self-importance & the ego

[hnd]

I have a question in mind which has been occupying my mind for a long time. I'd appreciate answers.

Simply it is : What is the difference between self-importance and the ego? ( BTW, I remember that once there was an entry about the ego in the glossary, but I couldn't find it.) But let me explain why I ask this:

Having read and pondered a lot about the 4th Way's concepts of programs; internal considering,external considering,little I's and Real I, buffers, self-love ( not lying to yourself), that everyone one of us is one kind of idiot; Don Juan's concept of self-importance and the predator's mind; the cognitive study on shemas ( http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=17907.0), I tend to think that the tendency to do internal considering, the programs / schemas we are trying to get rid of, our little I's, buffers, our self-importance, the predator's mind, tendency to think subjectively and feeding on others are all manifestations of the ego ( which is the source of pleasure) and we are, in 3D, prisoners of it. Thanks to it, we can build, create or do certain things ( service to self turns into service to others ), but this doesn't seem to change that it is a kind of enemy who has very subtle ways of manipulating us and I wonder by doing EE and getting rid of programs, having emotional releases, maybe in a way by minimazing the effect of the ego on us, maybe in this way we will stop being food and being affected by stress -in contrast to the other pole, STS which has a different way as to not being affected by stress.

And my second question is: What is the role of ego in STO path?


Edit: sentence correction for the sake of clarity,spelling and grammar

 

[RyanX]

hnd,

I think Lobaczewski had a good description of ego in Political Ponerology:

[quote author=PP]Egotism: We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously conditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and individual world view. Egotism hampers a personality’s normal evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and rejection of disintegration in turn favors the appearance of para-appropriate reactions as described above. An egotist measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his concepts and experiential manner as objective criteria. He would like to force other people to feel and think very much the same way he does. Egotist nations have the subconscious goal of teaching or forcing other nations to think in their own categories, which makes them incapable of understanding other people and nations or becoming familiar with the values of their cultures.

Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of egotism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby making it possible to overcome life’s difficulties. However rather exceptional people exist whose personality is very well integrated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism; this allows them to understand others very easily.

The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the development of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing of others well deserves the title “king of human faults”. Difficulties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms after a rainfall. Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowl-edge other nations’ values and dissimilarities, derived from other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.
[/quote]

So, I don't think that ego is really necessary, although it is quite common in just about everybody - some more so than others.

I think the concept of ego is similar to what Gurdjieff described as the "false personality", which while causing problems in man, also creates the internal conditions necessary to struggle against, creating an inner-friction necessary for the Work. In that sense, the more we struggle against our false personality, the more programs, buffers and other junk we clear out and thus free up more of our energy in service to others, OSIT. :)

 

[Mr. Premise]

Ego could also be seen as the same as Gurdjieff's concept of the False Personality versus the Real 'I'.

Self Importance has to do with the regard one has for oneself. Self importance is also involved with internal considering. From Castaneda:

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

From Cassiopedia http://www.cassiopedia.org/glossary/Self_Importance,_Self_Love

There exists a great confusion about what one should or should not feel about oneself. The confusion of the matter has to do with the lack of clarity concerning what the self actually is. As long as there exist all manner of fantastic conjectures that represent the self as being completely other than it in reality is, these questions cannot receive any satisfactory answer.

Castaneda writes that self-importance is a needless piece of baggage that the warrior needs to get rid of simply because maintaining it is a needless expenditure of energy. There is no ethical value judgement on self-importance per se, it simply is superfluous and inefficient and works against the values of correct use of energy the warrior should aspire to. Energy will allow seeing and seeing can bring one to knowledge and freedom. Self-importance is a hindrance on the way.

The self-importance as meant in the above paragraph is similar to Gurdjieff's notion of self-love and vanity. It is in fact identification with external circumstance, status, internal considering, worry over how other see the self. This self-importance or self-love has nothing to do with any real I but everything to do with obtaining support or corroboration or validation for various little I's.

Popular psychology speaks much about self-esteem, giving oneself credit and so forth. It is difficult to say anything about this because these statements are made as if the self were a single, known thing, which it is not. Esoteric discourse sometimes speaks of getting rid of ego. This suffers from the same vagueness.

