Ego-Id-Me-I
Ego says we have to be better than everybody else and feel important. We have to have the best of everything to be happy, but just how happy do we really feel when we achieve what ego says we want? Sometimes I listen to ego because after all he has my best interests at heart doesn’t he? No, not always and he doesn’t always know what is going to make me happy.
I was reading about ego on the Wikipedia site and I found the following excerpts interesting concerning the ego, id, and super-ego. The ego is the mediator between the id and the super-ego, the go between guy.
1. The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, sex, and aggressive impulses. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and will not take “no” for an answer.
2. In the opinion of Eckhart Tolle the ego is the minds identification with forms and social labels (body, thoughts, memories, social roles, life-story, opinions, emotions, material possessions, name, nationality, religion, likes and dislikes, desires, fears, etc.) and includes “the pain-body”, which is created by the cumulation of suppressed emotions, the suffering of non-acceptance of what is in the present moment.
3. The Superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. Many equate the superego with the conscience as it dictates our belief of right and wrong.
The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on — in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.
I have always found the psyche a very interesting subject even though it’s hard for me to follow all the different ideas that are debated by well scholared individuals in that field. Even they have their differing opinions same as any other field. I have my own opinions also and I love to watch people and watch their mind work, I have always found that to be an interesting pastime.
The point is I try to be grateful and happy for the people and material things in my life right now and not dwell on what was or how I can get more tomorrow because right now is all that matters because there is no past and no future there is only this moment. I know you have heard people say “live for the moment” and depending on how you see reality that’s really all there is.
