VVRLPP-07_La valeur de l'ego (1/2)

the question is um did the ego ever serve a purpose it's serving it's always serving a purpose serving a purpose right now the ego is mainly all good mainly all good the the ego is the uh we could understand the ego as the um as The evolutionary as as the evolutionarily emergent ever great capacity for individuation the self's capacity to IND individuate which is which means an Ever greater capacity for the self to disembed itself from its context so for example in very small babies are completely identified with their uh with their physical uh experience with their with their body and their urges and their desires and Pleasure and Pain comfort and insecurity and that's their whole world so the self's totally identified with physical with the physical Dimension so it's it doesn't get any more primitive than that so that's where the self is identified but then as as the as the structure of the self evolves and develops as um as a human being evolves from you know childhood into adolescence into early adulthood that's this the self-develop the self or ego develops in one way and in and in a similar but different way the self also develops through different levels of development and relationship to Shared cultural values perspectives beliefs um but the the capacity for the self to individuate is all good is nothing bad about it because because that's how Consciousness can begin to disembed itself from the body from nature and you for example what we're trying to do here is we're trying to disembed Consciousness from being embedded in uh the ego identifying with the perspectives and Bel beliefs and emotional impressions of early childhood and also trying to disembed Consciousness from a blind you know a blind identification with modern and postmodern values perspectives and beliefs and convictions um but the capacity for individuation the capacity for the self to disembed itself is all that's an Evol that's that's it's it's the greatest gift of higher development in the universe so so the ego is understood to be the capacity to individuate which is to stand out to stand out from it it means that there's a greater capacity to to stand back from everything and bear witness so from that perspective the ego is all good and uh and the the more individuated the self is from the perspective of evolutionary development the better it is right but so that's all good in terms of the evolution of Consciousness but the problem is that the if the the self has for various cultural reasons uh become uh hyper there's a hyper there a hyper identification with the in the indiv the individuation process so in other words we become extremely fascinated with and identified with the the fact of individuation uh to uh uh exclusively so we've given that un uh excessive value and importance and that and that is who's created a uh indiv ual and cultural narcissism and the problem with it is it is it obscures our ability to see so much of reality right so if the so the extreme individuation is that the individual just aware of their own the image of their own personal ego I think we're in just to to speak in a very general way about it we've we we're in a time when um the the exclud the for various cultural reasons we have been taught and trained to identify exclus almost exclusively with the very small and unenlightened perspectives our own of our own personal self it means that we've been trained to give attention to the fears and desires and culturally conditioned beliefs of that indiv highly individ individuated self to the exclusion to the extreme exclusion of so much of everything else that actually exists so if you look at it very impersonally if you see the the vehicle the mind and the body and even the self structure you know as a vehicle for Consciousness Consciousness is trapped in a very narrow field of identification which which profoundly and I mean profoundly inhibits that individual's capacity to engage with life others World culture Cosmos in any way that's deep and profound and meaningful because they're just so lost in their small little personal world so that's the problem Pro problematic part of it and I think it's a culturally created it's been created by uh you know cultures created this particular issue I mean it's always been an issue throughout history but it's become it's become a cultural epidemic for us in our own time so in terms of the in terms of spiritual Evolution this is why it's problematic so in evolutionary philosophy the greatest good is the emergence of that Which is higher and new so that which inhibits the emergence of that Which is higher and new would is UNH wholesome and dark that which is inhibiting Evol inhibiting that emergence that would be one way to look at it