The resolution of these issues begins with self-knowledge and discernment between the various impulses which make up the various little I's. We cannot say that all appreciation of self were bad: In the 4th Way discourse, a person who has an equal lack of appreciation for all things, one for whom all things are interchangeable, is called a tramp. A lunatic is one who appreciates things of no objective value and does not appreciate things of true value. Both conditions are harmful for the Work and exist to varying degrees within most people.

The crux of the matter is separating between diverse tendencies in self. Unqualified love or hate, appreciation or contempt of something simply because it originates with some part of self is absurd. Indifference is no better. Discernment between the mixed impulses which originate within the mixed self is key to having any reasonable attitude towards the question. The standard of how these impulses relate to esoteric work is one possible benchmark for ranking these impulses. Work towards truth cannot be based on lies to self, whether these were to glorify or vilify the latter. Both extremes represent a different flavor of self-importance and vanity. Yet, the self cannot be unimportant either. Some part must be recognized as higher and worthy of support for the Work to be anyhow motivated. Nothing can grow out of nothing, some rudimentary form must exist for anything to take root, says Gurdjieff.

Some teachings promulgate the dissolution of ego. This is in direct contradiction to the 4th Way. According to the 4th Way, the personality must on the contrary be brought to its highest possible development before it is ready for development past the human form. This development cannot however be based on illusory views on this personality nor can it be based on neglect of this same personality. The only kind of love of self that may hold esoteric benefit is telling the truth to the self. The subjective vanitous love of self is fundamentally opposed to this since it thrives on making the world support its preconceptions instead of seeking the truth concerning itself.

 

[hnd]

Thank you both, RyanX and Mr. Premise for the explanations.

I think Lobaczewski had a good description of ego in Political Ponerology:

I think the concept of ego is similar to what Gurdjieff described as the "false personality", which while causing problems in man, also creates the internal conditions necessary to struggle against, creating an inner-friction necessary for the Work. In that sense, the more we struggle against our false personality, the more programs, buffers and other junk we clear out and thus free up more of our energy in service to others, OSIT. :)

So, the quote seems to be the description of egotism related with the negative meaning of the ego- a great feeling of your own importance and ability- and in that sense, yes, false personality well corresponds it. (It was this meaning of ego that I asked about and I guess my thinking that it is the source of pleasure or the root of STS thinking is inadequate or oversimplified)

Ego could also be seen as the same as Gurdjieff's concept of the False Personality versus the Real 'I'.

Self Importance has to do with the regard one has for oneself. Self importance is also involved with internal considering. From Castaneda:

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

In the phrases ` brusing somebody's ego or massasing sb.'s ego`, the word `ego` can be replaced by self-importance, then.

However, when the word `ego` is used in Freud's terms, the self or the consciousness or the part of a person's mind which tries to match the hidden desires of the unconscious mind with the demands of reality, `Real I` seems to be ego which is not fragmented.

And there is the Jungian version of it (at http://www.kheper.net/topics/Jung/typology.html):

According to Jung, the Ego - the "I" or self-conscious faculty - has four inseperable functions, four different fundamental ways of perceiving and interpreting reality, and two ways of responding to it.

Jung divided people into Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition types, arranging these four in a compass.

Intuition
|
Feeling ------|------ Thinking
|
Sensation
The Jungian compass of Ego-functions.

The four ways of interpreting reality are the four ego-functions - Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition. These consist of two diametrically-opposed pairs. Thinking is the opposite of Feeling, and Sensation the opposite of Intuition. So, suggests Jung, if a person has the Thinking function (an analytical, "head"-type way of looking at the world) highly developed, the Feeling function (the empathetic, value-based "heart"-type way of looking at things) will be correspondingly underveloped, and in fact suppressed. The same goes for Sensation and Intuition. Sensation is orientation "outward" to physical reality, and Intuition "inward" to psychic reality.

Jung perceived of these four Ego-functions as making up a kind of fixed dial. The upper part of the dial is shown light, meaning that it is the developed conscious faculty, and the other part dark, meaning that it is the undeveloped or suppressed unconscious faculty. (Indeed, much of Jung's work involved recognition of the dichotomy of Light and Dark, Conscious and Unconscious). The faculty which is most Conscious (in this case "Thinking") is the dominant one, or Principal function, and the other one ("Intuition") is the secondary faculty, or Auxiliary function. So we have one function in full consciousness and fully developed, another function as secondary to this, a third function, the opposite of the second, as slightly suppressed and unconscious, and the fourth, the opposite of the first, as totally unconscious.

