent to also leave the compliments aside. I'm not going to fall into hypocrisy, and I will not fall into hypocrisy because false modesty is the first cousin of hypocrisy. When they asked me on TV: - Are you a teacher? They thought I was going to say:- No, no. How do you say that? No. But I answered: -'Of course I am, of course I am a teacher. I teach because there are many disciples who have learned due to my teaching, good, fair or bad, but they have learned. But I will also continue being a student until the last day of this incarnation. That was the total answer. This means that if one had responded, "Oh, no, I know little," knowing that he has knowledge by burning the midnight oil reading 1,400 books; it seems like false modesty which is hypocritical. And the Master Jesus said, "Flee from those who are hypocrites because they breed snakes." The issue is to be consistent with oneself. Saying: - Well, if I have the knowledge on a certain topic, why should I deny it? We have to have enough humility to say it, but I’ll have my eyes open and my ears paying attention to keep on learning a lesson as far as my life lasts in this plane. That's what most people leave aside. They think they have learned it and stay still. I’ll conclude with a description of what the ego is by itself and I will explain the aphorism "the goal is the quest". Then. That person who described the ego as pedantic and narcissistic was right, like the one who stands up on a pedestal to be admired. That is also a role of ego! That person seeks to be approved by others. That person seeks to be applauded. Bravo, bravo! But then the ego is also on anyone who goes unnoticed, a person who has low self-esteem, a person who says: - How will that girl go out with me? The competition that I have. I have come to this party and we are 25 boys and only 4 girls and... No, but I have no courage, I have no chance... The person doesn’t say that, but the ego. Surely there will be some pretty girl at the meeting and if a man is coherent and ‘figuratively speaking’ notices that the girl has no brains or she is shallow, he will not be with that girl. He will be with the one girl with whom he will be able to talk, to share a coffee, a drink, etc... One night in Tacita Cortazar in Palermo Viejo, we were talking about sex, about what percentage of sex occupies in the relationship of a couple. 30%, 25%, etc. - No, for me 60% - Okay - I said. - And for you that you are a tantra teacher What is the percentage? - I said: - It has nothing to do with percentage because we must give sex the due importance and not more than that. Look, Hector, you're not a person who likes to play, but you're suddenly a playful person in a relationship, but you do not go beyond that. How long are you sexually with your partner? And I don’t talk about every day, but I talk about how much time you spend having sex. Half an hour, 40 minutes? Well, for you that’s enough. If you do not get along with that person. what do you do with that person the 23 hours and 20 minutes remaining of the day? In case you focus only on that. What do you do with that person the 23 hours remaining? If there is no dialogue, if there is no respect, if there is no admiration, which are the other three legs of love... That little desire for half an hour once a week, what do you do with that person the rest of the time? For that reason I say that those couples who say, "sex takes a certain percentage, this other thing, this percentage of the relationship" that they have no knowledge of what they are talking about. I’m not neglecting the intimate part; I'm simply putting it on its place. Because having a good intimate relationship is useless, if the person has nobody to talk to after all, a dialogue that nurtures me, that makes me feel full as a man or a woman. What does it have to do with ego? It has everything to do with ego. Because the ego in couple relationships, one is always trying to dominate the other person. The ego is the enemy of agreement. And a couple has to agree. And the agreement on which leg of the table we put it? Agreement we put in the dialogue, respect, desire, etc.. Desire? Yes, of course. I've heard many women saying: - He knows what I like. - Huh? Hold on, I didn’t know that men were seers. - But he knows me and he has to know what I like Ah! Perfect, so, if he knows what she wants we’ll rule out the dialogue. He does not know what the woman wants. He has to agree and the woman has to agree with him. Or else it’s like the case of a very clever woman who once said to me in a meeting: - "Oh, but I have had 4 husbands. I know what a man wants." No, no! Because I don’t think there's a man who met two similar women, drinking coffee or intimately. And if a woman tells me that she knows two identical men, only if she has met the Corse brothers, where one felt the same pain of the other. No, no. That kind of experience is a lie, it’s false. I can be an experienced man, figuratively speaking, and knowing all, I can completely ignore all about an X person because he's new to me. And if I said: ‘I know everything’, I would be the stupidest man of the many that inhabit in this world. What makes us so stupid? The roles of ego. Because the ego has several facets, and the role of ego needs, the role of ego also wants to give a false appearance, the role of ego wears a mask of a person who knows everything, and nobody knows everything. We all know a little bit of everything. And that's the beauty. How ugly the world would be if each one of us had the total knowledge. It would be an absolute boredom. I interpret that our Father, God, is not bored, because first of all He is Love and He enjoys while we, his small creatures, are evolving, but we are not God, but we are part of him, and we are growing in him, if we enjoy as we learn, if we enjoy while we know the others, if we enjoy while we become more tolerant. For all these things that I am naming now, tolerance, perseverance, knowledge of others, respect for others, completely lack of the ego. So, as we know more about ourselves, in the measure we let us our spirits shine, in the measure that we get more in touch with our analytical mind, our reactive mind will have no power over us. Then the ego doesn’t allow that we get angry because we have it there, and it no longer offend us... Because another thing that the ego makes us do is to take offence. - Yes, because he said something I did not like and he made me feel badly, because he said I was shallow - Ah! And are you shallow? - No, of course not. - No, seriously. Do you feel that you're