Living
between the Light and Dark:
The Holy Ego
The individual self is part of who we
are, and it is only a problem if we do not see all of who we are as
holy. If we see all as holy, then we do our best to heal the extreme
separateness the ego has fallen into because of the wounds of our karma,
culture, childhood, and civilization, and the existential problems of
life itself.
APPROACHING GOD
Living as we do, between Heaven and Earth, the spiritual path has never
been an easy one. With so many approaches to the task of “finding
God” created over so long a period, you would think that there
would be some consensus about how to handle the difficult challenge
of relating to the human personality and its problems.
The truth, however, is very different. Not only is there no consensus,
but instead, spiritual paths have divided pretty much along two main
approaches, both hoping to deal with the problem of duality and Oneness
and where the human ego fits into this scheme.
The first approach, the one most of us here in the West grew up with,
is the theistic or deistic path. This understanding places the Deity
outside the person. It asks individuals to find the will of God and,
to the best of their ability, follow the path that brings them closer
to their Creator.
In this approach to the Divine, the spiritual path is a heroic one wherein
the seeker goes through various tests in order to finally meet the Deity
in some manner or at least know God’s will. The deistic way is
one of purifying the ego so that the personality is “pure enough”
to be with the exemplar of purity, God.
In the final analysis, this path is one of embodiment on the one hand
and surrender on the other. One must first take the ego or personality
in hand and subdue the wild tiger of the self, while building up the
stamina and bravery needed for the journey. Finally, one surrenders
the ego to the greater good of God. In this path, we are called upon
to reach closeness with the source of our being by following a prescribed
path of commandments, ways of being laid out by God and transmitted
to us by the prophets in texts such as the Jewish Torah, the Christian
New Testament, the Islamic Koran, and others.
By using the example of the most rigorous version of this path—the
orthodox or fundamentalist point of view—we can make two general
statements about this approach. First, it asserts that the truth has
been revealed and can be found outside the self and followed in order
to reach God. Second, it claims that the ego-personality or personal
self ultimately needs to be surrendered to the Deity in order for the
seeker to find the “peace that passeth understanding.”
The other main approach might be called the nontheistic, advaitic, or
nondual approach. In this approach, God is not considered to be something
separate at all. Instead, the personal ego is regarded as an illusion
that one must see through in order to come to an understanding of the
basic ground of being beneath appearances.
In these paths, rigor is used to see through the identification of the
self with both personal behavior and even the body itself. These paths
presuppose that the truthful layer of understanding is already there;
the way must simply be cleared so that the truth can be seen. So these
nondual paths are not so much paths of purification as paths of being,
where the truth of who we are is found by inquiry of some sort, such
as meditation practices that help us see through the static of the mind
to the essential nature of life that was there all along.
These two paths use different language to describe the achievement each
recommends. The deistic paths speak of saints, God-cleaving, revelation,
and illumination, and the nondual paths speak of self-realization, enlightenment,
and awakening.
It is my belief that the possible distortions inherent in both these
approaches—and certainly in the way they have been communicated—attempt
to erase the very vehicle that allows us to live as divine creations.
The Healed Ego
The
vehicle that enables us to live as who we are—that is, as individual
personalities in finite bodies who are simultaneously manifestations
of Spirit beyond life and death—is the human ego. While problematic
in its unhealed state, the ego in its healed state is the best vehicle
we have for bringing us to the gate of enlightenment. To that end, I
would like to describe a different approach to working with the ego,
in which the personal self is not seen as the antagonist of self-realization
or a life devoted to God. In this view, we go beyond the concept of
an enemy and find Wholeness where it already exists: in the human ego,
which allows for both self-realization and God-connectedness. From this
perspective, enlightenment is a form of nonviolence to all, including
one’s own ego.
However, the usual understanding of the God-awakened or enlightened
state is that it is a condition that seems to posit no personal self,
but only some sort of “transcendental view” in which the
person who has come into the light of understanding or the Light of
God is connected to something so great that it makes the ego pale in
its light. In this view—found in both the advaitic/nondual and
theistic models—the ego is a kind of enemy. In the advaitic context
the ego must be seen through; in the theistic, it must be conquered.
This is a misunderstanding of what enlightenment or awakening into God
actually is.
A quote from the Dalai Lama points to a problem that arises from this
view of enlightenment. Here His Holiness is describing a form of compassion
that is not based in any way on the needs or attitudes of the one who
is feeling compassion. In fact, this teacher feels that when the personal
self is involved in any way, compassion in its highest form has not
yet come into being.