Let us consider each of the Ego faculties in a little more detail. [Note: the following account of the four functions is based mainly on Calvin S. Hall and Vernon J. Nordby, A Primer of Jungian Psychology, (1973, New American Library), pp.98ff].

Basically, THINKING refers to the faculty of rational analysis; of understanding and responding to things through the intellect, the "head" so to speak. Thinking means connecting ideas in order to arrive at a general understanding. The Thinking-type often appears detached and unemotional. The Scientist and the Philosopher are examples of the "thinking type", which is found more commonly in men.

FEELING is the interpretation of things at a value- level, a "heart"-level rather than a "head"-level. Feeling evaluates, it accepts or rejects an idea on the basis of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. According to Jung this is the emotional personality type, and occurs more frequently in women.

Thinking and Feeling are both rational, in that they both require an act of Judgment. Sensation and Intuition are both irrational, in that they involve no reason, but simply result from stimullii (whether external or internal) acting upon the individual.

SENSATION means conscious perception through the sense-organs. The Sensation personality-type relates to physical stimulii. But there is a difference according to whether the person is an introvert or an extrovert.

So we could have an Introverted-Sensation type, such as an artist, who experiences the physical world (sensation) from the perspective of the psychic or inner consciousness (introversion). As opposed to this, the Extroverted-Sensation type would be the person who is a simple materialist or hedonist, interested only in physical or pragmatic things. This type tends to be realistic and practical. At worst, one may be crudely sensual. This personality-type occurs more often in men.

Finally, INTUITION is like sensation in that it is an experience which is immediately given to consciousness rather than arising through mental activity (e.g. thinking or feeling). But it differs in that it has no physical cause. It constitutes an intuition or hunch, a "gut"-level feeling, or an "ESP" experience. It is the source of inspiration, creativity, novel ideas, etc. According to Jung, the Intuitive type jumps from image, is interested in a while, but soon loses interest.

With the four Ego-faculties of Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition we have a basic classification of modes of consciousness; one that has been postulated under various forms (of which Jung's is only the most recent) for centuries.

This description of Jung bears parallelisms with the 4th Way concepts of Man 1,2 and 3 and centers to some extent. The quote from the same site below is also interesting and made sense to me:

Jung also speaks of Extraversion and Introversion as the two ways of responding to the world. Extraversion and Intoversion, which again could be seen as diametric opposites, the Extravert again being orientated out to the physical, the Introvert orientated in to the psychic. In this case what is being described is the direction of the consciousness. So we could have an Introverted-Sensation type, such as an artist, who experiences the physical world (sensation) from the perspective of the psychic or inner consciousness (introversion). As opposed to this, the Extroverted-Sensation type would be the person who is a simple materialist or hedonist, interested only in physical or pragmatic things.

Again, there would be the Extroverted-Intuition type, who has psychic experiences or revelations, and is able to easily convey them out to others at the social or interpersonal level. Most professional clairvoyants and psychics, and the founders and Gurus of various religious sects, would seem to fall into this category. One could call this the "prophetic personality". As opposed to this would be the Introverted-Intuition type, who is caught in the psychic experiences, and not able to share them very well with others. Many creatively original schizophrenics would belong to this group. Schizophrenic experiences, it should be pointed out, are real experiences of the psychic worlds. The term "hallucination" is meaningless to the occultist or esotericist. Because all experiences are real, there is no such thing as a "hallucination". What the materialist and the sceptic calls a hallucination is simply an experience of a reality of one of the psychic worlds, which of course being a non- physical reality, is inexplainable and threatening to the materialist, and hence dismissed as "hallucination".

My interepretation is that introversion and extraversion have nothing to do with the ego-faculty. They are actually expressions of the energy state and energy flow of the etheric bodies. When these principles direct the psychic consciousness out into the inter-personal material world the result is an extravertic or outward flowing personality. When they direct the experience it receives strongly back into the Psychic principles, the result is the introvertive or inward flowing personality.

And this image is from Wikipedia. It says that twin studies
suggest that introversion or extroversion is genetic. Are there any reference to this in the 4th Way psychology?


*I'd appreaciate corrections if there are things that I cannot see.

