SPIRITUAL GROWTH: THE PRIMITIVE EGO GROWS UP

by Dick Rauscher

Abstract

Spiritual growth will require humanity to adopt a meme or paradigm of horizontal power; a world view of cooperation, empathy, diversity, interdependence, and a self-identity that is spirit centered, not ego centered. The primitive ego of early childhood uses a paradigm of negation and vertical power; a world view called survival of the fittest. The vertical power paradigm of the primitive ego is the root of virtually all conflict and suffering. Spiritual growth, the evolution of the human species and the formation of a non-violent global community are all dependent on the maturation of the primitive ego.

The Primitive Ego: Childhood Formation

Spiritual growth is a journey of ever-increasing self-awareness and self-consciousness; a work that begins at birth, and continues until we reach enlightenment or death.

The first steps in our spiritual journey begin at birth with the struggle to create our ego and define our self-autonomy, self-identity, and self-esteem. By the time we are eight years old, our reactive, primitive ego is basically developed; our self-identity is in place. If we got the necessary emotional resources from our primary caregivers such as attention, unconditional love, empathy, and affirmation, our self esteem will be solid and positive. We are well prepared to continue growing into a mature adult ego that is comfortable with the anxiety of paradox, gray thinking, uncertainty, and not-knowing. Our primitive ego reflects an optimal stage of human development.

If, however, our childhood caregivers deprived us of the emotional resources we needed for optimum growth, it will be very difficult for us to escape the prison of the reactive, primitive ego. We will find ourselves stuck with one foot mired in the mud of childhood. Our spiritual journey toward a non-reactive, mature, adult, observing ego will be virtually impossible until the wounds of our primitive ego are healed.

Our primitive ego will manifest a false self; not our true self. We will become skilled at showing the world a “self “we believe the world wants to see. Vulnerability and intimacy will be experienced as dangerous. Our self esteem will be weak and our self image will tend to be brittle and negative.

Until we learn that the healing we need is an inside work, we will devote most or all of our life energy searching the external world for things that we think will eliminate the pain, and make us happy. Money, relationships, fame, possessions, and success are common places we will look; addictions are another. The primitive ego will spend it’s life on this false path.

We will grow to become overly concerned with the speck in our neighbors eye and unable to see the log in our own. We will attempt to maintain or increase our self-esteem by criticizing and judging others so as to feel superior. We will blame others for our feelings; a process that will cause unending conflict in our personal relationships, and will virtually always leave us feeling powerless, angry and victimized.

The primitive ego learns very early in life to survive by adopting these unconscious skills called “vertical power” and “negation”; the current paradigm or world view used by virtually every human culture.

Negation And Vertical Power: The Roots Of Conflict

"Vertical power" refers to the ego's need to have "power over"; to be the best, in control, and right. The primitive ego expends a great deal of energy avoiding the threat of vulnerability by making sure it is better than someone else, and passionately defending it's "beliefs"; what it "knows" to be "right". Vertical power, the tendency to catalog the world in terms of all good or all bad, right or wrong, emerges out of the early developmental stage called splitting or black or white thinking

The survival skill of “negation” means that the ego constructs it’s self-identity using all or nothing conceptual categories that define the “me” from the “not-me”. The creation of these me/not-me conceptual categories created by splitting in the primitive ego-mind is called duality thinking in Buddhist psychology.

Using “negation” to define the arbitrary categories of me / not-me, the ego then identifies itself with those conceptual categories or beliefs that it feels are right, and good. (For example, American, Christian, educated, successful, wealthy, therapist, Doctor, CEO, engineer, work for a living, white, male, married, do not use drugs, etc.). Once created, everything and everyone on this conceptual list is experienced as “we / us”. The “not-me” categories are emotionally experienced as “other / them”. These categories of “otherness” are the root of judgment.

After using concepts of vertical power and the process of negation to define itself, the primitive ego will struggle to protect it’s self-identity against criticism, and any real or perceived threats from “others”. Simply stated, the ego needs to be right and will create great conflict to defend its belief system from criticism. It will even go to war and die to defend it’s beliefs.

This unconscious primitive ego functioning should not be labeled as either right or wrong. This is simply how our ego gives birth to itself in childhood and young adulthood. However it is very important that we understand this primitive unconscious ego is “not helpful” in our day to day adult relationships, especially if our goal is non-violence.

