The American ego warrants scrutiny. We’re born to it. We’re bred to it—directly or subliminally. We heed it and we protect it. Though it’s only a figure—there’s no ego “there,” it feels like something foundational and crucial to who we are and, indeed, the bigger the ego, the more a bruise hurts.
Studied, understood and managed, the American ego is a remarkable function, a tribute to the productive range of the human brain. It is integral to the personal authority we require to fulfill our responsibility for creating our opportunities and determining the course of our lives.
Oversized, however, it can hide the value of what is alive, connected, intimate, natural and whole. When we face the demand for the originality and mobility of our thinking, the oversized American ego is a default position, a protective and defensive mindset. As a result, we limit our possibilities and our lives suffer.
There’s more. When oversized and inhibited, the American ego is often timid, fearful of embarrassment and rejection, fearful of imperfection and contradiction and fearful of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with open and honest communications. And, as I said, we pay a price for harboring our timidity, often with unaccountable feelings of confusion and loss.
Autonomy and Life is an advanced study program. Its goal? To enrich our lives as a function of enriching our autonomy. For in fact, it is our cognitive oversight that processes and directs our personal authority. The oversized American ego actually limits our cognitive independence as well as our spontaneity and even our affinity and ability to love.
Although our study has led us to recognize the oversizing affect on our cognitive independence, our efforts go beyond an examination of the conditions and circumstances that give rise to it. We set out to master the art of thinking freely.
Indeed, as I said in my 01.04.16 post, wielding this cognitive mechanism—thinking freely—is more than the means to satisfy our aesthetical and ethical sensibilities, although it is that. It is the means to be in possession of ourselves, to invent and reinvent, i.e., to set and reset, progressively who we are.
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Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.