 

[obyvatel]

From the etymology of the word, "ego" seems to mean "I" in Latin. "I" or self consciousness involves a sense of distinctiveness and separateness - that is there is "I" and the rest is "not I". In this sense, ego seems very fundamental to existence - an attribute of the created being.
Egotism and self-importance seem to be very similar and are both concerned with exaggerated view of the self and are most likely attributes of the false personality.
In common usage, the word ego is almost always related to self-importance. I wonder if this is a result of the false personality ruling our lives. It does not seem necessary that a sense of "I" should inevitably be accompanied by an exaggerated view of that "I". So once the real I is seated after dethroning the false personality, it maybe possible to have an ego without self-importance?

 

[hnd]

From the etymology of the word, "ego" seems to mean "I" in Latin. "I" or self consciousness involves a sense of distinctiveness and separateness - that is there is "I" and the rest is "not I". In this sense, ego seems very fundamental to existence - an attribute of the created being.

Yes, fundamental to existence in 3D and that must be why there are some teachings on killing your ego, and in essence it includes some sort of escapism. Actually, there is a good summary of the traps that these teachings have. Here:

http://mindfulconstruct.com/2009/10/13/four-reasons-to-kill-your-ego-that-arent-very-good/

Egotism and self-importance seem to be very similar and are both concerned with exaggerated view of the self and are most likely attributes of the false personality.
In common usage, the word ego is almost always related to self-importance. I wonder if this is a result of the false personality ruling our lives. It does not seem necessary that a sense of "I" should inevitably be accompanied by an exaggerated view of that "I". So once the real I is seated after dethroning the false personality, it maybe possible to have an ego without self-importance?

To me, as a fictional character or maybe real, I don't know, Don Juan is a very good example of someone with an ego without self-importance and with Real I.

But, isn't it possible that false personality which isn't fragmented is a kind of Real I,too?? After all, what is false and what is real in this sense is relative. Anybody without contradictions in their personality can be said to have Real I. From a distance, Osho, although it may be a bad example, seems to have a Real I, but I remember watching a video in which he was smiling as his devotees were kissing his feet. So? Or am I missing something here?

 

[Stevie Argyl]

Obyvatel is right on his entymology of original meaning of ego. I don't have ISOTM to hand, but there is a chapter there where G explains an exercise carried out in Mount Athos where the monks intone EGO, (I AM).

But I think by your use of ego in your first post you are referring to the program that protects and maintains the indivual unconnected 'I' of false personality.

Opinion:

We acquire a 'personality' through life, it is the interface between the flesh and blood of our physicality and the world of others. It need not be destroyed but it must be made subservient to will, and as we are we have no will.

It seems to me the work is two fold:

Recognising the false personality and nurturing the container for the real I.
As energy is withdrawn from false personality via non identification, recognition and dispowerment of programs then that energy can be used in another way.

-------------------------------

"It is a struggle to leave the illusion of “I” in which I live, in order to come closer to a more real seeing. At the heart of this struggle an order is created in the chaos, a hierarchy: two levels are revealed, two worlds. As long as there is only one level, there can be no seeing. Recognition of another level—that is the awakening of Thought."
J de Salzmann

 

[ana]

Although it is true that the word Ego is used in some teachings as the description of the self / soul, the cassiopaeans refer the ego as the false part of ourselves created and implanted in the human psyche in the period of The Fall.

Q: (L) I don't like the implied hardness... I am not a hard
person.
A: It is not hardness. The "feelings" you describe are related
to ego, and by relation, pride, two things that were
deliberately implanted into the 3rd density human psyche by
the 4th density STS 309,000 years ago, as you measure time.
Refer to the transcripts with regard to DNA alteration and the
occipital ridge. Believe it or not, you, Laura, will be rid of
these, eventually. It is not what some individuals respond to
you that matters. It is sharing the information that counts.

Here are some excerpts of Lost Christianity were Ego and essence/soul are differentiated:

Two in the morning and I am down thirty-two dollars. By then, however, my irritation and anger had actually faded away. No, that is not exact. What began to happen is that, without hav-ing thought about it beforehand, I began to get interested in my own wounded ego. I think that is about as accurately as I can describe it. I was still trying as hard as I could to beat him, but at the same time something appeared in myself that was inter-ested only in watching my own reactions of annoyance, disgust, resentment, injustice. The latter was quite a shock: I saw, as clearly as I saw the cards in front of my face, the origins in my-self of the sense of injustice and outrage that governs so much of our inner life. I smelled the egoism in this sense of injustice! the hurt feelings—and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the huge, com-plicated thinking apparatus being called in to serve this wounded ego with all the ideas, arguments and amassed evi-dence at its disposal.
With that, my whole body suddenly came alive. My back straightened, my eyes opened wider, and I felt awake in every tissue of my body. Also, I began to win again.

