No one believes talent, intelligence, stamina and nerve are equally distributed. And most of us agree that there are no magical solutions to life’s challenges.
We have to start from wherever we find ourselves and some things about ourselves are not easily amenable to change.
But what about the timidity that springs from an oversized ego? With the acquisition of different cognitive practices and communicative effort, can we intrude upon the tendency to be timid in the face of subjective challenges?
Is our authenticity to be sacrificed because we won’t confront our timidity? Is a consequential life of our own design to be sacrificed to our fear of embarrassment, say, or to the oversized ego’s hyper-vigilant fear of not looking good?
To what extent have we sacrificed our experience of a self-sufficient and responsible life in order to protect a brittle, insecure and know-it-all ego?
Autonomy and Life is a discipline that differentiates the ego-function. That is, it supports the development and quality of a right-sized ego-function or egoistic presence. When we study Autonomy and Life, we learn that timidity may not reflect a too-small ego-function but rather an unexamined attachment to what we believe is an innately centered, transcendent and mysteriously propertied ego.
With a more realistic, or let us say pragmatic take on the purpose of the ego-function, we make it our business to create a right-sized ego-function that will support our independence, our thoughtfulness, our commitments.
Certainly, over much of what happens in the world, we have little individual control. Yet we are capable of a progressive expansion of the autonomy born of overcoming the counterproductive habits of an oversized ego. And, as we come to grips with the cognitive and communicative practices that distinguish a right-sized ego-function, we can have far more referential authority over our private experience of life and over our subjective journey.
In other words, the state and content of our ego-function directly influence the quality of our day-to-day experience. How well we appoint it, fine-tune it and use it is pivotal to the presence by which we are known and know ourselves.
Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes. Visit autonomyandlife.com for more information.