Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Ego and Soul

So let's talk about those two concepts, those roles. These are all constructs, concepts, we're making them up. There are no tangible, measurable boundaries structures here. But for practical reasons, these are ideas, mythic ideas, that in this day and age, and for a growing number of people, they work--these are effective. People generally know what you're talking about, and more, most folks seem to like it.
Your ego-self, that's your everyday sense of who you are. The soul is a role. The soul is a role. That's the role of the source of your imagery, your temperament, your individuality, your telic preferences, your creative inspirations, your aspirations.

Your ego-self is the mediator between your soul and the world. You are a team, your soul can't manifest without you. However, your ego-self can for a while, at least, dominate, out-talk, talk louder than, repress, and even forget the soul. It's a still, small, voice, as the prophet Isaiah called it. But in the long run, the yearnings of the soul will be expressed somehow, in psychosomatic illness, in slips of tongue and mind, in acts of self-sabotage or impassivity or compulsions. Much emotional and even social disorder may be attributed to or formulated in terms of a disharmony between the needs of soul and the petty efforts at self-control of the ego.

So the game of healing is to align these two roles, to recognize what each does best and to stop trying to substitute one for the other. Now we don't teach this skill in school, and it so far hasn't been widely taught even in the field of psychotherapy. How to serve your soul. You do need to serve it, you know, because it's already doing all it can for you. It never lets up, it may be suppressed, but it's always there. You can lose touch with it, but you can't lose it.

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