Perhaps the reason why Western ego psychology has difficulties coming to terms with my conceptualisation of shamanism is that it equates "ego strength" with "strength of will". It seems to me that these are, potentially, at least, two different things. More to the point: In Western culture, what is considered to be a strong ego, from a conventional viewpoint, is actually an inflated ego. An inflated ego says: "Me first!" and "recognise me!" That approach works best when energy is not required for more complex interactions, like learning, like making difficult evaluations or coming to conclusions involving complicated mental processing.
An ego-generating approach takes a lot of energy, which it draws up and away from deeper thinking processes.
My kickboxing did not start to improve until I was able to subvert ego, whilst amplifying willpower. Both can be done at the same time. One doesn't need the threat of shame or of being outcast, in order to motivate one's learning: one does much better without these, and is more single-minded as a result.
Will-power just needs to be given a simple command by the ego, like: "The next half hour is for learning." Once the simple command is given, the ego can switch off, take a holiday, go about its business -- it isn't needed any more.
The amount of energy saved, and the amount of focus increased, with this approach, is huge. Reducing the dominance of ego allows one to take in all sorts of criticism objectively, and to put it to good use. The mind becomes a sponge.
There are times when ego will be needed again -- to give the necessary command that pulls the whole act together...
But, not now.
1 comment:
Good point.
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