Meanings of ego…
- Organization of the human self, the software allowing it to operate and function in the world. (Software, because it is malleable, although encompasses both body and psyche.)This one stays around before and after Ground awakening, and can continue to heal, mature and develop through experience and practice. Before awakening, this healing, maturing and development makes it easier to be who we take ourselves to be, and after Ground awakening, it makes for better skillful means in expressing and living Ground awakening through this human self, relieving suffering for others in terms of who they take themselves to be, and also invite Ground to awaken to itself through others.
- A sense of separate self, and the field of awake void and form filtered through this sense, creating an appearance of I and Other, center and periphery, outside and inside. This one is created through taking an imagined separate self as real, and can appear very convincing. We can see these stories as only thoughts through various forms of inquiry.
- A fueling of an identity specifying how this separate self is different from the wider world. This one deepens the sense of split between I and the wider world. I become better and worse than others, and stories are fueled about how this is so. We can reduce this sense of split through working with projections, finding in this human self the qualities we see in the wider world, and the other way around. The wider world becomes a mirror for this human self, and we find that anything here is universally human, although also with a certain flavor (and this flavor of uniqueness is also universally human).