Ego - Ocean Metaphor

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 7, Session 319

Ego – Ocean Metaphor

If you compare the whole self with an ocean, then the topmost wave at any given time would represent the ego.  It is not by or of itself a separate thing, but part of the whole, forever changing, to return to the whole and be tumbled under and emerge again in new form.

When it attempts to hold the upper position indefinitely, there is frozen motion and built-up pressures, but there will be the inevitable tumbling under.  For the tumbling under is the motion that forms the ego itself, and without it the ego would be meaningless.

Various portions of the self therefore face physical reality at any given time as the ego.  The process is constant.  An attempt to maintain the status quo is of course natural on the part of the ego, but when this becomes a stubborn effort to maintain dominancy then the difficulties arise.  The self throws up those portions of itself that it considers most able to handle the changing physical environment at any given time.

The characteristics of the ego therefore change as various situations are met.  The term ego, implying one phenomenon, is therefore confusing.  What was ego today may belong to the subconscious tomorrow.  Any attempt at rigidity is therefore defeating.

Now to some extent Ruburt’s ego wanted to stay where it was also: hence, comparatively speaking, the frozen motion.

It attempted to stop other portions of the personality from entering into the ego framework.  This ego that so behaved was then simply a group of particular qualities belonging to Ruburt, that were given control for a while to meet particular circumstances, and then stubbornly refused to return to the whole personality.

There had been a tendency, as given, for a rigid personality ego framework in any case.  The qualities thrown up to the surface were those in the past most capable to handle highly difficult situations, and in some of these stubbornness was, comparatively speaking, a virtue.

The situations had changed but the ego framework had grown rigid, rigid enough so that it could in a large degree dominate certain normally subconscious processes, bringing forth the physical symptoms.  Now there is always an imprinting process within the personality, belonging to past experience.  A previous inclination to gluttony had once led him to some slight gout, and in the present case there was a swelling of the feet.

There had been in the past overweight, and in this instance there was in some portions of the body an overextension of tissue about the joints.  The morning symptoms incidentally have to do with this life however, bringing back earlier fears of facing the day, you see.

To some extent the symptoms did represent caution.  He did not want to move until he was sure of his direction once more.  It was the stubborn ego in this case that prevented him from seeing clearly the direction which had been given by other portions of the self.

The knees, incidentally, I can help him here: in Saint Vincent’s punishment (Jane attended Saint Vincent’s Catholic school) took the form of having the child kneel straight upward, and doing so Ruburt’s knees often became sore.  The knee symptoms were a later development in this present series of symptoms, his way of punishing himself for his previous lack of understanding.  This knowledge should greatly relieve the symptoms.

The stability of the whole self is dependent upon the mobility of each portion of the self.  When the physical system is in good operating order, then the various portions of the self are operating properly.  The fault will not always lie with the conscious or subconscious, however, but in other layers.

Previous ego patterns can still operate under various circumstances.  Ruburt was often a male, and he sometimes attempts to manhandle the feminine aspects of his present personality, to inflict upon it literally qualities that go against its grain.  Force, logic over intuition, for example, or intellect over psychic awareness.  The psychic abilities in his case are, among other things, aided by that balance of characteristics, and these should not be tampered with.

You see, for years Ruburt hid himself from his mother, and as stated earlier he felt that in giving her his book he had opened himself to her.  For years he would not wear anything that had been close to her.  Then he shoved this feeling away and would not face it.

Egotistically he forced other aspects of his personality to accept what they feared.  In times of high vitality the effects were minor.  After the book’s publication however the effects multiplied.  A message to this effect was given him in a dream and he ignored it.

You see however he felt that he was learning maturity by ignoring the subconscious.  This is at the base of these problems.  He mistrusted the most reliable portion of his present personality.  He automatically rejected the sweaters as giving warmth on a subconscious basis.

Even then, however, the subconscious would not be forced too far, and a good deal of the time the sweaters sat in his drawer.  They were not his style, they were his mother’s style and in wearing them he felt further alarm that he was being cast in her world, so to speak.

Only the last one was simple.  His letters of thanks protested too much.  He wore the sweater night and day in a frenzied attempt to prove that it had no harmful effects upon him.  From the subconscious standpoint this was simply too much.

At various times when working he went without a bra because his shoulders bothered him, and he wore one of his mother’s sweaters.  Now his mother never wore a bra, you see.  The thin shoulders he imagines he has are a part of mother identification.