The Human Ego: Not an Original Part

I was reading something yesterday in one of David Richo's books and it was really powerful.  He said in effect that the human ego was not part of us humans when we were born.  It's something that each of us have learned as a consequence of certain events happening or not happening in our lives. 

What events cause an ego to develop?  Essentially, I think he was saying that the human ego---what Chuck Chamberlin defined as "the conscious feeling of being separate from other people, other things, God and ultimately, even ourselves---comes about when we do not receive what Richo calls the "Five As" from our parents and other important influencers in our lives.  The Five As are: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing.  All of us have had experiences in our lives when we did not receive the fullness of each of these from our parental figures.  The Five As all taken together, it seems to me, amount to Love.  And as a result, all of us have developed an ego in response to these events where we wanted and needed love, and didn't receive as much of it as we wanted and needed.  And as a result, we developed an ego to help us survive and move on....

The point made by Richo that struck me so deeply though was that the ego is a natural development of human beings.  It serves a good purpose at least for some period of time.  For most of us, it seems to save our lives and allows us to survive various traumas, big and small, as we grow up.  As a result, Richo cautions against the tendency to want to attack and demean the human ego.  The ego is not diminished by such attacks---in fact, it seems to only grow as a result of such efforts.  The effective treatment for the ego is love and kindness.

I'm going to chew on this for awhile now.  This approach seems right but quite contrary to much AA talk where there is much written to the effect that our ego needs to be "smashed" and all the talk about the need to rid ourselves of so-called defects of character.  And even our talk in regards to the disease of alcoholism itself: treating this disease as though it's something bad, as something that's wrong with us.  Something needing a cure.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing!, wrong with begin an alcoholic.  At least not for me.  Today.  My problem wasn't that I was an alcoholic: it was that I was an alcoholic who was trying to drink like a non-alcoholic.  Once I realized that my body was simply "alcoholic" in nature, permanently, and that it was possible to live sober and live fully despite that fact of being alcoholic, I experienced a freedom that's been sustained in me for the last eight years.

I still have lots of work to do, to be sure.  And most of that, I suspect, has to do with learning more about this ego of mine, how it's developed over my life and how it influences how I see things today.  I think I'm going to enjoy getting to know more about this inner child of mine.  I think I know his voice, gentle, oftentimes afraid, wanting my attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and, most of all, wanting to be allowed to be himself, just they way he really is.

My name is Mike and I am an alcoholic.

Take care!

Mike L.