Monthly Archives: June 2017
Is Lower Ego Vulnerability Damaging Your Relationships?
Lower ego vulnerability is reflected by an absence of awareness of one’s weaknesses and imperfections. This impacts relationships as this person is oblivious to how their weaknesses and imperfections are affecting others. They truly don’t recognize the small and large damage they are inflicting upon the relationship with their spouse/partner, children, parents, friends, and co-workers. In their case, “positive” emotional cues that most of us get—from love, anxiety, or anger—do not energize sensitivity to others and how they are treating them. They miss their callous thoughts, words, or deeds which often impact others, but they don’t realize this. Just as too much emotion can drown a relationship for those with higher ego vulnerability, too little emotion can starve one for those with lower ego vulnerability. Cold, aloof, and insensitive are often the words which describe them. The following excerpt from The Two Voices Within: Balancing the Energies of Ego and Spirit to Enhance Your Life presents the messages ego is telling the lower ego vulnerability person keeping them stuck in this energy. Messages they are listening to quite well but don’t realize.
Ego’s Voice
You have been led to live without emotion. Emotion is painful because it will let you know what you have done or not done and where you have failed. Without emotion, you need not know fear, guilt, or sadness. You need not know your earthly weaknesses, failures, imperfections, or vulnerabilities. Emotion is a doorway to them, so you must close it off to keep your distance from these enemies. The absence of emotion will make you invulnerable.
When desired, seek emotion only for your enjoyment. Let it be present in your thoughts, words, and deeds so you can be amused and entertained. Allow emotion to alleviate your boredom so you can know pleasure. Use it as a tool for this purpose. Allow it to be the maker of excitement or interest where none may exist. Make it a requirement of worthiness when forming your thoughts, words, or deeds. Abandon them when they do not provide the pleasure you desire and seek those that will.
Remain distant from those with whom you work or play. You need not experience emotion in your relationships with them, as it would expose your weakness and vulnerability to them. Both you and they are better off not knowing about your weaknesses. You must not let them know all of who you truly are. The absence of emotion will also make you less obligated to them. When necessary, use emotion to experience pleasure in your dealings with others. Be the maker of thoughts, words, or deeds that will bring forth feelings of love, anger, or fear from within yourself and others. Use them as tools for your amusement and to relieve your boredom.
You must be free of emotion in your dealings with those who are closest to you. They will reveal your weaknesses and betray you if you experience anger, sadness, or fear with them. In their absence you can keep others at a safe distance. Love and fear will bring you closer to others and lead you to need them. It will also make you obligated to them. You are safest and will survive best without these needs. Remain an island unto yourself. When necessary, bring emotion into the company of loved ones by allowing it to arouse, stimulate, and amuse you in the thoughts, words, and deeds you are choosing. Feel love, anger, or fear for the pleasure it can offer you. Emotion is safest when you are able to decide the terms of its expression. This will keep you safe and allow you to survive best.
Emotion will weaken you by forcing you to know yourself. It will lead you to see more of your vulnerability, which must remain hidden. In its absence, you can like yourself more, as you will not have to own or take responsibility for the darker parts of who you are. Allow them to remain strangers to you. Do not allow emotion to concern you with how others see you. In its absence, you can more easily, miss, ignore, or dismiss the weaknesses they are calling to your attention. Their thoughts and words can remain meaningless. This will keep you safe and help you to survive.
If the content from this blog resonates for you or someone you know, you may want to read further in The Two Voices Within (Chapter 6) to see if you/they are living any of the roles we discuss linked to lower ego vulnerability (Hedonist, Sociopath, Logician, Loner, Inattentive Person, or Sadist). It is when living these roles, some or most of the time, that we are damaging relationships with others and ourselves. Complementary material for those who would like to heal and bring your lower ego vulnerability into balance can be found in Ego Therapy: A Method for Healing Your Whole Self (Chapters 10 and 16) and EgoSpiritualism: Awakening to Your Human and Divine Self (Chapter 7). All three books are available on the Shop page Here.
Is Higher Ego Vulnerability Damaging Your Relationships?
Higher ego vulnerability impacts one’s sense of vulnerability within relationships—be they with family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. These interpersonal experiences are opportunities within which our weaknesses and imperfections—real or imagined—can be revealed to others. When ego vulnerability is higher, relationships become “dangerous” and we can become distant or defensive in our efforts to manage them. Either way, relationships weaken as they begin to be filtered through one’s vulnerability impacting the rationality of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This distortion occurs when too much emotion—anxiety or anger—is at work within our relationship experiences. The following excerpt from The Two Voices Within: Balancing the Energies of Ego and Spirit to Enhance Your Life presents the messages ego is telling the higher ego vulnerability person, keeping them stuck in this energy. Messages they are listening to quite well but don’t realize.
Ego’s Voice
I have led you to all of your fear, which is the foundation upon which many of your thoughts, words, deeds, and physical symptoms have been built. Fear is present within your earthly life and has found its way into many of your relationships and activities. Your fear leads you to seek to gain distance from the imperfection and weakness within you and surrounding you. Fear is your friend, and you must cling tightly to it. Its purpose is to serve as a warning of all things large and small, from within and without, that may threaten your survival. This fear keeps you protected and can ensure your survival.
You must be wary of those who surround you in your earthly life. You must keep them at a distance from your weaknesses and imperfection, just as you strive to do for yourself. Defer to their thoughts, words, and deeds so your weaknesses and imperfection will remain hidden. When necessary, reveal yourself only after putting great effort into hiding what is vulnerable within you. Always remain suspicious of others for their efforts to find weakness and imperfection within you. Do not let your guard down, as they seek to weaken you with any evidence of vulnerability you have shown them.
You must be fearful in your relationships with those who are closest to you. This fear will keep you wary of any distancing that is occurring between you and them. Fear will let you know they are leaving you or that you are leaving them, prompting you to find the source of this distance. Fear will energize thoughts, words, and deeds you must use to narrow this distance, protecting you from the loss of these relationships.
Fear must also be present within your relationship with yourself. It will help you to rid yourself of your weakness and imperfection, so you will be able to like and love yourself more, and so others will like and love you more. When vulnerable, you cannot gain acceptance from yourself and others. It makes you unsafe and unprotected, endangering your survival. Fear is the friend you must use to vanquish this enemy. Let it be your sword.
If the content from this blog resonates you may want to read further in The Two Voices Within (Chapter 5) to see if you are living any of the roles we discuss linked to higher ego vulnerability energy (Perfectionist, Overachiever, High Maintenance Partner, Stressed Out Person, Overly Self-Critical Person, Clean Freak, Traumatized Person, or Order Freak). It is when living these roles, some or most of the time, that we are damaging relationships with others and ourselves. Complementary material for those who would like to heal and bring your higher ego vulnerability energy into balance can be found in Ego Therapy: A Method for Healing Your Whole Self (Chapters 9 and 15) and EgoSpiritualism: Awakening to Your Human and Divine Self (Chapter 7). All three books are available on the Shop page Here.