Have you ever met someone who believes they are god’s gift to the world and deserve special attention? How about someone who believes they are worst of the worst and also deserve special attention? Both individuals have essentially the same thing going on: they can’t stop thinking about themselves or get the attention they feel they deserve.
They are both entitled neurotic egos.
At various times in our lives we have all been there. Almost by definition, ego (Latin “I”) is the center of attention around which turn our circumstances, daily life, the universe, and everything that matters – to us. Ever since we were born our tribe has been busy telling us who we are, where we belong, how we should behave and what we should believe.
Some of us had taller powers who told us we were perfect little angels and deserved the very best in life. Others were told that we could never be good enough on our own and would always need someone else’s help to measure up to anything.
The adventure of ego (or self-) consciousness on Earth has had mixed results. Certainly the rise of self-conscious actors who could serve as bearers of social identity and cultural meaning marked a significant evolutionary breakthrough.
But with it came this susceptibility to self-obsession, believing we are either better or worse than everyone else and consequently deserving of special attention.
When you stop and think about it, most of humanity’s greatest social disasters through history can be attributed to the root cause of our neurotic and entitled egos.
That orange spiral to the left – which in this blog never indicates anything good – stands for this condition of spinning in ever-tighter revolutions around an insecure identity.
Whether we’re stuck in a superiority complex or an inferiority complex, it’s “all about me.”
In my diagram I have placed math operators next to each of these conditions. The multiplication sign is a magnifier that makes the ego into something exceptional and larger than life, while the division sign is a minimizer in the way it breaks the ego down into something exceptionally unexceptional – helpless, hopeless and waiting for Godot. For the neurotic ego, the meaning of life is a function of either magnifying oneself (“more of me”: superiority complex) or dividing oneself (“less of me”: inferiority complex).
This plays out in religion as the difference between those who see themselves as deserving of honor and glory, on one side, and on the other those who regard themselves as damned helpless rejects who need to be saved. In orthodox Christianity the message is that it really is all about you. High-achievers and lowlifes alike can be assured of living forever in heaven as long as they believe in (what the church teaches about) Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior.
Inside popular Christian theism this profound allegiance to the ego and its insatiable craving for attention and immortality is passionately proclaimed as the end-game of belief. You believe so that you will go to heaven, whether because you’ve done good and deserve a hand, or because you’re no good and deserve a hand up.
Jesus himself seems to have had a very different message, for the good and bad like: Get over yourself and start caring for others. You are not entitled to anything and you don’t deserve anything, because you lack nothing. Not a pat on the back or a boot on your neck. It’s not all about you. There’s work to be done, so come along!
Indeed there is hardly a more tragic gap to be found in all of religion than what separates orthodox Christianity and the spirituality of Jesus. If there’s hope for the Christian religion – and time is running out – it will come by way of a renaissance of his original message and way of life.
What makes this unlikely is that the Christian religion has a strong historical momentum of self-centered belief and behavior, and is currently under the management of leaders who can’t get over themselves either.
But if they could, what would be different? What else can be done with this evolutionary breakthrough in self-conscious personal identity (ego) besides showering it with glory or casting it down in shame?
The answer to that question is where our renaissance will begin.
To the right of ego in my diagram are two more math operators, a plus sign and a minus sign. Now, whereas the other operators were “done to” the ego (making it bigger by magnification or smaller by division), these next two are “done with” the ego. The plus sign indicates a move of leaping beyond the ego in connection with, or as Jesus might have said, for the sake of others.
This is one way of getting over yourself: psychospiritually getting outside and above ego concerns in order to join the higher wholeness of genuine community.
Obviously – or at least it should be obvious – an insecure ego that is spiraling into its own neurotic sense of entitlement will not be capable of self-transcendence or genuine community. There’s too much of “me and mine” getting in the way. When the neurotic ego connects with others it’s typically with the aim of getting the upper hand (×), or else kissing the feet of one we hope will save us (÷).
The neurotic ego will also refuse to follow the inward path of subtraction – not reducing ego until little is left (which is division), but dropping past ego consciousness altogether. Such an inward descent entails rappelling the interior precipice of oneself, below personal identity and its whirling tetherball of obsessions, through the nervous system, and deep into the living body’s cradle of biorhythms.
All of that descending terrain is what I call the grounding mystery. In this deep inner place there is no separation where thoughts and words might get a toehold. The experience is timeless and ineffable; there we can simply relax into being and be at peace.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the ascending path of transpersonal spirit (plus sign) and the descending path of existential soul (minus sign) have been consistently condemned in religions where the entitled neurotic ego is calling the shots. These same religions know nothing of the grounding mystery within or what genuine community has to offer.
In fact, they are presently the diabolical adversary to the spiritual renaissance our planet needs. When all that matters is what you deserve … well, then nothing else really matters, does it?
Tracts of Revolution 