Compassion without attachment
is possible. Therefore, we need to clarify the distinctions between
compassion and attachment. True compassion is not just an emotional
response but a firm commitment founded in reason. Because of this
firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does
not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based
not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs
of the other. . . . This is genuine compassion . . . the goal is to
develop this genuine compassion, this genuine wish for the well-being
of another.
My problem here is not with the end point or desired result of this
compassion. It is with the implied methodology. The Dalai Lama recommends
practices that are altruistic, which do not highlight or support the
ego, but help to diminish its central position in the human psyche.
Here it might be construed that the Buddhist belief is that the human
attachment to the “I,” or the very existence of the personal
self, inhibits openness to others, and that only by seeing through the
seeming solidity of the “I-thought” can the nondual enlightened
life be approached. There are similar examples in the deistic path that
take the same point of view from the opposite end of the tunnel. The
testament of Christ, for example, is filled with Jesus’ selfless
actions, and it is his selflessness that is mostly held up for emulation.
Yet practitioners of both of these approaches who have achieved Wholeness
do not seem to be selfless or colorless people. Instead, they seem to
be vivid personalities who know what they want and what they do not
want, who stand for what they believe in, even unto death.
It is clear from this that it is not the ego per se that has either
been purified away or seen through, but the unhealthy ego. It is vital
that we differentiate between these two aspects of the human psyche,
since it will give us a way to work with ourselves that will allow us
to avoid falling into the error of trying to pretend to be what we are
not: trying to be “self-less,” when every atom in our body
wants to have a self; trying to be altruistic and override our own needs
while these needs are overwhelming and powerful. This behavior sets
up a dichotomy between self and other and cannot be seen as nonviolent.
It says, for instance, that something of our own self must be lowered
or sacrificed in order to be of true service to others, that lowering
ourselves and service to others are linked concepts.
Is it not possible for a healthy or healed ego to be compassionate in
a nondual way? In a way that includes self and other? Is it even possible
that this is the function of the healed ego, that is, to be of service
to self and other simultaneously?
To approach the spiritual life without this understanding is to think
that we must destroy what God made: an individual. It means we have
not yet found a way to see the holiness of creation in a completely
nonviolent manner, a manner in which even the ego is not “killed”
in order for it to heal. The need to kill, subjugate, or ignore the
ego for some “higher purpose” leads to problems down the
line and could even be said to have brought us to the desperate conditions
we find our world in today.
The Desire to Exist
So
what exactly is this ego that can sometimes appear in a healthy state
and sometimes in an unhealthy state? That can be both an impediment
to awakening and not an impediment, at exactly the same time? While
we usually think of the ego as a psychological component of the individual
human being, we might redefine it here for the purposes of our discussion
as the very desire to exist, and in that way see it as a universal quality
that is beyond the “human-only” in that it is found in some
form or other in every created thing. It appears in the Nothingness
of the Absolute and divides the universe into where “we”
are and where “we” are not. We could even go so far as to
say that before this division, there is no “universe.” And
by “we” I mean not only humans, but rather all things: here
is a proton, there is a neutron, and in this way of perceiving we see
the Creation of the world as an act of separation.
The ego is a demarcation that says, “I exist,” or even,
“Existence is!” It separates the Absolute into foreground
and background and creates—eventually, and many steps removed—the
human psychological qualities of conscious self-reflection and the unconscious
self, since what is known and what is unknown arise together as one
unit, through the same single action.
Kabbalists use the term Ayn-Sof to speak of Divinity that is beyond
manifestation and nonmanifestation, foreground and background. The term
God and the various Names of God (such as Adonai, Elohim, Yah, and others,
which are sometimes used in kabbalistic study as a methodology for unifying
consciousness) are reserved for the Godhead associated with manifestation,
or Creation. From that perspective, we might say that God’s Ego—the
Primary Desire to Exist—created the world and is manifestation
itself. Thus God’s Ego is the model for what the healed ego is.
This divine and healthy model of Creation must automatically create
opposites, since embedded within the very notion of Creation is the
act of separating one thing from another. Though the products of this
activity of division seem to be in opposition, they really have a common
origin in the act of creation. In this way we can say that the conditions
of the entire world are mutually co-arising. On the deepest level, the
creation of opposites is not in itself a problem.
