The Daily Chaotic Guilt of Egocentricity

The ego-self, or that which you call “I,” is a battleground of opposing beliefs, held together by the tiniest most imperceptible strand of guilt. In fact,”your”  life is an exhaustive struggle to make sense of your ‘self’ on a daily basis. Every morning you awake to the relentless job of arranging your beliefs to avoid crumbling into complete nonsense.

Are “you” a body or a mind? Good or bad, right or wrong? Hopeful or discouraged, aware or ignorant, happy or depressed?

From this unstable and inconsistent framework you perceive and make sense of your world. From this filter of chaos you make decisions that symbolize what you believe “you” are.

“You” believe one thing at one time, only to change course at other times and then back again. Often you believe you must DO what you DO NOT want to do, while NOT DOING what you want or DOING what you want when you know you shouldn’t, but NOT DOING what you should because you DON”T want to.

Sometimes you don’t even know what to ‘believe,’ but pick something because you believe one should believe something, like everyone else does, and that can change from moment to moment. You often believe you should lead, while other times you get pissed because your leader doesn’t lead the way you believe they should.

There are things you desire that you believe are “wrong” and things you reject that you believe are “right” (but only at certain times and depending on your mood). Your belief that one should work hard for a living competes with your dread of the daily mind-numbing grind and "you" resent that your "existence" requires this. You always want more money, but rage against the greed on Wall Street. You believe you should be there for your family, but hate when they get in the way of things you want for yourself, but then feel guilty for being selfish and hate them for that guilt. You believe you should have access to good healthcare, but sometimes smoke, drink to excess and eat crappy foods because you believe it feels good and sometimes you believe that “feeling good” is more important than anything. You believe you should be happy with what you have, but really wish you had your neighbor’s Hummer. You love your spouse, but wish he/she lost weight, then you’d really love him/her, except when he/she pisses you off, which you recognize is sometimes only his/her reaction to the stupid things you do, but find it easier to blame him/her and so continue to do so. You know you should not commit adultery, but would if your coworker wanted to, but hope he/she won’t, even though you’d be thrilled if he/she did want to, so hope he/she might, which you know probably won’t happen so you try not to think about it but sometimes can’t help it. You definitely do NOT believe in “murder,” but feel we should nuke the Iranians and then the North Koreans and if your neighbor’s dog sheits on your lawn again you claim you’d shoot his dog and him. You don’t believe in lying, except on your taxes and to your spouse (if you slept with your coworker). You tell yourself that you "love" your mother, but think she can be a real pain in the ass and still blame her for your “issues," which you blame for all the times you feel like a big sheit as opposed to the times you really love your 'self.'

Your egocentric self-concept struggles mightily on a daily basis to keep it all strung together and in some semblance of order. But sometimes this attempt at maintaining order crumbles and “you” do something completely irrational and absurd, only to experience the guilt of your “wrongness,” demanding you impose stricter order on your thinking (until the next time you blow it).

Human nature is essentially irrational and absurd because it is essentially egocentric and egocentricity is extremely difficult to maintain in any precise order or balance. But you work very hard at it nonetheless. You take care of your body, meditate regularly, try to be nice to people, eat healthy and manage your anger. Until the moment of irrationality when you toss it all to the four winds, telling yourself some rational sounding story to justify what you will later recognize as complete idiocy.

But not to worry, egocentric guilt grinds you right back down into your ‘self’ rather quickly and it is actually guilt that provides an illusion of order and the appearance of holding all the tenuous strands of your egocentric self-concept together. Without guilt you’d completely unravel into total absurdity and nothing would make any sense. 

Naturally, and as every “Christian” will tell you, with guilt must come punishment, otherwise, what use for guilt? Hence, the claim “nobody can hurt you like yourself” or “you are your own worst enemy” is completely true, but only because of your own personal egocentric guilt, which you need but feel guilty for needing.

Indeed, the guilt that troubles you the most is not the guilt for what you do or do not do or have done or have not done, but the guilt for what you have THOUGHT. This is the guilt that nobody sees, but that you often believe, if others could see, you would be known as the vile and evil creature that you often believe you are.

All this merely illustrates the suffering that is the nature of egocentricity and that, without it, one could not be an ego-self. You have invested your egocentricity with the modus operandi of experiencing an “existence” and from that prime objective your ego will do anything to achieve that objective, even if it means attacking YOU because of the guilt IT manufactures and makes "real."

Make no mistake, you gave it all its power and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

One day, however, you may wish to take that power back. You can do that easily if only you would recognize that you granted it in the first place.

Maybe "you" should stop trying to keep it all together and be okay with the chaos rather than feel guilty about it? This will tend to dissolve the guilt that acts as glue and provides an illusion of self-coherence. However, surrendering your need to arrange and order your chaotic egocentric self-concept might seem like a sacrifice, but only to the ego and not to YOU.

However, the ego-self you currently refer to as “you” will attack you viciously for not following instructions. It will berate and condemn you with all its might.

But I would just ignore all that or, at the least, fail to take it too seriously, because egocentric guilt is serious business ONLY to an ego-self.

Once the ego is ignored, it’ll most likely stop bothering you.

Egos need to feel special…

…otherwise, they tend to shrivel up and die.

Artwork by Barry Godber - "21st Century Schizoid Man"