The problem is: how to move from the holy desire for God to the precise struggle for God without the intervention of the ego? No guide can give another man the holy desire, and no guide can give a man the contact with the higher. But what can be taught is the way to recognize and neutralize the initia-tives of ego.

Through awareness of the attention of the body it is possible to see how even the instinctual desires obey the higher instantly, without violence. They have only needed contact for this natural obedience, this innate love of the Higher, to become active. Ego prevents contact between the various sources of attention within the human organism; that is its evil and it is only that about it which needs to be destroyed. It is, however, a very difficult task.The body is sacred because in it we may, with diligence and persistence, come to experience directly the hierarchy of God and the confusion of the ego's striving. Through the body we may study and destroy at the root the illusions and initiatives of my social self, the self I assume to be myself but which is only the smoke of the ego. No person in the Church dare speak or act with respect to another without knowing whether in that mo-ment he is or is not experiencing the truth about himself and the Creation. It is not demanded of us that we always be in the state of the heart which grants us vision and self-mastery. It is only demanded of us that we know the state we are in.

What is called dualism, the idea of a good and evil force in the universe, is con-nected with the task of discriminating different directions of en-ergy, and of recognizing that the struggle for inner perfection in-volves cosmic principles that operate within and outside of human nature. If the term esotericism is going to be used, it should be reserved for the study of energy within oneself; it has nothing to do with words and formulations as such, or rituals as such, or social practices as such.
And the study of development and degradation of energy within oneself requires the long and difficult development of the force of attention, which is the soul in its infinite gradations within ourselves.

So the task of discriminating between STS/STO inside and outside ourselves, wich can only be done with the power of attention/essence-soul(depending on the degree)

To awaken spiritual emotion is the work of religious discipline. This comes about through
sacrifice. The sacrifice of what? What is the inner purpose of sacrifice? I must sacrifice
attachment to results of the spirit—even as they are taking place in me. Reli-gious man may become a magician, but through becoming such he sees only the greatness of God and the insignificance of his own being. The energies of egoistic emotion, the psychic and mechanical energies, that, through the inherent structure of human nature, are bound to his inner or outer results are imme-diately separated from these results and are transformed upward and therewith connected to the Tree of Life, the conduit of the power of God. Thus sacrifice brings union with God. Without this understanding, both self-indulgence and asceticism are equivalently inhuman.

So here we see the ego as part of our lower nature.

 

[obyvatel]

But, isn't it possible that false personality which isn't fragmented is a kind of Real I,too?? After all, what is false and what is real in this sense is relative. Anybody without contradictions in their personality can be said to have Real I. From a distance, Osho, although it may be a bad example, seems to have a Real I, but I remember watching a video in which he was smiling as his devotees were kissing his feet. So? Or am I missing something here?

It is possible to remove contradictions within the personality and fuse what Mouravieff called a black magnetic center. Mouravieff discusses such cases in Gnosis. Here is a thread that discusses this issue in the specific context of Osho Rajneesh.

 

[hnd]

Although it is true that the word Ego is used in some teachings as the description of the self / soul, the cassiopaeans refer the ego as the false part of ourselves created and implanted in the human psyche in the period of The Fall.

Q: (L) I don't like the implied hardness... I am not a hard
person.
A: It is not hardness. The "feelings" you describe are related
to ego, and by relation, pride, two things that were
deliberately implanted into the 3rd density human psyche by
the 4th density STS 309,000 years ago, as you measure time.
Refer to the transcripts with regard to DNA alteration and the
occipital ridge. Believe it or not, you, Laura, will be rid of
these, eventually. It is not what some individuals respond to
you that matters. It is sharing the information that counts.

Here are some excerpts of Lost Christianity were Ego and essence/soul are differentiated:

The problem is: how to move from the holy desire for God to the precise struggle for God without the intervention of the ego? No guide can give another man the holy desire, and no guide can give a man the contact with the higher. But what can be taught is the way to recognize and neutralize the initia-tives of ego.

