Enuma Okoro: On Ego

Ego. I hear the word and a range of associations pop into my mind from pop culture or political references to art history. I can almost hear Kanye West opening up the remix version to Beyonce’s 2008 song, Ego. Or see Caravaggio’s 16th century painting, Narcissus housed at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome’s Gallerie Nazionali. It’s a tricky word to dialogue about because what exactly we mean by an “ego” depends on the perspective from which we are considering it.

There’s room for ego in psychoanalysis (think Freud or Jung), philosophy, spirituality, religion, or even ancient mythology. And, of course, there’s ego in the way we most typically imagine it, having to do with one’s level of aggrandized self-assessment. In the cultural lexicon, ego is most immediately ascribed with negative connotations, the arrogant, or prideful, or narcissistic. The one who thinks too highly of himself to the detriment of others has a big and unhealthy ego.

And yet, the opposite is also true, that to think poorly of oneself, to consider oneself not enough in some way that denies one’s own genuine value and worth, is also a form of ego unhealth. We need some degree of a healthy ego for survival and to accomplish things for our lives and for others. Ego points to our awareness of our unique conscious self and that self in relation to the world. It is also, in the general sense, a way in which we chart our level of self-esteem and perhaps even self-love, whether it’s too much or too little. And, in a world in which we have been taught and conditioned to judge ourselves and others by external achievements and appearances, and to believe our self-worth runs parallel to how high we can climb any number of metaphorical ladders, it makes sense that our primary way of considering the ego is hyper focused in this singular and almost obsessive way.

When we look around us as the state of the world, it is not hard to recognize that on many levels, our societies are deeply imbalanced between health and disease. Perhaps a symptom or perhaps a cause of this is that we remain so fixated on our conditioned wants and expansive and seemingly collective greed, that we remain so often unaware of our genuine needs. We are ego-driven in the least interesting and least generative ways of all.

But, there is another way to think about the role of the ego, the shape it takes, and how experiences that push towards the loss of ego can lend to reconsiderations of how we live, our sense of purpose, and what is of ultimate value to us. Some may refer to these experiences as ego death, times when there seems to be a dissolution between our sense of self and the rest of the world, when, for a brief period of time, we may feel “at one” with the world, and with each other. This kind of ego loss is often associated with the use of psychedelics or spiritual meditation that reaches a certain peak.

But there is also the ego loss that comes in tandem with those seasons of our lives where old versions of ourselves are in the process of dying and new versions of ourselves are in the process of becoming. Whether triggered by any one of life’s unforeseen trials, or from reaching natural passages of different life stages, or sparked by an interior movement or awakening we may not have words for, we all at some point find ourselves at the threshold of life asking us in one way or another if we are willing to let a version of our old self die in order for a new self to be born.

For this to happen, there needs to be some element of ego loss, a letting go of whomever we have perceived ourselves to be in order to surrender to the space between the old and the new, where we may feel painfully full of new questions as we feel our way through transformations that begin within us and then ripple out to the concentric circles that make up our outer worlds.

I don’t in anyway pretend to understand the process of ego dissolution. It straddles that line of mystery and spirit, becoming and consciousness. And usually requires courage to embrace the season in which it presents itself. I think it is a way for those who suspect that the life journey is as spiritual as it is corporeal, that the ego has a purpose to play in teaching us both how to learn and how to unlearn as we hopefully move towards higher levels of consciousness.

And whatever we might imagine, I am not sure that chasing such an experience is the goal. Rather, I wonder if it is more about staying open and cognizant of the fact that along our human journey, life will happen to us in ways (likely painful) that open the opportunity to experience the path of ego death.

“Ego loss – a letting go of whomever we have perceived ourselves to be in order to surrender to the space between the old and the new, where we may feel painfully full of new questions as we feel our way through transformations that begin within us and then ripple out to the concentric circles that make up our outer worlds.”

I don’t in anyway pretend to understand the process of ego dissolution. It straddles that line of mystery and spirit, becoming and consciousness. And usually requires courage to embrace the season in which it presents itself. I think it is a way for those who suspect that the life journey is as spiritual as it is corporeal, that the ego has a purpose to play in teaching us both how to learn and how to unlearn as we hopefully move towards higher levels of consciousness. And whatever we might imagine, I am not sure that chasing such an experience is the goal. Rather, I wonder if it is more about staying open and cognizant of the fact that along our human journey, life will happen to us in ways (likely painful) that open the opportunity to experience the path of ego death.

I stress opportunity because not all of us will open ourselves up to the challenge and perhaps the discomfort that follows. And yet, I believe that in some way, before we can transition to the next iteration of ourselves, the unveiling of a self more fitting to the place in life we inhabit, the old self has to be peeled back, to be left behind. This is where an ego death seems necessary.

As though we must continually encounter mini-deaths of the versions of the self we are familiar with throughout our lives if we are to continue to evolve and grow. But we are so used to associating the word death with devastation and ultimate end that I think we fail to remember that death is also a rotation in the cycle of life, and it sets the stage for the birth of something else in a new form. Ego death may be an end, but it is also a beginning, to engaging in life in a new way, with the one we have become and are yet becoming.