Imagine a superb project manager –
an expert at listening to all the members
of her team.
She keeps duties in flow
and handles competing interests,
emotions, and demands.
Her department is healthy.
Each assignment is handled with
creativity, imagination, and love.
The entire team grows strong.
This PM has a loving bond with
The One In Charge and often
checks in with Her.
Another PM, down the hall,
thinks he is The One In Charge.
He contradicts managements rules,
seeks only to serve himself and
disregards the lessons learned
in the long history of the Company.
He ignores the constant memos
sent by The One in Charge.
His team languishes in illness.
Duties are confused.
The Ego is the Project Manager of our psyche.
But too often it forgets about The One in Charge.
Too often it rejects the memos sent
in body symptoms, dreams, and emotions.
The One in Charge tries again
sending longer, stronger messages.
But too often the Ego goes rogue
causing disruption
destruction
to herself, the company, the World.
The Ego is given great powers
to project manage the psyche.
Without the Ego we’d be lost –
like working in a business that has
no one running the daily duties.
We often condemn the Ego.
Noting its serious offenses.
But don’t imagine life without it.
When the Ego is broken
mental illness and catastrophe follow.
The Ego is a vital deputy
to The One in Charge.
Let’s not speak of its demise.
Rather, let’s help rogue Egos
with interventions, training, prayer.
Our Ego is a necessary part.
“It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one’s own destiny. In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory. Nothing is disturbed—neither inwardly nor outwardly, for one’s own continuity has withstood the current of life and of time. But that can come to pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the workings of fate. – Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections
A Necessary Part – A Poem by Laura Lewis-Barr
For more explorations of symbolic language visit our main page.
Edward Edinger’s fantastic book, Ego and Archetype. For a review of this book.