Through awareness of the attention of the body it is possible to see how even the instinctual desires obey the higher instantly, without violence. They have only needed contact for this natural obedience, this innate love of the Higher, to become active. Ego prevents contact between the various sources of attention within the human organism; that is its evil and it is only that about it which needs to be destroyed. It is, however, a very difficult task.The body is sacred because in it we may, with diligence and persistence, come to experience directly the hierarchy of God and the confusion of the ego's striving. Through the body we may study and destroy at the root the illusions and initiatives of my social self, the self I assume to be myself but which is only the smoke of the ego. No person in the Church dare speak or act with respect to another without knowing whether in that mo-ment he is or is not experiencing the truth about himself and the Creation. It is not demanded of us that we always be in the state of the heart which grants us vision and self-mastery. It is only demanded of us that we know the state we are in.

What is called dualism, the idea of a good and evil force in the universe, is con-nected with the task of discriminating different directions of en-ergy, and of recognizing that the struggle for inner perfection in-volves cosmic principles that operate within and outside of human nature. If the term esotericism is going to be used, it should be reserved for the study of energy within oneself; it has nothing to do with words and formulations as such, or rituals as such, or social practices as such.
And the study of development and degradation of energy within oneself requires the long and difficult development of the force of attention, which is the soul in its infinite gradations within ourselves.

So the task of discriminating between STS/STO inside and outside ourselves, wich can only be done with the power of attention/essence-soul(depending on the degree)

To awaken spiritual emotion is the work of religious discipline. This comes about through
sacrifice. The sacrifice of what? What is the inner purpose of sacrifice? I must sacrifice
attachment to results of the spirit—even as they are taking place in me. Reli-gious man may become a magician, but through becoming such he sees only the greatness of God and the insignificance of his own being. The energies of egoistic emotion, the psychic and mechanical energies, that, through the inherent structure of human nature, are bound to his inner or outer results are imme-diately separated from these results and are transformed upward and therewith connected to the Tree of Life, the conduit of the power of God. Thus sacrifice brings union with God. Without this understanding, both self-indulgence and asceticism are equivalently inhuman.

So here we see the ego as part of our lower nature.

Thanks, Ana. So, in Cassiopean terms, this thinking below is much or less right, ego-the false nature of human beings- is the root of STS, but what about the part in bold?

Having read and pondered a lot about the 4th Way's concepts of programs; internal considering,external considering,little I's and Real I, buffers, self-love ( not lying to yourself), that everyone one of us is one kind of idiot; Don Juan's concept of self-importance and the predator's mind; the cognitive study on schemas ( http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=17907.0), I tend to think that the tendency to do internal considering, the programs / schemas we are trying to get rid of, our little I's, buffers, our self-importance, the predator's mind, tendency to think subjectively and feeding on others are all manifestations of the ego ( which is the source of pleasure) and we are, in 3D, prisoners of it. Thanks to it, we can build, create or do certain things ( service to self turns into service to others ), but this doesn't seem to change that it is a kind of enemy who has very subtle ways of manipulating us and I wonder by doing EE and getting rid of programs, having emotional releases, maybe in a way by minimazing the effect of the ego on us, maybe in this way we will stop being food and being affected by stress -in contrast to the other pole, STS which has a different way as to not being affected by stress.

Until I read the below script today, I thought the ego,in Cass terms, is inevitable if you are in 3D and getting rid of this false thing is like the title of the lessons we learn or cannot learn here. All lessons are this way or that way related to it.

Q: (T) Is there a 3D race in this universe that is STO?
A: Yes. Already stated thus.
Q: (L) If there are planets with STO beings...
A: Some look like you.
Q: (L) What is life like on that sort of place? (T) They are
not going to tell us that. That is something that we are going
to have to develop to find out.
A: Exactly.

But this shows that it may not be so. It is very hard to imagine the lessons that STO beings have in 3D and does it imply that some of our lessons are not ego related? I cannot think of any. My mind stops here.

Thank you, all contributers in this thread,it was great help. There are books that I haven't read yet, so I don't like the idea of asking for information which is already in books and I can discover myself, but still I'd be glad if somebody who has an idea and time to answer this question reply:

Twin studies suggest that introversion or extroversion is genetic. Are there any reference to this in the 4th Way psychology?

 

[ana]

Thanks, Ana. So, in Cassiopean terms, this thinking below is much or less right, ego-the false nature of human beings- is the root of STS, but what about the part in bold?

The parts in bold make reference to the Ego too.