The resources of the conscious Ego

The adventure of the Ego in human life

When the Ego starts its human adventure, it begins to passively experience the dynamics of the psyche that involve it, both the sweet and the bitter ones. There are not a few cases of Egos forced by adverse organic, environmental, social and human conditions, to suffer from early childhood and to grow, as best they can, having to experience negative and demeaning attunements of the psyche. It is also understandable how, in the state of naivety that is proper to it, the Ego tries to indulge those dynamics which, in the form of desires, promise to give it pleasant and gratifying emotional reactions, adopting on an experimental basis the behaviors that seem most suitable to get what it wants. This shows the presence, in the Ego's very essence, of a tendency towards the pursuit of happiness, destined almost always to be disappointed by the needs of organic life and the dynamics of the human psyche. In some few cases the human environment in which the Ego is formed and helped to consolidate and grow, is evolved enough to transfer to it since childhood the necessary resources to deal successfully and in a balanced way with the objective difficulties of life and the often deceptive dynamics of the psyche: otherwise the Ego is almost always forced to learn from its own mistakes, which manifest themselves as consequences of incorrect or inadequate evaluations of choices and behaviors determined by the functioning of the psyche itself, which the Ego supported or which anyway it was unable to counter. Most cultural programs designed to avoid aggressive and violent behavior are based on the deterrent constituted by the prospect of a punishment, yet the power of the psyche is such that often not even the threat of a future suffering can prevent the Ego from acting in a certain way. It may be that there are, between one human being and another, differences in the same quality of the Ego, the cause of which remains unknown to us, which would further complicate a framework that is already difficult to interpret: however, the Ego can change its attitude of subordination towards the dynamics of the psyche that involve it when, as the years go by, its experience of this life is enriched.

One of the strategies that the Ego frequently adopts in facing the difficulties of life – driven by the will to survive and to assert itself manifested by its own psychophysical system, and often boosted by the cultural programs it receives from its social milieu – consists in trying to satisfy its desires, which can also present themselves in the form of long-term ambitions, successfully obtaining the desired results and avoiding, as far as possible, the misfortunes that life can throw at it. In this way the Ego immerses itself, in one form or another, in the competitive game determined by the psyche's dynamics, trying to come out victorious with the means and resources at its disposal. However, the acceptance of the rules of this game involves an identification, for better or for worse, with the very dynamics of the psyche, which are not subjected to any critical evaluation, because the same realism with which human life is considered as an absolute value (life is the supreme good, as they say) prevents one from escaping the intense need to play. The fact remains that, if in this game there are some winners, there are also many losers, who pay with interest the prize of the winnings and of the game itself as a whole. It's like a big lottery where, once the prize money for the lucky few winners has been deducted, those who benefit most financially are the organizers. In terms of budget, it would therefore be necessary to understand whether the participation in the game of life is consciously taken by some entities or organizations that care for the interest and destiny of the conscious Ego, regardless of the greater or lesser resources of which each human being disposes in facing the adventure of life. In this respect, it is not enough to rely on the natural desire to procreate new organisms – a need already well present in the animal kingdom – especially when this drive manifests itself in the undifferentiated and primitive form of uncontrolled sexual impulses, aimed at the search for a more or less intense form of pleasure resulting from the discharge of a psychophysical tension which the Ego cannot control.

