How Do I Control My Ego?
A teacher of mine once told me that the difference between being brave and being a hero is that a brave person will enter a burning building to rescue a baby, while a hero will enter a burning building to rescue a baby … and never tell anyone about it. That leads me to believe that true heroism defies ego. Is that why Superman quickly returns to his Clark Kent identity? He’s not looking for accolades, slaps on the back or a new movie from Warner Brothers with his name above the title. What makes Superman different than most of us has very little to do with his lightening speed and superhuman strength. The real difference is that he has arrived. The stories of great heroes tell more about the journey than the act of heroism.
The hero’s journey takes the ordinary man from home, across dangerous thresholds and then home again with an expanded consciousness. So departure, struggle and return, the three phases of the journey are really a metaphor for what we all are programmed to do. Our task, our goal, is to evolve from the neurotic ego through to the healthy ego and then ultimately to the spiritual Self. Departure for Clark Kent might be stepping out of his office and putting on his Superman cape, while for us mere mortals departure is of a different kind. Departure for us means letting go of our attachment to the illusion of being in control and the compulsions to cling to what we falsely imagine will make us happy.
Where Superman struggles with any number of enemies, our human struggle is with the neurotic ego. This struggle consists of our learning to take responsibility for our feelings, dealing with fear, anger and guilt, building self-esteem, maintaining personal boundaries, achieving true intimacy and befriending our “shadow self.” And just like our heroic forefathers of fiction, we humans leave the familiarity of our mother’s house believing our journey is to faraway lands, only to find it was a path to bring us back home. Only now, we’ve brought with us the capacity to give and receive unconditional love. And that is what being a hero is.