When we draw a line on a blank piece of paper, we automatically create
two worlds: the place the line is and the blank space where the line
isn’t, the fullness of the line and the emptiness of the unmarked
space. It is the same with the world. Every act of creation makes the
world dual: hot is responsible for the existence of cold; in for out;
here for there. Our pencil line and the blank space need one another
to exist! When we forget the act of creation and see only the result
of that creation, these so-called opposites, we start believing that
things have independent existence, that hot can exist without cold or
in without out. We even start naturally preferring one of the opposites
over the other.
In the human realm, the ego is our personal, psychological agent who
splits the world from its intrinsic wholeness into parts we like and
want and parts we reject, and this splitting has positive and negative
consequences. On the negative side, we buy into the ego’s need
to dominate and control, and continually pit one part of creation against
another: life against death, time against eternity. Through this attitude
of loving only half the world, we have no home here.
On the positive side, the ego, this fundamental desire to be, is responsible
for the world of individuality and, through that lens, consciousness
and self-awareness itself. It is how we get separated as foreground
from the background of everything else. It is through the agency of
the ego that we get to look at ourselves, to see our own reflection.
Many positive implications arise from this stance of separateness. For
example, the healthy, egoic awareness that splits the world into viewer
and viewed is responsible for the entire concept and existence of Beauty,
a divine quality that could not come into being without the manifestation
of opposites and the capacity for self-reflection. It is we, self-conscious,
individual beings, who seek answers and reflect upon the beauty of nature.
Not only does the eye of the beholder need to exist in order for there
to be beauty, but when that eye is the eye of the healed ego, all things
are beautiful.
It is because we are made of this beauty that we respond to it so deeply;
true beauty always draws us deeply into our own soul and into a deep
communion that not even death can touch. Our connection to beauty goes
beyond the unhealthy ego’s myopic vision and unites the various
parts of ourselves into the Original Whole. We can find a home in the
world because the entire created world is actually singing the same
song.
When we posit an agency or being who created all of this manifestation
and beauty, we call it “God” and bow our heads and open
our hearts to our Creator. This reverence can happen only as the ego
becomes nonreactive to opposites and learns to negotiate the difficulties
encountered in the world of duality. Only then can the ego see the opposite
aspects of the world and simultaneously take its place in the bigger
picture of who we truly are.
Splits in the Soul
We
must remember, however, that since all of creation is made up of paired
opposites, the healthy ego has its shadow as well. The unhealthy ego
arises as we unconsciously, through misunderstanding and miseducation,
split ourselves further and further away from the awareness of our origin
until—completely split off—we believe we are unconnected,
unrelated, and live a detached existence, the continuity of which is
threatened on all sides by the very content of life itself. It is first
threatened by other people and their needs and finally by the very existence
of the opposites of life and death. It is the extremity of this separation
and the trance of the ego that make us forget that on some essential
level, we are truly One with all beings and all things—and I say
this not on a theoretical level, but as an actual, concrete fact.
This seemingly separate existence—one of the hallmarks of the
unhealed ego—causes unbearable loneliness and longing for something
more connected and meaningful. This intense longing and suffering is
usually dealt with in one of two ways: through spiritual search or through
burying the offending reality even deeper, so that it splits further
away. Of course, the attempt to feel more powerful and more in control
by pushing away the offending piece of Reality ends in the individual
feeling less powerful, less in control, lonelier, and bereft of genuine
contact with the very wholeness of the world that he or she so deeply
desires.
If we continue attempting to bury the unbearable feelings, the conflict
gets more and more externalized until it leaves the realm of the self
entirely, and the world and others are blamed for our plight: “They
did it to me. I would be happy if it were not for them.” It is
not an exaggeration to say that wars are fought on the battlefields
of Earth because we are not brave enough to fight them on the battlegrounds
of our souls by consciously passing through the suffering and effort
needed to unify our beings.
Both theism and nondualism attempt to address the separation, each putting
forward an approach to progress that reflects its individual point of
view. The heroic, dualistic path seeks to purify the ego so that any
self-will is burned away, so it is filled with practices that are constructed
in order to educate the ego until it sees the errors of its ways and
is “pure,” such as prayers, meditations, fasts, and exercises
of all sorts. The nondual path (when it is distorted), on the other
hand—since it sees the ego as illusory—requires only that
the practitioner stop his or her efforts so that the luminous ground
of being can shine through. Because of this, despite various practices
and hints, the seeker is left to sink or swim in the great ground of
being, with the (hoped for) utter trust that things are proceeding on
their way in proper fashion.