Since no one grows up in a “perfect” family, every human ego will, to some degree, have its self-identity based on vertical power and negation. In other words, each of us bring the seeds of conflict and suffering into the world. Non-violence will not be achieved until we understand and accept this uncomfortable reality. The primitive ego is always self-serving. The primitive ego always knows how reality “should” be. The plumb line for right and good runs directly down the center of the primitive ego.

Thus, non-violence simply can not be achieved using the primitive ego-mind’s operational paradigm of negation and vertical power; a paradigm of exclusion and domination or “power-over”. All of the castes and classes; all the gaps between the have and have-not nations; all the racism, sexism, and the painful judgment that comes from “otherness”; have been created using the vertical power paradigm of the primitive human ego.

If we are to continue growing spiritually so that our ego’s energy is less focused on protecting it’s self esteem and is more available for empathy and the formation of compassionate communities, it is clear that we must develop a new world view of non-violence, and radically redefine our self-identity. We must learn to move our self-identity from that of the self-centered ego to the spirit-centered self as taught by all of history’s great spiritual teachers. Injustice and violence will not be eliminated until we learn to think differently.

To summarize, the needs of the unconscious primitive ego are best served by a paradigm of vertical power; the need to be right, to be in control, to be better, to win, and to protect its self-identity and self-esteem at all costs.

The needs a mature conscious adult ego and the development of compassionate community are best served by a paradigm of horizontal power; empathy, cooperation, diversity, and interdependence. We will explore the mature ego’s paradigm of horizontal power in greater detail below.

So where do we go from here? How do we begin to develop this more mature ego? First, lets explore the results of a world controlled by the self-centered, unconscious, primitive ego of childhood and take a look at what happens when our primitive ego moves out of its family of origin and into the larger adult world of diverse cultural and societal memes.

Memes: A Virus Of The Mind

Memes are mental ideas or beliefs. Some refer to a meme as a mental virus…..an idea that spreads from mind to mind. We use memes to build cultures the way genes build bodies. For example, the founders of our nation created a new cultural script or meme when they created the “idea” that we could be a nation that embraces freedom as its most important value. This meme called freedom grew to eventually give birth to a major paradigm shift in the structure of human society in the new world.

It is important for us to understand that the various human cultures and societies we have thus far created on this planet are but a few of the infinite possible cultures available to us. Each of the current human cultures on this planet simply reflects the specific memes that the members of that particular culture have chosen or adopted to define their culture.

It should come as no surprise that the predominant worldview or meme being used today is the vertical power paradigm of the primitive ego; commonly referred to as survival of the fittest. The violence and conflict we see around us in the world today is a direct reflection of this vertical power paradigm.

The vertical power meme of the primitive ego was an important evolutionary step in human consciousness. A basic meme of primitive humans was the self-identity one had with one’s tribe. It was a very helpful meme when the primary goal of life was survival. The strong tribes survived, the weak tribes perished. Tribes remain an important meme in the Middle East even to this day.

The most defining concept we use to describe the modern world is that of change. Human knowledge is growing exponentially. The rate at which we are discarding the old memes, and creating new cultural memes is also growing. The memes of Marxism and Communism have collapsed. The meme called unlimited economic growth is being questioned. The meme of terrorism is on the increase.

Blacks and other minorities are rapidly becoming equal partners in a meme called an “integrated culture”. The old meme was called white mainline society. Women are beginning to take their place along side of men as the old meme called “patriarchal domination” gives way to the meme of “sexual equality”.

It is important to note that racism and sexism, which reflect the primitive ego’s meme of vertical power are slowly giving way to memes of horizontal power called integrated culture and sexual equality. The primitive ego is slowly beginning to mature; but not without conflict.

The Primitive Ego Identifies Itself With Specific Memes

Because of the amazing growth in communications, transportation, and technology, the global community is growing smaller every day. People on opposite sides of the globe now routinely chat with one another over the internet. These people are no longer strangers to one another. They may live on opposite sides of the globe, but labeling them as “others” is not making sense anymore. These global friendships are still small in number when compared to the overall population of the world, but the numbers are growing.

Rudyard Kipling once wrote: "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Today, the once clear boundaries between eastern and western cultural and social memes are no longer quite so clear. When people begin to share ideas, talk about what is important to them, an develop friendships, the sense of “otherness” begins to dissolve.

Individuals in the eastern nations are rapidly digesting the values, technology, and economic systems of western culture. Individuals in the western world are increasingly integrating and adopting eastern psychological and spiritual insights.

