Are the Inner Child and the Ego the Same?

reply to post by Itisnowagain

Are you avoiding answering the question? Bringing in all sorts of stuff that is not relevant - blood, skulls and hearts. I am asking about 'thought' - nothing else.

That's your problem. You feel thoughts are somehow disconnected from yourself, as if they existed without you. Thoughts are nothing until they are written down, spoken, or expressed; only then can they be "thoughts and nothing else".

You always blame thoughts, inner battles and so many non-existent things for your actions. It's petty; but I don't blame you, because you're human. We all do it; but It's time to start taking responsibility.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

Are you avoiding answering the question? Bringing in all sorts of stuff that is not relevant - blood, skulls and hearts. I am asking about 'thought' - nothing else.

That's your problem. You feel thoughts are somehow disconnected from yourself, as if they existed without you. Thoughts are nothing until they are written down, spoken, or expressed; only then can they be "thoughts and nothing else".

You always blame thoughts, inner battles and so many non-existent things for your actions. It's petty; but I don't blame you, because you're human. We all do it; but It's time to start taking responsibility.

Are you saying that thoughts do happen where you are?

I do not think that thoughts can exist without me. Taking responsibility is about 'respond' ability. If you do not understand the science behind dialogue you will not know what games are being played. I see the games people play and I avoid unnecessary conflict - I have win, win exchanges.
Do you recognize the game you play?

reply to post by NibiruFinal


Nice OP NibiruFinal.
The inner child that you speak of is what our true nature is - it is always there but on top of it there is fear. This fear happens at the moment we find ourselves separate from everything and from that moment on the world we appear to inhabit feels alien to us and we try our hardest to fit in. We try to do everything right and judge ourselves. There is a person who seems to know better in our head that says 'you should do...' or 'you shouldn't have done...'. and 'it's not good enough'. Children do not have this judge, this little dictator, this voice, it has not been assimilated - but when it is an adult - it has. That voice crushes the inner child and life feels rubbish. I am not sure you can change it - but you can recognize that it is just an appearance - just a noise and means nothing about you really. When you don't join in the game - it fades though lack of interest. It's like a habit.

My inner child is the one that gets excited at the sight of snow flakes, hoping it will keep snowing. My ego is worrying about how I'm going to get out and how much disruption the snow will cause.

We are born into this world innocent and conditioned after that to be opposite of what we are. Ego and greed are both conditioning. Desire for self control of ones life, that is something we are meant to suppress in children till they are ready to leave the nest. To break a childs spirit and creativity is not good but to suppress it till the child can be aware of the consequences of his actions is desireable.

The inner child is not bad and is by no means the same as Ego.

... The term ‘ego’ is commonly demonized, but the organ it describes is actually our active, conscious mind, and much like our heart or lungs it is an essential component of our survival, not something to be defeated or overcome, any more than it’s counterpart the ‘id’ or subconscious. They are meant to be in cyclic balance, alternating between each other as our waking, and dreaming states, and from either vantage point we can gain insight on the other. The ancient symbol of yin and yang demonstrates their inseparable nature, and this alternating motion is what drives the mechanism of life itself! What we are striving to do with this model, just as scientists map the neural synapses in the brain, is get a clearer picture of the way thoughts exchange between the various chambers, or organs of the psyche. We want to know, how something can begin as an idea and result as a violent action, how associations are made, and the nature of memory itself. Ok? That's not what the original Latin intended for it to mean, stop twisting it to fit the Freudian model, a scientist makes a HYPOTHESIS which has to be corroborated by the data, not the other way around.

