Afflictions of the Ego : Part - 1

Ego being a part of the Mind, gets afflicted with certain disorders, just like the Mind. It does whatever it does naturally and perfectly, but these operations may not be desirable if you wish to progress on your path. If they stop your progress or retard you, they are seen as afflictions. Many people live their entire life afflicted with these disorders, and suffer or cause suffering for others, but it may not matter if they have no goals. They are on the path of evolution through suffering.
If one is consciously and deliberately trying to walk a path, it becomes necessary to identify and remove these afflictions. It depends how deep one is into the pit of Ego, but sometimes its easy to get out of it. Usually the suffering caused by these afflictions is enough motivation, because the suffering inflicted by the Ego is huge and brutal when compared to the suffering caused by dysfunctions of the higher Mind.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
- Bertrand Russell 

Ego and its tendencies

The Animal Inside by Olympia Altimir

Ego

Ego is a popular term, and therefore, has acquired many meanings. It means “I” or “myself” and it also means something that one owns (e.g. in “my ego is weak” etc). It also means a sense of self-worth, self-esteem (for some odd reason). In Psychology/Psychoanalysis it has been adopted in a more formal way. For the purpose of this discussion, we will define it as a structure in the Mind that deals with survival directly and in a primitive and mechanical fashion. It is also called Mammalian Mind, Lower Mind, and Primitive Mind etc. 

There is also a Reptilian Mind, which is even more primitive and is seen as control system for basic actions. It takes care of some very basic self-preservation activities. E.g. when you are about to fall from your chair, the fear, the feeling of urgency and the actions you take to save yourself or to minimize the damage, all come from reptilian mind. There is often no time to think, or even for primitive strategies to fire up, you must act mechanically and automatically. We can see some physical structures corresponding to these various mental structures. The reptilian part corresponds to the brain stem and spinal cord, the mammalian part corresponds to the limbic system. The cortex and the neo-cortex correspond to the newer and more developed human Mind.

The Extraordinary Gift of the Mind:Part-8

Continued from Part-7

By Alex Grey

23.    Pleasure and Pain

We have seen in the previous articles that the Mind has an ability to perceive. It organizes the experiences gained via external and internal senses into knowledge. This is an evolutionary process, and is biased towards a certain goal, namely, the sustenance of the Mind. Anything that is unnecessary for the existence of the Mind is simply not organized or is organized very weakly. The goal of the Mind to remain in existence is auto-set, it is by necessity, because any other goals that may appear are destroyed sooner or later by the impermanence (continuous change, the Experiencing). This goal biases the perception process and almost all actions of the Mind and results in a reward/punishment system, that rewards (enhances) favourable perceptions/actions and punishes (diminishes) the non-favourable ones. Such a system is at the core of any evolutionary algorithm, as AI/AGI programmers/researchers know very well [1].
The rewards cause the behaviour/actions/perception helpful in sustenance and preservation of the Mind to repeat often and strengthen the structures, while the punishments cause the unhelpful or damaging behaviour/actions/perception to diminish and destroys the structures that cause these or creates new structures to prevent the damages. The reward and punishment are also perceived, they are the familiar perceptions of pleasure and pain. They appear as qualia, a distinct experience that cannot be shared with others (such as the experience of seeing colors), but can only be inferred. Why is there a need to perceive the rewards and punishments as “flavours” of pleasure and pain? This is same as asking why is there a need to perceive colors and why do they look like the way they look like, or in other words – why is red, red? These are just structures, non-physical ones, a result of unique experiences, created to help organize the experiences (As we have seen in the case of time and space). The pleasure and pain provide a useful tool for biasing the Mind towards continued existence. Their perception is a meta-process that aids in their recognition and memory formation. One tends to remember the experiences that cause extreme pain or pleasure. These cause very effective learning.