For example, yoga, acupuncture, eastern spiritual practices such as learning to live in the moment, the importance of unity / non-duality, and meditation, are rapidly replacing traditional western mainline religious practices called prayer and Sunday worship.

Conflict at the global level is increasing exponentially as both religious institutions and nation-state governments struggle to preserve, their faiths, beliefs, language, national boundaries, economies, their cultural histories, and their identities as a people. The global conflict we see today is clearly driven by the meme called survival of the fittest.

Virtually all of the terrible violence and conflict in the world today is the result of religious memes being defended by the vertical power paradigm of the primitive ego; religious institutions struggling to defend their beliefs, and each claiming to have the right and good version of faith despite the reality that no one faith will ever capture the reality we call God. No words will ever describe the reality we call Creator. There are many paths to the Sacred Ground of Being. The existential question of consciousness will always remain unanswered; who am I? Why am I? What is the meaning of life?

It is important to remember, it is not the memes that create the conflict. Faith, religious beliefs, economic and national ideologies are neutral; simply the religious, social, and cultural models that we are currently exploring as a species. It is not the various religious faiths or the national and economic ideologies that create the conflict. Conflict emerges when the primitive ego uses vertical power to protect the memes or models that it is using to create its own self-identity.

The primitive ego sees itself as a separate object and lives in constant fear of being destroyed; physically or psychologically. Once the primitive human ego has identified itself with a particular meme through the process of negation, it does not like to “think” differently.

New ideas, new mimes, new beliefs, new ways of understanding reality, and new values, are all threatening to the primitive ego’s survival. Once it has adopted a meme or a belief, it does not like change.

In order to give up the meme of vertical power and embrace change, the primitive ego must be willing to change it’s self-identity; it must literally be willing to die. If, as we have seen, the basic need of the primitive ego is survival, then it is not going to embrace change easily. In other words, the primitive ego may be slowly maturing, but we will not give birth to a new global paradigm of horizontal power without conflict.

The Need For Change: Learning To Think Differently

In today’s world, the sense of “otherness”, and the conflict which results from the vertical power paradigm is growing, not diminishing. We claim to value compassion, we preach about the importance of global peace, we acknowledge the growing gap between the have nations and the have not nations of the third world, but the conflicts continue to grow.

Everyone agrees that a more interdependent, systemic world view is very much needed.; that diversity, cooperation and empathy must somehow quickly become the new meme for human consciousness. Day by day it is becoming clear that global peace and non-violence urgently requires the birth of a new horizontal power meme.

So how do we let go of vertical power thinking and continue to move, even more quickly, in the direction of horizontal power thinking, when the primitive ego so passionately resists change? Again, I believe the answer is obvious; the unconscious primitive human ego must be encouraged to mature and become conscious. In other words, humans must become more self-reflective; more self-aware.

We must become conscious by learning to become more contemplative. This will require us to pay attention, to reflect and contemplate who we are at a deeper level of self-awareness, and to become more self-conscious because the simple reality is, we cannot change anything that we do not see, understand, and accept about ourselves. Once we begin to see and deeply understand the conflict and suffering caused by our own unconscious vertical power thinking, it will begin to make less and less sense for the primitive ego.

The human ego will not change because of force of will, it will change only when the old memes no longer make any sense. Through contemplation, it will become more and more obvious to the primitive ego that in order to survive, it will be necessary to increasingly embrace horizontal power.

The path into the future will become clearer. To develop a peaceful global community, we must give up the vertical power meme of the primitive ego, and replace it with the meme of horizontal power; of empathy, diversity, and cooperation where everything is systemically interdependent.

So how do we continue to create this new horizontal power paradigm? How do we accomplish this shift in consciousness? How can we accelerate the maturation of the primitive ego?

Creating A New Spiritual Language

Part of the problem interfering with the creation of a horizontal power paradigm, is simply the lack of horizontal “language” to articulate the new paradigm. The spiritual language currently available to talk about horizontal power comes from the various religions of the world. Unfortunately, the world’s religions are the bastions of vertical power thinking.

When we attempt to use religious language, we get caught in the emotional baggage that has been attached to “religious” and “spiritual” language by thousands of years of vertical power ego struggles over who is right and who is wrong. For example, when I suggested above that we need to become a more contemplative species, even the word “contemplative” has emotional religious baggage attached to it. The image of “Christian” clearly comes to mind even though the dictionary defines contemplation as simply being calm and thoughtful; to view or consider with continued attention. I use contemplative to mean intentionally looking more deeply into the nature of reality so as to enable spiritual growth through self-awareness.

