What is the ego?

The pop culture meaning of ego: egotism, or a person’s over-inflated sense of self-importance. An overcompensation for low self-esteem.

 

The spiritual meaning of ego: a person’s sense of separate identity. The mechanism through which souls are able to have a human experience.

 

The Jungian psychology meaning of ego: the totality of a person’s conscious self, including all of the personality traits and identity of which they are consciously aware.

The spiritual community consistently conflates the meaning of ego as an identity with the pop culture notion of self-importance. This results in a demonization of the concept of an ego, when in reality, a strong ego is what results in a healthy sense of self-esteem and the ability to keep one’s sense of self-importance in check.

The Spiritual Ego

The ego, from the spiritual perspective, serves an important purpose: it is the mechanism through which we are able to see ourselves as an individual, unique person. The ego is what creates the illusion of separation from all that is and gives us the opportunity for experience in the physical plane. Through the ego, incarnate souls have the free will to decide who they want to be.

Many misguided spiritual teachings discuss the death or destruction of the ego, or inflated sense of self-importance. To truly destroy one’s actual ego would be to cease having a human experience. If a person were to permanently dissolve their ego while still existing in a human body, it would look like being zenned out in a transcendental meditation every day for the rest of their lives. There would be no longer be any growing, learning, experiencing, or participation as a part of the collective.

What these spiritual teachings actually mean is to examine one’s ego (the conscious aspects of self) along with one’s shadow (the subconscious aspects of self) in order to shed any beliefs or behaviors which are self-destructive or harmful to others, resulting in an evolution of the identity that is in alignment with higher consciousness.

When individuals are able to tap into the connectedness of all beings in the universe under the influence of psychedelics or through meditation, they are actually temporarily transcending their ego-self. In Buddhism, this may be described as Nirvana. Once the high or meditation is over, the ego remains intact, but fundamentally altered by the experience.

It is important to note that these experiences do not singularly resolve unhealed trauma or self-limiting beliefs, they merely provide the experiencer with a new perspective. Shadow work is still necessary to heal unhealthy habits, behaviors, and deeply rooted belief systems.

The Ego in Psychology

From the psychological perspective, the ego’s purpose is to help regulate various aspects of the self that need to be kept in check, such as the id (our basic instincts and animalistic desires). In that regard, when someone has a weak ego, their ability to regulate those aspects of self is lacking. They may have low self-esteem and be vulnerable to unhealthy psychological projection and a desire to overcompensate. When someone has a strong ego, their capacity for self-regulating is healthy,  they have healthy self-esteem, and are able to keep themselves in balance.