Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #11 – King or Servant

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by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self.

Ego is the servant pretending to be a king. You are avoiding stepping into your Unique Self for fear of being a king. Your ego thinks it is God but does not really believe it, so your ego insanely tries to make itself the God it knows it is not. Your Unique Self knows it is God, so it acts in the world with majesty, audacity, and grace.

Further discussion:

We can take a lot of different perspectives on today’s issue. Let’s try on a couple of them.

Perspective 1: The Ego-perspective

“The ego-mind is only a problem when it’s leading the show. As a master, it is a tyrant and a dictator. As a servant, it’s a beautiful, sublime servant. It knows very well how to serve. As we know from creative activity, great moments in philosophy or science or spiritual moments, the mind is the vehicle for insight and revelation and discovery. It’s wonderful. It’s equal to the whole mystery. It’s just that we have tried to follow our minds and that doesn’t work. It’s a mess.” ~ Gangaji, Nondual teacher/author

Here, the ego is seen as the mind that needs to understand that it is a part and not the whole, that it is a servant and not a master. Or like Dr. Marc puts it: “Ego is the servant pretending to be a king.”

The question we could ask is: If it is a servant, then, whom does it serve?

In most spiritual teachings the answer is that it serves the One True Self. But is this really true??? That would practically mean that our body-mind-system is merely a servant and has no real dignity of its own. It needs to get out of the way and let True Self or the Evolutionary Impulse or Process take over and use the body-mind as a vehicle. There is a partial truth in that because our Ego really isn’t the King or God or Master it pretends to be. Yet, there is an irreducible dignity in the Personal Self that is lost in many of today’s spiritual teachings.

Perspective 2: Typology

This perspective is incorporated in certain soul archetypes with different types called King-Souls and Server-Souls. Despite the “channeled” origin of the content below, these archetypes or types (from an Integral perspective) are especially important because they show the tension that is inherent in both of the words King and Servant. Both types have positive and negative poles with the positive pole being an expression of True Self or Soul (or we would say Unique Self), and the negative pole being an expression of the ego or false self.

For the King-Archetype these poles are expressed as Mastery versus Tyranny:

“In the positive pole of their essence, mastery, King souls are completely autonomous, powerful and responsible, in charge of both themselves and their surroundings to good effect. They can achieve unity of effort and synergy of action, empowering others to achieve great things. They give power to others rather than take it from them. A great leader, it is said, is one who creates more leaders, not followers. In the negative pole, tyranny, they are more like puppet masters, merely “playing” people as pawns for their own selfish ends. At times they can be callous, imperious, tyrannical, despotic.”

For the Server-Archetype these poles consist of Service and Bondage:

“Servers are the most altruistic and accommodating of the Roles, tending to put the needs of others first, even if to their own detriment. In the positive pole, service, the Server soul might be better described as a “saint”. The word “slave”, on the other hand, is more in line with the Server’s negative pole (bondage, servitude). In this case, the individual identifies with being someone who has no choice but to work their fingers to the bone for others, and for no thanks or reward.”

Perspective 3: The Servant-King or the non-dual perspective of Unique Self

“But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others…” ~ Jesus in Matthew 20:26-28

“One wonderful young Christian theologian, Rollie Stanich, with whom I have shared the Unique Self teaching, wrote to me of his vision of an evolved Christianity, in which Jesus was an incarnation of the Unique Self principle that waits to be realized in every person… “Jesus lets God see through his eyes. God’s perspective was enriched immensely, immeasurably, through the eyes of Jesus; never was humanity seen—and thus loved—as from the cross,” wrote Rollie. “This is how Unique Self inspires me to unpack my own Christian teaching.”” ~ Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self

If we take Jesus here as a role-model for Unique Self we can get to the root of the issue. For Ego wants to rule and be served which makes it oscillate between tyrant and subservient slave. It needs to play one of these roles because it fears that it would cease to exist if it would stop identifying with one of these. Yet, when it tries to be King, it knows that it is not; and when it tries to be slave, it knows that it is not.  In becoming a Servant it needs to learn about the dignity of true Service.

Unique Self, on the other hand, truly wants to serve which makes it the true King, Leader, God, or Master that “acts in the world with majesty, audacity, and grace” as Dr. Marc reminds us.

Perspective 4: Your Unique Perspective

How do YOU sense those different poles within yourself?  – The poles of:

• King and Servant?
• Master and Tyrant?
• Servant and Slave?
• Ego and Unique Self?

Share with us your thoughts in the comments – here or on Facebook.