So from the theistic viewpoint, we need to get better, and from the
advaitic, there was never a problem in the first place. Of course, neither
extreme is true. Neither the theistic nor the nondual paths are complete
without the integration of the ego. From the theistic point of view,
the ego cannot be truly surrendered if it is in an unhealed state. Then
so-called surrender does not include the truth of the power of the individual
self. It is only an accommodation to the difficulties of living with
an unhealed ego. If the ego is not healed, the image of a perfect God
is simply substituted for the problems of the smaller self. The difficulties
we all have of living in a dualistic universe and having to deal with
the human issues of power and powerlessness, oneness and separateness,
are withdrawn from contemplation and “solved” by giving
them over—like unripe fruit—to the so-called greater God.
Doing this is like placing your second best apple on the altar as an
offering to God. It simply is not good enough.
This “not-good-enough” is not a moral statement, but a statement
of cosmic law: only to the extent that we have worked through the splits
in our soul can we connect with God. Otherwise we only strengthen the
false self we all needed to create in order to survive the slings and
arrows of outrageous childhood. (It is possible of course, to surrender
the self to God completely. But this surrender is authentic only when
the self is not viewed with hatred or contempt, when its limitations
are seen to spring from the very nature of the self as a simple, imperfect
bit of creation.)
The oneness of advaitic nondualism cannot be truly achieved until the
ego has been seen to be an illusion (in that it is temporary) and allowed
to thrive without the violence attached to attempts to disinherit it.
True nonviolence is love-in-action. What fear is there in loving this
small, separate part that thinks it is the whole? Only by loving it
does it come into its own divine and nondual status: part of the One
and one with the One.
Finding Our Way
We
need to be as precise as possible about how to approach the spiritual
work of kabbalistic healing, and it might be helpful to distinguish
two levels we encounter on our path. The first and most important stages
of spiritual growth have to do with challenging the standard, shopworn,
yet powerful ideas our ego has about the world. This is the egoic work
that Western psychology does so well, and which should never be seen
as separate from the spiritual path. In this way, therapy is spiritual
work, and spiritual work is therapy. It is through working with our
psychology that the ego is made into a proper chariot to take us further
into what we call “ourselves,” but which is actually the
Mind and Body of God. Without this work, the ego is forever wounded
and not held in love and, like any wounded part of our body, draws our
attention to it and distorts the way we feel.
When the organs and other parts of the body are healthy, they function
invisibly and we do not notice them, but instead see the fruits of their
actions. The same is true of the healthy ego. Even this stage of the
“invisible ego,” however, cannot take us all the way to
liberation, which is beyond concerns with the ego. Working only within
the heroic or theistic model—the realm of this first stage of
spiritual work—cannot bring us to the point where having or not
having an ego is no longer the burning question.
To enter the second stage of spiritual work, in which the ego is brought
back into the wholeness of the human being, we must have an ego that
is no longer the master of the self and no longer the slave of God.
The vividness that is necessary to make the great leap into Reality
comes from the ego. It brings depth and passion to life and, with them,
the means to achieve our vision. In this stage of work the ego is no
longer the enemy, not because it has been vanquished—as in the
heroic/theistic model—or “seen through”—as in
the nondual model—but because it has become a friend. So the same
sort of conflict that was necessary in the first stage is no longer
relevant.
Liberation occurs when we can see simultaneously both the solidity and
validity of the ego and its transparent, temporary nature, not aiming
at one or the other state, but holding both. While in the beginning
there is an “inner foe,” at the next step of development
there is no inner foe. Ultimate liberation, which we might call Love,
knows no such boundaries and is content to let the ego exist. This contentment
is what heals the ego from being the leader of an opposition sect (“me-only”),
bringing it to its rightful place as the human function that sustains
and directs our efforts. Then the ego is the birthplace of the individual
who is divine and beautiful in his or her own right and needs no introduction
to God.
When we no longer need to purify the ego out of existence, nor see it
only as illusion and therefore deny its importance, we can surrender
to choice that does not split the world! This type of choice can never
be used to hurt another being or to fragment the world in further ways.
It can never be used to do violence to the self. It is neither exclusively
dual nor nondual. The more we do the work on the ego, the less of a
center of gravity the ego is, and the less it can pull us out of our
realization of God and Oneness.
