Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

the same type persons that always lead to relationship
failure), or other kinds of pain.
On top of this developed the superego, or morality,
which at first is quite rigid, and then becomes more
flexible as we become adults.
That is, Freud of 100 years ago conceived of a far
more complex sense of ‘I’, or ego, than Buddhists or
mystics of the East. Freud’s ego encompassed vast
amounts of behaviors, and complexities of personality
not dreamt of by Eastern mystics.
We can go even further as did the ego and
developmental psychologists, and assert that the word
ego also refers to one’s abilities, talents, behaviors,
patterns of interactions with others, educational
attainment, ability with language and mathematics,
and even all of one’s beliefs and opinions. Really, do
we not use the word ‘ego’ in this way, to refer to all of
these processes and attainments? So what is it that
the word ‘ego’ points to?
Now let us assume there is reality in Freud’s model
of the personality and ego. If the ego is really a
collection of “processes” rather than a single entity,
either an ‘I-thought’, or an inner psychic form which
we can view by looking into our subjectivity, then of
course self inquiry or the recent “Direct Pointing”
method will always find nothing.