Ego And Essence
A Moonday 🌖 Monday reflection on Ego And Essence, Conditioned Awareness And Open Awareness, Individuality And Participation as a kind of Sorites Paradox—a puzzle about vague predicates/words.
Why the most important words are the least precise.
As a contemplative practitioner and a personal development coach, I spend much of my time using words I cannot precisely define.
Soul.
Spirit.
Grace.
Presence.
Love.
Heart.
Ego.
Essence.
If you asked me exactly where “ego” ends and “essence” begins…
I couldn’t tell you.
Neither could Thomas Keating.
Or Thomas Merton.
Or Cynthia Bourgeault.
Or the fourth century contemplative Evagrius.
And strangely…
I don’t think that’s a problem.
I think it’s a clue.
Perhaps the deepest realities of human life resist sharp boundaries because they were never meant to become concepts.
They were meant to become lived experience.
Imagine standing outside just before sunrise.
At what precise second does night become morning?
No one can say.
The boundary is wonderfully fuzzy.
Yet no one doubts that dawn is real.
The edges are unclear.
The experience is unmistakable.
I have come to think that words like personality or ego and soul or essence work in much the same way.
They are not laboratory words.
They are living words.
Laboratory 🧪 words
vs. Living 🌱 words
Laboratory words seek precision.
Living words invite participation.
Water boils at a particular temperature.
212* degrees Fahrenheit
100* degrees Celsius
That is wonderfully precise.
Love isn’t.
Neither is forgiveness.
Or wisdom.
Or beauty.
Or Grace.
Thank goodness.
If we could fully define them, perhaps we would stop allowing them to transform us.
Sometimes we take these living words apart, hoping to discover exactly where one ends and another begins.
When does personality become soul?
Where exactly does the ego disappear?
At what point does awareness become Presence?
The closer we look, the more impossible the project becomes.
It’s a little like trying to determine which grain of sand finally becomes a heap or vice versa.
Ancient Greek philosophers spoke of this as a Sorites paradox or paradox of the heap. (Wikipedia)
Which single leaf transforms a sapling into a forest? 🌱 🌳
Reality simply doesn’t cooperate with our desire for perfectly sharp lines.
And perhaps that is one of its greatest gifts.
For many years I imagined ego and essence as two separate places.
You were either living from one…
or the other.
Life has taught me something gentler.
Perhaps they are better understood as two ends of a continuum.
Not two different selves.
But two different ways of identifying.
On one end…
I become tightly identified with my story.
My roles.
My fears.
My achievements.
My opinions.
My Enneagram type.
My carefully constructed image of who I think I need to be.
On the other end…
I begin resting in something quieter.
Awareness itself.
Presence.
The heart.
The spaciousness that has been here all along.
The question slowly changes.
Instead of asking,
“Am I in ego?”
I find myself asking,
“How tightly am I holding the story I’m telling about myself right now?”
That is a very different question.
And perhaps a much kinder one.
Thomas Keating often spoke about the “false self.”
I have gradually come to think of what I call the provisional self in a similar way.
Not false because it is bad. It’s more “artificial.”
Not false because it is unreal. Its reality is just more patterned and machine-like than the reality of the deeper luminous human heart.
False in the sense that it is incomplete.
It is provisional.
Provided for by Grace.
Necessary.
Adaptive.
Brilliant.
It helps us navigate the world.
It protects us.
It learns.
It remembers.
It plans.
It survives.
But it cannot carry the weight of being our ultimate identity.
That burden is simply too heavy.
This is where the language of the Luminous YOU has become so meaningful to me.
The Luminous YOU is not another personality hidden underneath the one you already have.
It is not a spiritual identity waiting to replace your ordinary humanity.
It is the quiet realization that who you most deeply are has always been larger than every story you have ever told about yourself.
Larger than your successes.
Larger than your failures.
Larger than your fears.
Larger than your certainty.
Larger even than your spiritual biography.
Perhaps awakening is not crossing an invisible line from personality/ego into essence.
Perhaps it is simply becoming less fascinated by the stories that once convinced us they were the whole truth.
The stories still appear.
The provisional self still has work to do after all.
The ego still lives under our roof, as Cynthia Bourgeault so wisely reminds us.
Nothing needs to be thrown away.
Every•thing belongs.
But not everything belongs in the driver’s seat.
Maybe that is what contemplative practice slowly teaches when we consent and become more open and receptive to what is going on.
Not to become someone else.
Not even to eliminate the ego.
But to loosen our identification.
To discover, again and again,
a deeper place from which to live.
A place spacious enough to welcome every part of our humanity.
A place I have come to call…
the Luminous YOU.
Reflection
Today…
Can I hold my opinions and preferences a little more lightly?
Can I come to appreciate my personality without confusing it for my deepest identity?
Can I notice the stories my mind is telling…
without assuming they are the whole truth?
Perhaps I don’t need to know exactly where ego ends and essence begins.
Perhaps it is enough simply to ask…
From where am I living right now?
And perhaps the answer isn’t another concept.
Perhaps it is an experience.
One breath.
One moment of awareness.
One gentle act of consent.
One more step toward the Luminous YOU.
“Every•thing belongs.
But not everything belongs in the driver’s seat.” So simply said!