Shannon's Journal Discussion Thread, Vol. 5

[Shannon]

@Shannon Hey Shannon, I hope you are doing well. I did have an important question I wanted to ask though I hope it doesn't crossover into some spiritual discussion or anything like that. In your opinion what is the ego exactly? Is there any kind of link of what people call the ego and the subconscious? I ask that last one because I have seen more and more videos of people using this term and the way they describe it it almost seems like the subconscious being stuck in negative or false belief system as in regards to how it views reality. So I wanted to know if the ego is connected to the subconscious or perhaps people sometimes confuse the ego and subconscious. Sorry btw if this is some loaded question as well but I am confused by this concept and if it has any connection to the subconscious. Also if this question isn't appropriate here could you possibly put it else where? Thanks in advance for any info you can shed on this subject.

I think that there are multiple definitions of "ego", which leads to confusion.  There are also multiple different understandings of each definition, which further leads to confusion.  

It is my point of view that the "ego" exists as a part of our awareness which is both conscious and subconscious, operating (in simple terms) as a singular, but transcending the boundary of conscious and subconscious.  So part of it is conscious and part of it is subconscious.  It is actually significantly more complex than that, but I don't care to get too detailed because there will always be someone who disagrees and I don't care to get into that discussion.

The subconscious is not the ego, and the ego is not the subconscious.  The ego is a part of the whole, which operates within the whole such that part is and part is not "conscious".  The "conscious ego" influences the conscious primarily, and subconscious less so.  The "subconscious ego" influences the subconscious and conscious more equally.

It may be useful, if I can be descriptive enough, to imagine a graph showing the area within two axes of the graph which contains all the data points.  Similar to a scatter plot, but not showing points; instead it shows the limits of the points and the area in which they all fall, without reference to how many data points fall within any particular place within the area depicted.  

If you are still with me, there is an area from top to bottom that looks like a gradient which represents the conscious and subconscious.  The gradient crosses the chart such that above it is the definite conscious awareness and below it is the definite subconscious awareness.  The gradient represents the area where they come together and more or less coexist.  Think the "falling asleep" phase of sleeping.

Within this plot, imagine a jelly bean shape such that it extends mostly below the gradient, but some of it is above it.  Now elongate that shape and straighten it such that it is too thin and straight to be a jelly bean.  Now you have some sort of two dimensional visual representation of a very simplified representation of what I am talking about.

I don't know if this fully answers your question or not, but if not, please ask for what I did not get.

Hope things are going well for you.