So to answer the original question, are they the same, NO in fact they occupy the most opposite possible positions within the diagram of the psyche. The 'inner child' is the shadow, the deepest point of the anima which is completely insulated from direct contact with the external world by many layers of subconsciousness and consciousness, which alternate in a spiral as is suggested by the yin/yang symbol constantly flowing into itself. Or, if you prefer, the visual of an orrery or gyroscope, with a constant motion of concentric rings, which is synonymous with a mechanical description of an atom with its electron cloud right? An inner world. The 'ego' as a general term can refer to the entire active thinking consciousness, or it can center around the central layers that are slightly shielded from direct contact with reality by the pragmatic reactionary portion of the mind, but also not in direct contact with the yang component of the 'inner child' which is the imagination. Imagination is one step up to the consciousness, from the shadow. So the dual nature of the inner child layer is that of the shadow, or little girl, who is our root impulse of desire. -It’s subconscious, feminine organ is the originator of all impulses, the deepest manifestation of the self, which is the shadow. Pure intuition, the very pulse of self awareness and represented by the little girl, unfettered by any of the restraints of reality. This is desire in its purest form, and some of the wishes can be dark until the little girl establishes a link to the outside world, and discovers that she is not the only being that ‘wants’.- Don't tack on unnecessary negative or positive associations on that, it is simply what I said, don't get bogged down in gender issues because the gender I refer to is the primeval alchemical gender, yin/yang, receiving/giving. The only difference between males and females, truly, is that males are most concerned about what is done, and females with what is NOT done. But for psychological purposes, these gender descriptions are to differentiate the states of the internal mind between conscious/active and subconscious/latent.

The male counterpart to the shadow is the imagination. - This base impulse is passed to the most delicate stage of the mind, and also the most free, which it’s the pure imagination of the little boy. Raw energy, the prima mobile is held by no bounds of mental conditioning. The subconscious impulse of ‘want’ has found conscious manifestation in the idea of the self, ‘cogito ergo sum.’ Now the spirit, still unbridled by societal expectations, gets a glimpse of its dual identity and compulsion to share with itself. ‘I want.’- This is the only connection between the ego and inner child, and they are still worlds away!

reply to post by NibiruFinal


Much ado about nothing would be a fitting response I guess.

The ego and the "inner child" have nothing to do with each other. Firstly the ego is being defined wrongly by the whole new-age community. It has not that much to do with greed and all the other bad things, at least not directly.

The "inner-child" is not really anything. It is a concept for ones ability to retain some childlike qualities as an adult. The ability of wonder and being honestly astounded or happy even.

reply to post by NibiruFinal

Sorry, I do not believe in the "Inner Child" theory. In my opinion, childhood is a 'mode of operation' of a human soul, just like survival, procreation, leisure, and war. It contains most of the latter elements in a 'training mode', totally devoid of the many shocking sides of life. Remove blood from war and you get a game. Remove childbirth from procreation and you get a game. And so on. Whenever you forget about the consequences (e.g. because you are lazy or stupid or tired), you retreat to the safe world view of a child. Maybe you can call it the "Inner Child", but I'd rather call it a state of mind.

I'd say the ego is the pollution of our inner child. The two became intertwined. Set your ego free. Put distance upon it untill you aren't influenced by it anymore and it releases its grasp upon you.

I'll do elaborate.

Let's say your inner child is resembled by a circle the size of a football. Yourself remains that size, but the parts ego took you became less. It's to become full circle when compared with this equation.

reply to post by NibiruFinal


The inner child is a concrete thinker with an underdeveloped brain. Children do not think like adults - because they can't. To experience a lack of abstract thought is to relax in the here and now and the details on what's in front of you so it doesn't have to be about letting go completely of the ego which holds us together so to speak. The ego develops over time and is about survival and control. If you don't have an ego your only id and therefore not incorporated into the world where one has to follow social norms (use the bathroom when you have to go as a very simple example). The ego is constantly working to balance id and superego (me me me and they they they). It certainly gets out of balance but it is necessary just as its necessary for executive functioning to develop by a certain age - it's like our backbone and we can't exist in this form without it. The inner child is subjective at this time to me since I'm assuming you mean the ability to think in simple terms (snow is as magical as it used to be if only...). A part of development is definitely magical thinking and this is correlated with ego in that the mind begins to realize that there must be a reason for everything and I can figure it out by myself - and the answer is always related to what I feel is best for me. It's a bummer when reality hits and its unfortunate we can't easily have a piece of this back. You are exploring how we can but its not by separating the two because they are intertwined like a trees root system. To rip this apart would be analogous to a trauma (potentially a spiritual crisis), and in my immediate thinking on the matter it would be an attempt to "start over and allow the ego to grow in a less restrictive way). If a root is strangling the base of the tree some pruning might be appropriate but not to try to undo it all.