It is important that we remember that a particular “religion” is defined simply as a collection of objective beliefs and practices. Spirituality is defined as a personal, subjective experience of the sacred; the Consciousness of the universe; the ground of Being. They are two very different subjects, and they must be understood as being separate if we are going to escape the age old struggle as to who is “right” and who is “wrong” when we try to create a “spiritual” language of horizontal power. It is the only way we can avoid the destructive conflict of vertical power.

In other words, we need to create a modern spiritual language that transcends all of the specific world religions; a language grounded in concepts of human consciousness and spiritual growth, not specific religious beliefs; A language that supports a “conscious evolution”.

It is virtually impossible to think about anything that can not be described by language. So until we begin to create this “spiritual” language to articulate and define a paradigm of horizontal power, we are going to be very limited in what we can create.

The creation of this language of “spiritual growth” is our first important task. (see www.stonyhill.com/newsletter for the feature article from Issue #1 of the Stonyhill Newsletter entitled Spiritual Growth: Growth in Self-Awareness).

Conscious Evolution: The Importance Of Diversity

Anthropologist and evolutionist Teilhard deChardin believes that when human beings developed reflexive consciousness, the ability to be conscious of being conscious, it was a radical step in evolution. The universe’s 15 billion year process of evolution gave birth to consciousness on this planet we call Earth. At that moment, evolution of one species on one small planet at the edge of one galaxy in a universe of billions and billions of galaxy’s was no longer confined to simple biology.

It is deCharin’s belief that the future of human evolution will now be determined by the evolution of human consciousness. Through the evolutionary birth of consciousness, we became evolution; co-creators with the consciousness of the universe. Barbara Marx Hubbard calls this the meme of “conscious evolution”….an evolution based on our consciously choosing to change how we think.

As co-creators, we will either unconsciously create more pain and suffering through the inevitable conflicts created by vertical power, or we will consciously create a new meme of diversity, cooperation, horizontal power, systemic interdependence, unity, and diversity; a meme that will allow us the ability to freely choose to create a compassionate global community.

Embracing unity does not mean that these integrated global communities will be communities of amorphous oneness, but rather global, non-violent communities that celebrate and embrace the infinite diversity and uniqueness of each member of the community.

Teilhard deChardin taught us that evolution is a process of similar elements coming together and freely sharing their essential energy so as to create the next step toward increased complexity and increased consciousness. If he is correct, we will evolve as a human species only when the essential energy of each person is freely connected and shared with the essential human energy of the next person. An integrated global community will be formed only by this person to person, center to center sharing of each member’s essential energy, not their egos.

To consciously birth this new horizontal power meme will be a great challenge for the human species. The primitive ego which uses a vertical power paradigm of domination is totally invested in seeing itself as a separate and unique object that must survive; it can embrace community, but only in so far as it is right and in control of all the other primitive ego “objects” in the community.

This is the internal conflict I believe the human family is presently manifesting in the world.

On one hand we currently have the vertical power of the “coalition of the just, the white, the right, the good” attempting to bring down the “evil, bad, black, wrong” regime of Saddam Hussein. It is the classic evolutionary struggle of the survival of the fittest.

On the other hand, while American soldiers fight to bring down Saddam’s brutal regime in Iraq, there are countless millions of people around the globe who are demonstrating to say that this way of running the world is no longer working. I believe that they represent a global awakening in consciousness that reflects a growing wisdom that we need to move from our current ego based, self-centered view of the world to a more spirit centered view.

Since we don’t have good language to speak about a spirit centered world view yet, and because our present vertical power language cannot adequately describe what a spirit centered community’s values and structure would look like, many of the peace demonstrators might have difficulty clearly articulating their deeper wisdom of a new horizontal power paradigm.

But I do believe that these peace demonstrators are beginning to manifest such a spiritual wisdom; an awakening consciousness that we indeed need a new paradigm; the wisdom that something needs to change; an emerging spiritual awareness that the old ways of thinking are no longer making sense!

Summary - Changing The Way We See Ourselves: The Journey From Ego Consciousness To Spirit Consciousness.

We cannot create a compassionate global community and world peace using the outmoded paradigm called survival of the fittest. The primitive ego can embrace the idea of peace, love, and compassion, only so long as the plumb line of what’s “right and good” runs directly through the center of its own belief system. The minute the primitive ego feels threatened, aggression and the conflict of vertical power will emerge.

