How is EGO formed and how to control it? Some aspects from babies to adults.

Learning about how to control the ego leads to a state of permanent enquiry, a mature state. In school we get an emotional reward from the teacher or ourselves as to success or failure, we attach to those emotions and this also becomes part of our ego – and is the basis of our “learning” process at school. 

But first we need to understand conditioning and how this builds up ego. There are political aspects of our conditioning, and words we might use are indoctrination, manipulation propaganda etc. 

Conditioning is a natural process that we all go through in our education and upbringing, and it is far broader than any political description. In his books (The Four Agreements and The Fifth Agreement) – App A, Don Miguel Riaz describes this conditioning as agreements – a far gentler term. We go through our education and upbringing until eventually we agree with what society and our parents want us to agree with. I prefer to call this process “conditioning” because, although as children we choose to agree, as adults we have not made a mature choice and yet these agreements are still part of most of us as adults. In the process of maturing to become an adult we eschew the agreements that were part of our upbringing, and choose enquiry – proactive choice is a characteristic of the mature.

How does conditioning or this process of “making agreements” work?

Let us go back right to the beginning – as babies. Nature gives us instinct so babies know to get milk from the mother without having to be told, this is instinct. Instinct is beneficial because it helps us survive even when we don’t have the faculties to decide how to survive. We develop an emotional bond with our parents where we learn behaviours that please our parents getting an emotional reward or getting negative attention (a different emotional reward) by less pleasing behaviour. As we get older there are other instincts – most notably the sexual instinct which nature takes us to. So our youthful conditioning comes from instinct; is there another way of learning?

What actually occurs within the child during this conditioning? There is an event such as the need for milk. The baby feels the emotional warmth of the mother as well as the milk so the baby desires these feelings – the baby attaches to these feelings and to a certain extent becomes this attachment to these feelings; this attachment is the beginning of ego. As a young child learning of what gets a response from parents occurs. The child feels the emotional response, attaches to those feelings and what produces them leading to more learned behaviour for the ego. In school we get an emotional reward from the teacher or ourselves as to success or failure, we attach to those emotions and this also becomes part of our ego – and is the basis of our “learning” process at school. This is how we reach agreements at school, or, a more emotional description, this is how we are conditioned at school. Broadly our egos are formed as attachments to emotions we gain as we grow up, our egos are this collection of attachments based on response to emotions in different circumstances.

There can be different levels of emotion that cause the attachments that build up the ego. An event can happen producing minimal emotion but the ego recognises it, reinforces the power of the event and the event is attached to the ego accordingly. As children our egos are conditioned as responses to events that happen to us, we build up egos as response to emotions.

Please note here that as teenagers we function as these egos, egos which have responded to emotions coming from family, education and society. But because our egos come from emotional responses to external events it is very easy to affect the development of these egos.

So far I have mostly considered emotions we like as a means of developing the ego, but of course our egos can be formed as a response to events we dislike. Dislike is often used by parents as a corrective measure in upbringing - in the formation of ego. As children grow older this dislike is more strongly recognisable. Teenagers are renowned for their rebellion. In the way I have been discussing the ego it could be seen as the ego rejecting the agreements – not accepting the conditioning. The word I will use for these “not-liking” responses is aversion. But the important characteristic of this aversion is that it is still a response to events. The ego is averse to the conditioning it is given, it is averse to the expected agreements.

This aversion continues into politics and we can be averse to the political system but at this stage this political aversion is still a response; it is still egotic. This would be typified by statements that you will soon grow out of it. And it is exemplified by those who do grow out of it, agree to follow a lifestyle that society has conditioned the ego for. Typical of this aversion phase would be those who intellectually accept this aversion and reject the political system, yet as they grow older they take on family, need a job, buy a home, and then vote because the people in their background have been conditioned into believing that this traditional vote will provide a more stable economy. Despite their younger aversion they have accepted the conditioning of their upbringing in accepting the connection between job, home and stability and a particular way of voting, conditioning which their parents got from their parents. This type of traditional vote is more based in conditioning and ego than in any reasoning.

So this aversion is still an egotic reaction and is not the type of growing-up reaction. 

Suppose we grow up in a compassionate home, we might not experience any aversion. The agreements in that home would be compassionate, and whilst there will be some aversion to the aspects of the system that are not compassionate, within the home and within education these are likely to be met with agreement.

So far I have described a process of conditioning that creates ego, this ego can be seen as a significant aspect of our personalities but it is based on responding to events that condition either favourably or aversely to whatever degree. Conditioning produces an ego through response. But creative acts are not responsive, creative acts come from who you are inside. Acts that are creative have gone beyond the conditioning, they are not a response that agrees, they are not averse actions. Creative acts take us beyond ego, and because this creativity is individual it has a strength that is far beyond the fragility of ego.

It is important to see the position of creativity within the development process as I have described. Nature provides us with instincts, and we learn instinctively either favourably or aversely. But as we mature these instinctive reactions are designed by nature to fall away and be replaced by a personal creative maturity. What is also important to note is that the ego created by this instinctive development is naturally fragile and is intended to fall away.

But sadly in our society this ego does not fall away. Rather than encouraging the ego to break, fall away and be replaced by a creative maturity, in our society the ego is continually reinforced. This is an important aspect of the 1%-satrapy. Our consumer spending is oriented towards this indulgent egotistical lifestyle that is competitive, materialistic, fashion-oriented, sexually-indulgent; it is egotistical. I would also describe it as adolescent and immature because these are not the attributes of a lifestyle that I associate with creative maturity.

Many of the people whose egos are averse to the system agreements are also averse to the indulgent adolescent consumer-oriented egotism I have just described. Initially their response as teenagers and young adults is averse. As they grow older does their aversion change? Sometimes. A mature person would balance out their life, fulfil their family commitments whilst carrying out their natural duty of struggle.

What I want this example to illustrate is the fragility of ego. Egos are responsive, require continuous reinforcement; by its very nature an ego is vulnerable.  The strength of the person who has made a creative mature decision comes not from a reinforced response but from the mature conviction itself coming from the creative understanding they develop as a mature person.

In addition, repeated reinforcement can give the delusion of this inner strength. 

The change of emphasis in political education that I am proposing is to focus on the developing of this creativity and inner strength as opposed to repeated reinforcement of the narrative.