Ego Disidentification November 30, 2005
Posted by admin in : Psycho/Spirit , trackbackSometimes it falls away in the night. Sometimes you have to nudge it aside. Maybe sometimes it’s a struggle, and you have to do it and yourself and possible even others some violence to free yourself.
It never stops happening, really. It’s more obvious and evident and socially blessed in childhood. We are expected to grow and change and go through phases and grow out of things.
It slows down in adults because by them we have constructed something very elaborate, very heavy, and plugged it into a social nexus — our identification as worker, citizen, father, mother, etc. all demand constancy and continuity which is not conducive to frequent dramatic personality or ego iterations.
The hardest things to grow out of or to disidentify with are those which work so well and receive much social reinforcement.
But these things — these little ego objects, core beliefs, habits of thought, self-constructs — while they obviously serve us, come at a price. They serve us by ordering our reality into something that gives us meaning and perspective, some sort of comfort. They provide us with excuses, too.
But the cost is in the over-identification with what are artificial and provisional realities. These things are not we, we are not they, yet we accept the illusion that we cannot exist apart from them. We forget they are artificial and provisional. And as seamlessly identifies with them as we are, we have much invested in them. Some facts will inevitably not fit, so we will either distort or reject them to preserve the integrity of the thing. We’ll sooner reject knowledge than risk the disorder of disidentification with an otherwise useful and orderly reality.
Who pays the price for such willful ignorance? We inflict much harm on one another, and ourselves.
At some point, it becomes obvious something must give. Letting go, nudging aside, overthrowing or ego disidentification is a troubling though liberating process. The familiar becomes new. Safe and trusted must be reconsidered. Social relations renegotiated. Social reinforcements of the rejected reality must now be met with resistance. Ready-made alternate reality constructs available for consumption must be kept at bay, for one’s liberation from construct X must not be hastily enslaved to construct Y.
A period of disorientation and disengagement is healthy and reasonable before the new heads starts to grow back.
Although this all sounds like a kind of identity crisis or personality disorder, I submit it is quite normal, necessary and in some respects pleasurable. Much baggage is attached to these constructs. Disorientation might be frightening to some. But the feeling of lightness that comes with escaping the gravitational orbit of these ego bodies is joy and bliss for others.
Is it necessary to have some sort of provisional reality construct in operation at any given time? Is it normal and healthy, provided you do not overly identify with it, and let it go when its time comes? Or is it possible or preferable to just live in the stream, never building these flotation devices at all?
I suppose it is possible. Maybe if you are a fish-soul.
My own experience is this cycle of growing and developing a new provisional reality, inhabiting that, then coming eventually to disidentify, sometimes temporarily as a kind of meditation, sometimes permanently as a kind of growth. Then feeling sort of free and lost for a while. Then, before I know it, like the mime placing his hands on the imaginary window, I discover some limits and boundaries and walls and shapes that become my new imaginary glass house. Which works for a while, and the process starts over again. I know of no other way, so I cannot say what might be possible for other people.
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