The solution is two fold.

First we must understand ourselves well enough psychologically so as to see the log in our own eye; not focus on the speck in our neighbor's eye. We must become aware that the seeds of conflict, pain, and suffering that come from the paradigm of vertical power live deep in the heart of our own primitive ego.
Simply stated, our primitive ego, which believes itself to be an object separate from all other primitive ego objects; is created and maintained using the vertical power meme of negation and vertical power, and, as such, cannot co-exist with other primitive ego objects without conflict.
Secondly, we must learn to see who we are, the essential self. We must struggle to answer the age old question that humans have been struggling with since the beginning of reflexive consciousness. Who are we? Why are we? We must contemplate these questions by taking away, one by one, all the conceptual categories that the primitive ego uses to define it’s “self” through negation.
When the primitive ego has emptied itself of all its conceptual categories, and its self-identity based on a paradigm of vertical power, what remains is who we really are; Our essential self; Our essential nature; Pure Consciousness; Pure simple Observer; The one who sees what is without ego distortions; The localized "i am" that rests in the larger reality of "I AM"; The wave that can never be apart from the ocean.

This is clearly the message that Jesus, Buddha and all the great spiritual teachers throughout history were trying to teach us. They emphatically rejected the castes and class structures of vertical power consciousness. The lord-servant paradigm was rejected by them. They encouraged us to redefine ourselves in more spiritual terms; to be in touch with the essence of who we are; Pure compassion. Children of the Creator.

Thus, the creation of a mature ego that can use a new paradigm of horizontal power, cooperation, and diversity to form a compassionate global community; a freely chosen blending of our essential "i am" energies into an infinitely diverse global human family that manifests the agape love and compassion of "I AM", will require a radically new definition of “self”.

Spiritual growth is directly proportional to growth in self-consciousness. In other words, when we have consciously emptied ourselves of our conceptual categories, our various ego beliefs, and the need to judge everything relative to our self-esteem, then we will be free to accept the world as it is, and simply love. This place of ego “emptiness” and compassion is what I refer to as the middlepath; or middlepath consciousness.

We don’t know what a middlepath community, might look like, because it is a product of our human future. Until that time, we must have the courage to embrace a middlepath consciousness, a co-creative place of ego emptiness and not-knowing; where we can evolve into a new humanity; a humanity fully able to manifest the creative agape love of "I AM".

The only thing I am certain of, is that the present primitive ego driven by its paradigm called survival of the fittest has clearly outlived its evolutionary usefulness and will eventually destroy the universe’s evolutionary gift of reflexive consciousness; at least on this planet. This reality is not rocket science. Just pay attention to the news. Our evolutionary life on this planet is not, as they say, a dress rehearsal. This is our one chance. We will either evolve into a higher level of consciousness, or we will most likely cease to exist. The “choice” is ours.

The gift of consciousness was built into the very fabric of this universe at the moment of creation, but futurists and biologists such a Teilhard de Chardin tell us that our planet will never again produce the conditions necessary for conscious life to evolve. Mother earth gave birth to consciousness. Her work is done. Now it’s up to us to determine our evolutionary future. I am convinced we will learn to evolve consciously and quickly, or our future is dark.

Survival of the fittest works fine when the battle is over a cave and the weapons are spears. It doesn’t work very well for ideological struggles when the weapons are weapons of mass destruction.

The future evolution of the human species which will take us to a new supra-human level of consciousness and complexity will be based on the free sharing of our essential human energies. Thus, a compassionate global community, where this freely chosen coming together of our essential human energies can happen, is clearly essential.

This global community will be comprised of all the humans on this planet; the diverse gifts of every unique individual will be needed. No-one can be left out. One mind alone, or one group of minds alone is not going to direct the evolution of a supra-human consciousness.

Evolution to a supra-human consciousness will require all of our minds interdependently and cooperatively working together. This is not a work that the primitive ego can accomplish. We must learn to live out of our spirit center; our essential self.

The ability of our essential self to embrace diversity is not only the primary challenge of humanity in the modern world, it is unquestionably the foundational prerequisite for the evolution of the nascent supra- human species.

1) The Phenomenon of Man, Harper and Row, New York, 1975 ( back )
2) Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, New World Library, Novato, California, 1998 ( back )
3) See Do No Harm-The Invitation To a Middlepath Spirituality Called Compassion at www.stonyhill.com ( back )