Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 09:08:09 +0100

To: ken-wilber-l@listserv.azstarnet.com

From: Thomas Jordan <Thomas.Jordan@redcap.econ.gu.se>

Subject: How to catch the ego by the tail - . . .

. . . some hints - Part 1

How can we know when we are engulfed in our cunning ego's self-preservation strategies? This is, methinks, a mighty important question (at least for us poor ones who are too lazy to have meditated one hour daily for five years or more). How can we learn to spot the operations of the ego, indeed what "ego" *is*, when we have not yet fully differentiated our consciousness from it?

The (separate) ego believes that the only possible kind of experience is its own. In the ego-embedded stages, the I-feeling is exclusively identified with a specific form, a distinct identity, e.g. in the form of a self-image. The ego therefore wants to preserve this form at any cost. The ego fears its own dissolution, and feels that giving up the familiar positions is a fundamental threat to its continued existence.

As some of you know, my hobby-horse is the role mindfulness in conflicts can play for consciousness development. For various reasons (see my homepage for details: http://home.t-online.de/home/Perspectus/index.htm), I believe that conflicts may be *used* for spiritual development (under certain circumstances, of course). I have identified six common ways the ego may become visible when we get involved in conflicts. By observing carefully how we react in conflicts, I believe we can learn to spot how the ego operates, and thus learn to make the ego and its strategies an object of our awareness, rather than the center of it.

I'll briefly present these simple expressions of the ego's operations in conflict situations in six separate posts. The first of the six is this:

Control strategy 1: Diagnosing. Making up explanations of other people's behaviour, and fantasies about their motives. Closure of images - no openness to revision. This strategy permits the ego to retain a feeling of knowing what to expect (=sense of control). Having a comprehensive interpretation of the current situation enables me to make rapid decisions. However, this certitude is mostly an illusion. We don’t fully know what motives, intentions and feelings other people have. This is all the more true in conflicts, when our imaginative abilities start to make up all kinds of scenarios spontaneously, while communication with the counterpart is reduced. Closure of our interpretations (i.e. believing they are true) is very destructive, because it closes the door to change, resolution, and a more authentic relationship to the world around us. Examine your own tendencies to make diagnoses of the background to other people's behaviour. Ask yourself if these diagnoses tend to become fixed. Feel how it feels to imagine that you give up all assumptions you have made about what makes your counterpart tick (I don't mean it is desirable to give up all efforts to understand other people: just that it is useful to observe the way your ego works).

to be continued . . .

Thomas J.