From either direction, the theistic or nondual, this egoic work in the
service of truth supports the ultimate freedom we all seek. When this
level of spiritual work is done, God becomes the center of our lives,
which no longer need to be defended from incursions from some imagined
enemy. God is no longer an enemy. The individual self is no longer an
enemy. To be peace and not just portray it, we need to stop our own
terrorism, even against the part of us we think of as the enemy. Then
we no longer need to project our pain on the outside world, but return
to our Origin, which some call God. And it is the ego, our foundation
in its healthy and glowing form, that is our very soul, made of Heaven
even as it brings us to It.
Questions and Answers
Comment:
It seems that when people are striving for the impersonal, the reality
is they can’t escape being personal as well. So no matter how
hard they try, they are being personal when they are striving for the
impersonal. That returns us to the unity.
Jason: That is true. And I am saying something even
further. Even when the striving is done, when we are no longer striving
for the Absolute, we still seem to be a person in this world.
Response: We can’t escape that.
Jason: It would be like saying you have to be blind
to see.
Question: Can you say more about how to change the
ego from being an inner foe?
Jason: Some of the work we do in A Society of Souls
could be described as learning to inhabit a universe. When we inhabit
Briah, concepts that exist as opposites in other realms or states of
consciousness can be seen to exist simultaneously, each one supporting
the other. We might say that Briah is that place where the personal
and the impersonal mutually arise, are dependent upon each other, and,
to personify it a bit, welcome each other. When we learn to be in that
state of consciousness—which we do in order to do certain types
of healings—we have a new vantage point from which to understand
Reality. We begin to see Reality deconstruct into its constituent parts.
So concepts like inside and outside exist simultaneously as part of
a larger whole; ego and non-ego, mind and no mind exist simultaneously.
This gives us a large view. To do these specific healings we have to
exist in that realm, which is a nondual realm where both things are
accepted as equals, not as hierarchies of each other.
When we get to that state of awareness, we even begin to see the constituent
parts of the ego on a psychological level. I could say, for instance,
that the ego is a thought, but it is a different type of thought: in
our work, we call it a “penultimate root metaphor.” We find
that the ego is an extremely twisted thought. I don’t mean twisted
in the pejorative sense, but as meaning deeply enfolded; the ego is
a deeply enfolded thought. Its unfolding brings us to the realization
of what the ego actually is: it is both very real and not so real at
the same time. It exists and needs to be dealt with and yet has some
illusory aspects as well.
The ego is kind of like an ice sculpture. If you pay someone to make
an ice sculpture for a Bar Mitzvah, perhaps he will create a swan. But
that creation is only temporary. On a certain level, it begins disappearing
the moment it is created, very much like us, as a matter of fact! You
have to pay the guy for making the swan, even though it will soon disappear.
And you still have to deal with it and put all the little hors d’oeuvres
and things around it. It is the same with the ego: it must be taken
seriously, but not too seriously. It needs to be accepted totally as
what it is, and it needs to be healed and changed so that what it really
is—a kind of twist of fate—is revealed as well.
Question: I liked what you said about theism and nondualism
and would love to hear you talk about that a little bit more.
Jason: Well, I can say one interesting thing about
that. When you have half the picture, you have half the realization.
The Buddhist Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, puts it this way. It says,
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” From that perspective,
one would say that both theism—which is seemingly about a separate
God and the distance between us and Heaven—and the nondual or
the impersonal approach—which sees only Unity and does not recognize
these differences—spring from the same essential core. Both are
pictures, if you will, of the same thing from different perspectives.
But the Heart Sutra goes on to say, “Form is form and emptiness
emptiness.” This also means that the dual or deistic approach
is valid just as it is: choice is part of our lives, along with everything
that choice suggests, such as separateness and a centralized viewpoint
from which one chooses. Here duality itself is nondual. This nondual
form of choosing, which allows a thing to be itself, does not choose
in reaction to, or against, or as part of a polar opposite of, something
else. It makes its choice from unity.
©
Jason Schulman, 2005
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Jason
Shulman is a spiritual
teacher in the kabbalistic and Buddhist traditions and is the founder
of A Society of Souls, a school and community dedicated to the awakening
of the human spirit through the work of Integrated Kabbalistic Healing,
Impersonal Movement and the Work of Return. He is the author of KABBALISTIC
HEALING: A Path to an Awakened Soul (Inner Traditions). He has
received Dharma transmission in the Buddhist lineage of Shaka Kendo
Rich Hart, Abbot of the Clear Mountain Zen Center. Additionally, he
is on the faculties of the New York Open Center in New York City;
the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California; and the Omega Institute
for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, NY. He is also a member of the
Professional Advisory Board of the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy
of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City.