The term ego often gets used as a negative label to refer to a supposedly unhealthy aspect of our identity that causes us to have selfish impulses. There’s this idea that if only we were willing to “let go of our ego”, we would stop acting in harmful ways. While this way of thinking about the problem has an element of partial truth to it and might seem accurate at first glance, the truth is that it’s a vast oversimplification. When we judge ourselves and each other for our egoic tendencies, it can inadvertently cause more harm by adding yet another layer of self-judgement to the already long list of “shoulds” that many of us believe that we must adhere to in order to be accepted by others. Furthermore, it can bury the real problem more deeply, causing it to eventually reappear in more dangerous and sophisticated ways.
With this idea that ego is the problem comes the presumption that each of us is individually capable of suppressing this aspect of our personality while adhering to socially accepted norms of behavior. Successfully doing so earns us the privilege of identifying ourselves as a “good person” and it grants us the authority to call out others who have yet to learn how to do the same. But what if egoic tendencies are not the result of individual failure to be a good person? Doesn’t it make sense that someone who suffered social isolation from not fitting in, or who suffered chronic childhood abuse would behave in more selfish ways as a result of experiencing the world as a cruel place where they have no choice but to fight for their own survival, alone?
During my twenties, I participated in meditation groups led by a woman named Mada Dalian who claimed to have achieved spiritual enlightenment. She would often shame students in front of the group by pointing out their egoic tendencies and commanding them to “drop the ego”. Once they were sufficiently humbled by this and willing to submit to her “guidance”, she would begin to give them direction to change their lives in ways that seemed to turn them into smaller versions of herself, loyal to her and increasingly dependent on her to feel like they were on the right path. Aware that something felt wrong about this to me that was getting in the way of trusting her as a teacher, I honestly and respectfully confronted her about it with the intention of seeing if we could somehow resolve the trust issue. Her response was “Jeremy, that’s your ego. Drop it.” I left the group and never turned back, but carried the confusion caused by this experience for years. I could admit that I did have harmful egoic tendencies at times, yet I also knew that my intention in this situation was definitely coming from a good place that truly deserved to be respected, not dismissed.
In my thirties, I had a therapist challenge this negative concept of ego as I was sharing how horrible I still assumed mine was. While this confused me at first, it cracked open a doorway for me to begin learning how to understand the nature of ego in a more compassionate way. While this really helped me to go easier on myself, I still found it confusing to hold the paradox that ego could be both healthy and unhealthy.
It wasn’t until I began to learn about Integral Theory and the stages of human development that it all started to make more sense. The ego’s healthy function at any given stage is to allow us to make meaning of what’s happening and take action in accordance with what matters to us. As we develop through the stages in a healthy manner, what matters to us expands as we are able to see and care about increasingly complex nuances of reality. As we undergo the transformation into each new stage of development, there are indeed moments where our ego naturally struggles to let go of the way that it had previously thought everything worked. With enough love, awareness and acceptance, our ego eventually learns to incorporate a new level of sophistication in its concept of reality. In turn, this enables a new level of maturity in one’s ability to respond to life situations more effectively than one could previously.
Understanding the nature of ego development in this way makes it clear that it’s not wrong to have an ego and it’s not our fault when our ego does not yet have the capacity to handle a situation in the most mature or balanced way. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. When we see our three year old stealing a toy away from his sister, we don’t tell him to drop his ego. We sigh understandingly and intervene to introduce him to the rules of how to play nicely together by taking turns or finding a different toy.
When we understand that someone doesn’t know any better, we tend to respond with loving boundaries and a willingness to help them learn. On the other hand, when we assess that they should know better, we tend to respond with judgement and a more harsh response. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume that it should be obvious to someone else what has become obvious to us through our own developmental journey. Judgement can cause harm when we mistakenly assume that someone should know better, and perhaps that’s understandable too, if we ourselves don’t know any better than to make such assumptions! Please don’t judge yourself for that either, we’ve all done it.
So, if all of this is normal, then what’s the real problem? The real problem to watch out for is shadow, not ego. Shadow forms when an aspect of ego becomes fragmented, getting stuck at its current developmental stage as a result of a false belief. Healthy ego meets legitimate needs in appropriate ways, but fragmented ego that lives in the shadow tends to meet those needs in less healthy ways. Even though it might be a full grown adult, there’s still an element of not knowing any better, associated with the developmental stage at which the shadow was formed.
Why does this happen? In order for the ego to develop in a healthy way from each stage to the next, it is necessary that we both fully transcend and fully include the previous ego perspective. For example, the “it’s all about me” perspective at the Red stage of development is transcended by the Amber perspective of “it’s all about we”. If “me” is fully included in “we” then there’s no contradiction and we learn to follow rules of behavior that result in a fair balance between my needs and the needs of others. Things can go wrong when we fail to transcend or fail to include the Red ego perspective, resulting in the formation of shadow. For example:
- If the needs of others are perceived as a threat to my own needs, then I might fail to transcend the Red “it’s all about me perspective”. Unable to trust that “me” will be included in “we”, I develop a narcissistic tendency in my Amber rule-based thinking. For example, “it’s OK to steal as long as I don’t get caught”. My Red ego doesn’t feel safe to let go, and instead it becomes more sophisticated, using Amber thinking to hide what it’s up to.
- If my own needs are perceived as inherently wrong or of questionable importance, then I might fail to include the healthy aspect of Red. I embrace the Amber value of putting others first while secretly under-valuing myself. I feel safer keeping the focus off of me where my inherent wrongness would otherwise be on display for everyone to see. This can also become more sophisticated as it goes unconscious, tempting me to scapegoat others who remind me of the disowned Red part of myself. Meanwhile, the Red part of me still finds other ways to get its needs met, such as subtly dominating others in covert ways.
We are especially vulnerable to forming shadow as we transition from each developmental stage to the next, and shadow becomes more dangerous and sophisticated as it grows with us into higher stages of development. All forms of what we label “evil”, from serial killers to corporate greed can be understood in this way. We all have many shadows, most of them inherited from our family and our culture. Shadows live with us, like thorns in our sides, until we are able to find the love and awareness needed to correct the false belief and heal the parts of ourselves that became fragmented as a result of it. Pointing the finger at ego doesn’t help, in fact, this is often exactly what creates the shame that causes fragmentation to occur in the first place.
On this note, there’s one simple but powerful story that impacted me deeply that I’d like to share with you. It illustrates what the real problem is and what actually helps. It is a story by Aaron Stark, who initiated his TEDx talk with the open admission that he was almost a school shooter:
I was there in the audience at Aaron’s TEDx Boulder talk in 2018 and by the end of it, I was in tears. Not only was he breaking the stereotype that our culture holds about the kind of person that a school shooter must be, he also credited his transformation to the willingness of a friend to love him unconditionally. No, it was not being shamed into taking individual responsibility for correcting what was wrong in himself that prevented the atrocity he was planning to commit. It was the ordinary sense of belonging that his friend gave him, illuminating the darkness of isolation in which Aaron’s self-hatred had grown into a demon. In Aaron’s closing words, “We have to give love to the people who we think deserve it the least.”
The real problem is not ego, it’s shadow. And the real solution is not judgement, it’s love. Always.
