Ego-Reference means no room for others
In the grip of these imperatives, the only thing we see about the world and people is our own point of view, which is all about fulfillment of our Ego-References. There is no room for another person to be truly seen nor heard, to be acknowledged as a person by us. All people are merely pawns in the (deadly serious to us) game of fulfilling Ego-References.
‘Unto the seventh generation…..’
Now you can see how the pattern leading to the development of a Substitute Sense of Self with the accompanying unhealthy dependency on the fulfillment of the Ego-References – instead depending healthily on a Natural Sense of Self – repeats itself from generation to generation! As children of people who are not truly connected to themselves but instead are dependent on the fulfillment of all kind of conditions for their Substitute Sense of Self, we have developed into the same kind of narcissistic person who created us, (read: Problems for others, under construction) and the patterns are bound to be repeated without a different outcome.
Rage and violence
Experiencing any kind of obstacles on our path toward achievement of any of our Ego-References can lead to irritation, anger, and/or depression. If we are thwarted in our compulsion to live up to the requirements of the Ego-References, we may also experience terror. Fear of annihilation is lurking around every corner. (Fear of losing our identity, ourselves, our Substitute Sense of Self.) This fear often results in rage or fury!
An impossible task
Many, if not all Ego-References are things which are difficult to achieve or not feasible at all because their nature is fictional. It is comparable to wanting to be ‘perfect’; it sounds nice but it is impossible. You can’t make sure ‘you will never be angry’ or ‘always in time’. You can’t anticipate if your weight will be the one that will be appreciated by the parent that you will have the ‘cute family’ your mother would like to see so much. Yet you keep on trying to realize it if it is an Ego-Reference, meaning a way to get your parent’s approval after all.
Even though based on a real need, it was a need in the past and is not part of present life. So even you get your parent’s approval it at that point it doesn’t change your condition anymore.
On top of that, it was the perception of a child who concluded that their characteristics or behavior were not ‘good enough’. The situation might very well have been that the parent was the one who had a problem. But you keep trying to fulfill the Ego-References once they have settled in your mind. The sad truth is that the fulfillment of the conditions has become our identity and therefore we are not in a position to actually notice and objectively evaluate the realistic or unrealistic nature of what we are doing.
For a person who wasn’t so fortunate as to develop a healthy Sense of your Self by being mirrored as being indeed a separate and independent human being, a stable footed Sense of Self will never be achieved, even by succeeding with their Ego-References, and ‘improving’ on their Ego-References stays a project continuously under construction. It is a horizon that never comes closer.
The psychological ‘car-jacker’
Improving on Ego-Reference conditions and requirements is a life’s goal in the Substitute Sense of Self-oriented person so he is continuously on the lookout for ways to be able to work on it. He is continuously in ‘the scanning mode’ to find opportunities to refute his own internalized (but originally mirrored by his caregiver’s) belief that ‘I am not good enough, I am not adequate enough, I am not beautiful, intelligent, smart enough etc. So whatever he does, the particulars don’t actually matter, as long as he can use it to improve an Ego-Reference. The things he chooses (well, is compelled) to do become ’Vehicles’ for improving his Ego-References and he selects (I use that word in a limited sense here!) his activities based on that possibility.
Ego-References ultimately have the task of leading the person to successfully achieve the Hidden Goal about which we will speak on the page about Hidden Goal.
