We can’t escape the Ego. Our best option is to embrace it, understand it, and forgive it. Ken Wilber is the philosopher who most influenced my initial recovery, encouraging me to use the big Ego as a functional vehicle. When I am defined by Ego, I am Narcissistic. Addicts are usually riding backseat in a limo driven by their Ego. In fact, I had to hijack the limo to arrive at the proper destination–sobriety.

Admitting our mistakes, our failures, our weaknesses, our sins, our fears–all part of the healing process. Not only is it a scary process, but it is one that taught me to fear the Ego. At first it was, This Thing, a terrorist, a hi-jacker. But, it is me, is it not? The Ego is a thing unique to us humans. My Ego also makes me an individual, capable of actualizing things only I can in this world. That whole idea of doing God’s work, but I’m not religious, so it’s more simply just using my voice, vision and skills to co-exist in and to improve the world.

Wilber thinks that our historic sages have what he calls Divinely Big Ego’s, and that those Ego’s are precisely what helped them be accomplished. Here, the expansion of the Ego is not destructive, but rather tapped into a more reverent place, one that Wilber, calls the Kosmos. Kosmos, God, Spirit, The Flying Spaghetti Monster–something bigger than us that is a part of us all.
Wilber thinks and I agree, that the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present and it can be a harmonious, effective union because of the shift–where the self is not exclusively preoccupied with the self, the individual self.

In regards to movers and shakers, sages, he says:

And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness, and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self)-the ultimate source of their power-but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all.

As an active addict, I really didn’t care who heard me. I spoke for the needs of myself and to the people who gave me what I wanted. Inside, I really want to think my respect for humanity and the greater good still showed up occasionally. But I would be fooling myself.
If it did make an appearance, it was fleeting. The motivation to help others was likely to make myself feel better. In effect, to justify my deteriorating state because, look at me, I’m helping others–not all is lost.

And that’s ok. I wasn’t driving the limo at the time, but I finally took over. Every once in awhile the Limo Driver cracked the window, and in those fleeting moments of communication between my fractured Selves, I was appalled. It’s a scary feeling in sobriety to shake off the cobwebs, to see the span of your actions in as much entirety as the brain cells allow. We begin to identify the hi-jacker–the Ego.
So the Ego takes on a dark role. Often it is a goal to become ego-less.

All this work on self–it’s still feeding the Ego. Isn’t it?
The preoccupation is reinvented and repackaged. Think of the work that went into securing fixes and posturing, often because we were scared, scared to crash and let reality sink in. Right there we can see that fear was a motivator. Are not recovering addicts still motivated by a fear? A fear of failing? A fear of not working the program hard enough? A fear of not impressing our sponsors with our hard work?
A fear of having severed all past friendships? A fear of never knowing and mastering this Ego that drove us into an abyss?
A fear that we won’t ever truly be “normal,” successful, honorable, or exist as a exemplary models of society.

Being an addict means you are exclusively preoccupied with the self.
We take little successes and treasure them. And that’s ok. I do it. There is a whole new meaning to living and that’s a gift indeed.
A self-realization that a minority of humans become privy to, actually. There are other people out there are earnestly trying to transform, utilizing a variety of modalities. I found this at the Holistic Institute where I worked. This idea that working on the Self, identifying and confronting the Ego is enough. We who do so are improving our community and the world by our own self-work alone.

Not quite. I always say, “You can’t close your eyes, chant Om Namah Shivay and think that is improving the world.”
It’s improving YOUR world. Which helps. But what about the “bigger picture?”
Ghandi always said, “Is not politics a part of the dharma too?”

In a sense, the tempering of Self preoccupation with preoccupation on Others.
Aren’t addicts just the perfect nominees to help save the world? Who else understands coming so close to loosing so much?
Who else to better understand how significant small, incremental step build foundations for lasting change?
Who else is poised to thoroughly enjoy developing relationships after ruining so many?

These were some thoughts going through my head last Saturday as I stood in front of our local grocery store, collecting signatures for same sex marriage in Maine. The topic doesn’t really engage too many people, by the way. Not easy work. Religious people always want to demonstrate their universal love by telling me to “Burn in hell,” or my favorite, “I hope your church burns.” (The Unitarian Church often participates in these actions. )
What struck me most about the event was our pre-game pep talk, in which all participants where asked, “Why are you doing this today?”
And every single person in that room named someone else. They weren’t gay, but their friends are. And so they braved public animosity and frigid temperatures for a few hours–for someone else. What a beautiful thing.