Psychology recognizes that thoughts are the main influencers of our feelings and behaviour and that we often have negative, unhelpful thoughts which do not do us any favours. These thoughts however come from ego goals that we have set for ourselves. We are not good enough, not successful enough, we should be better and these drive our allegiance to the ego. The overcompensation for this, is that we are special and better than everyone else, we are good people and have done nothing wrong and we are successful because we have a lot of money or power or achievement.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy teaches us to recognize and challenge these thoughts and make them more helpful. This is a very effective strategy. We learn to accept limitations, to be more reasonable and rational and accept our egos for what they are. It goes a limited way into questioning why we have to be so special, that we are not truly guilty and that success does not have to be based on external values. It helps us live with our limitations more easily.
However, it does not challenge the whole thought system on which these premises are based. We learn to make our thinking more helpful, but we do not change the core values on which this thinking is based.
The province of the true self is based on a totally opposed thinking system which has at its core a totally different set of values. These values are alien to the ego self which tends to fight the logic and implementation of these values and believes the thought system is against its own best interests. It IS against the best interests of the ego but is in the ultimate best interests of the true self. When we identify with this part as the true part of us, the thinking system does not seem so unnatural and with practice, it is able to provide us with the happiness and peace which the ego thought system can never provide because the ego’s system is flawed and bound to not deliver what it promises.
The Path from the ego to the true self
The first step is to question the value of these goals. This is only done when there has been enough disappointment, pain and dysfunction in our lives for us to question its advice and guidance and seek for something else. We start to be a little more open to a different way of seeing things as a possible solution. Even when our lives have been relatively successful according to the ego, we are left wondering why these goals do not satisfy.
Psychology infers that problems do not come from these goals themselves, but from the distorted thoughts, emotions and behaviours in attempting to achieve them. The value of the goals is left unquestioned. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure are all still prized. We just wonder why we are still not happy. It is not our pursuit of happiness that is the problem, it is the ways we define what will bring us happiness that is the problem.
Why is the ego system so dysfunctional?
Psychodynamic theory takes it all back to early childhood. As a matter of fact, as Psychologists, we spend a long time exploring a person’s childhood and investigating the onset of particular dysfunctional thoughts and patterns of behaviour which emerged then and which have stayed with the person during their lifetime.
But the true self stands apart from the ego self with its convoluted patterns of thought and behaviour which certainly were apparent in childhood and in the circumstances of our childhood. Is the origin of our pain and dysfunction entirely in our personal history? Certainly our personal history has shone a light on our particular expression of our pain and dysfunction.
Is it possible that the causes are much deeper and more global than merely our personal histories? Could the causes be in the very nature of the ego?
It is our overall desire to become what we think we need to become and the thought system which promotes that which is at the root of our dysfunctional thoughts and behaviour.