shallow? - No. - Then why does that person’s word hurt you? The other day we talked about it. The word has no power. If I pull a little hair of the not many that I have left and I put it on the table and at one meter away and with magical gestures I say to the hair: -"Move, move." Unless the wind moves it, your hair will not move. So, my word has no power to move even a hair. How can a word have power to hurt you? Who gives the power to that person? You, you are the one who gives power to the person. If I have it clear who I am, if I’m really aware that I am unique, that each of us is unique in his/her own way... "No, no, but there are unique and unique." No, we are all unique at some time. Let's think that the spirit has no bank account, Let’s think that the spirit has no color, let’s think that the spirit is not obese or thin, let’s think that the spirit has no color of eyes and let’s think that spirit has no record. The spirit vibrates in syntony with the spirits of Light or with the spirits of error according to the attitudes they have. Nobody takes the spirit from the plane it is. In the spiritual planes there are no punishments or rewards, but there are consequences. So we have to imagine as though we had a bank account in the spiritual planes and unlike what happens in the physical plane, we had unlimited credit. Our self-centered attitudes would be like loans and our altruistic attitudes would be like deposits. If we end up our physical life with a huge debt, we would descend of plane... I do not believe in what those Protestant or evangelical people say, according to the country in which they are called they usually say: - Oh, no! But if I repent on the last day I'll be forgiven. That is to pull the Father’s leg! If I owe millions of credits and I deposit two credits today, I will continue with an enormous debt. Then I will go to a plane of error when I disembody. And in this plane of error I’ll embody again in order to correct my debt, because I still will have that debt after I disembody, or within that plane I will do things for others at a conceptual level in order to correct the debt. Or else I’ll still have that debt. And that's what people do not understand! And it has nothing to do with physical money. It is an account from another plane that we can perfectly correct by changing our attitudes. Nobody casts us away from a plane of Light and no one rises from a plane of error. One can descend from a plane of Light if one falls prey to ego. One can rise from a plane of error if one realizes how important the others are, without the others we are nothing. For that reason the word "I" is the least important word. Not to be confused with low self-esteem. I mean, I'm important; I love myself, so that the others love me. Once achieving the love of others it’s done, I have to show the others that the love I feel for them is real. Or else I’ll stay only in words. Let’s remember what I said before. Service is Love in Action. If I do not do any work Love becomes sterile like a plant that was uprooted. It has no use at all. Finally, I’ll finish this little psychointegration session with the aphorism: "THE GOAL IS THE QUEST". It is an aphorism that I made back in 1997 and it’s my second aphorism of the 316 I have. What does ‘the goal is the quest’ means? Spiritually speaking. I have a goal. I do things, I achieve results and I get that goal. What do I do once I got that goal? Would I lie on the grass and put a straw in my mouth? Like the grasshopper and I play the mandolin?. Then I learned nothing! I reached that goal being sterile because my real goal will be to keep on looking for another goal and another goal. - Ah! But, how? What about the famous paradise we were told when we were kids? The famous “Heaven” or paradise we were told when we were kids is absolutely selfish. Absolutely selfish. I could not live in a quiet paradise playing the harp on the clouds, hypothetically speaking if there was something like that, because in reality the spiritual planes are not like that, As long as I perceive conceptually that down on planet Earth or other planets there are people who are suffering and I do nothing. - What could you do? What all the spirits of Light do, they try to guide conceptually that person or incarnated being or they choose to embody again and get back to work in order to help those people. Roll up your sleeves! Because when Siddhartha embodied and became Buddha it was necessary he became Buddha because he was the first. However, I prefer Nagarjuna’s example, who 500 years later resigned the holiness to pursue the bodhisattva. He didn’t want the 10, he was the 9. And he mingled with the people rolling up his sleeves to keep on helping. It is much more remarkable to me that position. Giving up holiness in order to follow among the people. Well, then, Heaven or paradise is a myth, a falsehood. I couldn’t’ be happy there if there is only a single being shedding a tear down on Earth. That is the real work! So, my goal will be my quest. And then my partner tells me: - But how? I’m tired to keep looking and looking - That is the mistake! Because the search has to be with joy. And everything you're looking for has to be with joy. And every project we do has to be done with joy. - And if I fail? -…And if you fail it will fail, but you will look for other goals with joy. But you will always have to do it with joy because the only thing that’s going to protect you aside from Love will be euphoria. - Well, and what happens if I have a monotonous job? - Okay, how many hours do you work? - Nine - Do you like your job? - No. - Well, psychologically if you don’t do it with joy those 9 hours will be 18 hours. If you do with enthusiasm... - Well, I have to thread wires… - Never mind. Those 9 hours will be like 4. That is common sense; that’s consistency, if you do it with joy. Because if you got used to looking out for the reactive mind, so that it does not arise, also you will get used to doing things with joy. And the bitter expression will begin to fade away from the face of the person. The enthusiasm begins the desire to be hugged with the other. And the hug is the most beautiful thing that human beings have. And many people do not take it into account due to prejudice unfortunately. But I know that one person will wake up today, tomorrow another person will wake up and another... Waking up means understanding. They will understand that we, each one of us, are the best we have. And we would have to make a chain together. For the moment it’s the beginning. There will be 4 or 5 links. We have time.