As it goes on in the course of its life, the conscious Ego becomes aware of the often deceptive character of many of the dynamics of the psyche to which it naively entrusts its destiny, including those cultural and propaganda programs based on a hypocritical representation of ideals and values considered as positive, to which a completely different management of the reality of the events of this life corresponds (as not infrequently happens in politics or in religious organizations). As we have often observed, the Ego is naturally induced to trust its own psyche, by which it becomes involved to the point of identifying itself completely with it: however, if it has a minimum of critical intelligence, it cannot fail to recognize how often the results of its choices and actions do not correspond to what had been predicted by those same dynamics of the psyche on which it had relied. This insecurity on the part of the Ego with regard to the resources it can dispose of to face life's difficulties also extends to knowledge, which is always based on interpretations originating from the psyche. The unquestionable successes obtained in the scientific field in these last centuries are based on the recognition of a method which is able – as far as possible – to avoid the uncertainty of subjective interpretations, a method that nevertheless must always deal with this uncertainty when trying to explain the primary causes of the phenomena rather than limit itself to the measurement and management of their interactions. These aspects of the human condition determine a progressive loss of confidence of the Ego in its ability to know and control the reality of this world, which manifests itself in a strong mistrust and skepticism towards everything that cannot be included in the limited framework of the certainties we rely on, depending on the culture we feel we belong to. The conscious Ego is now so used to distrusting everything, that it cannot even believe in the possibility of an afterlife in which it will no longer be deceived or betrayed.

The resources of intelligence

The distrust of the Ego towards the human psyche is fully justified: the mind in fact tunes all sorts of material coming from the psyche – not only in the form of thoughts, but also of emotions, desires, feelings and fantasies – by which the Ego constantly takes the risk of being fascinated and conditioned, due to the mere fact of identifying itself with its own mental experiences. Intelligence is a precious resource, which should protect the Ego against negative and harmful dynamics of the psyche, not only in those who experience them directly, but also regarding others who, interacting with them, are somehow contaminated by them: indeed, every form of activity of the psyche, in manifesting towards others, generates in these latter more or less instantaneous and often automatic reactions, by which their Ego is involved. However, the intelligence everyone has is what it is, and although some people are gifted to an above-average extent, however variable, humankind as a whole functions on the basis of average intelligence, which often proves inadequate to successfully manage the complex and conflicting dynamics of the human psyche. On the other hand, the same recognition of intelligence of others requires an adequately developed form of intelligence, but even in our days we often witness the prevalence of certain characteristics of the psyche – such as obstinacy, presumption and arrogance – which are strenuously defended with considerable contempt for intelligence, and so it happens quite frequently that in democratic systems large groups of citizens accept to be directed by people who are not very capable and not particularly gifted with intelligence, with whom they identify by recognizing in these leaders the same forces through which the dynamics of the psyche control and subdue the conscious Ego of those who support them. It is, in some way, a mental vicious circle that up to now has proven unfavorable to the evolution of human intelligence.

There is never enough of intelligence in this world: even the most intelligent people must always admit and recognize their intellectual limits in being able to understand different aspects of the reality of our planet and in solving the problems which mankind as a whole must deal with. However, what is most surprising is the low level of average human intelligence, especially as it affects the functioning of social organizations at all levels, up to the (very important) one of leadership of sovereign states: the fact remains that this is the state of the art as far as humankind is concerned, given that up to now no product or method has been found capable of increasing the level of intelligence of people. Moreover, it is not certain that a higher intelligence would necessarily orient itself towards the common good, although usually the evaluations determined by a higher level of intelligence lead to favor collaboration, concord and harmony among humans rather than competition and conflict, as intelligence in general shuns violence and prevailing by force. There is often an inverse proportion between the degree of intelligence that a person has and the identification of her conscious Ego with the dynamics of the psyche in which it is involved, especially in those cases where the collaboration between intelligence and consciousness is manifested in the need to make some step forward on the cognitive path that frees the conscious Ego from its subjection to those aspects of the human psyche that it feels as unpleasant and alien to its deepest essence. It is precisely intelligence that highlights the inadequacy of the psyche's dynamics that normally drive the Ego – determining its choices, behaviors and actions – to successfully face the complexity and difficulties of life, obtaining the right reward for its own evolution. Often even those whose life has been successful in their youth and maturity, in accordance with the predominant cultural programs, then find themselves having to face the psychophysical decline of old age before death, without having been able to find a valid cognitive framework on which their Ego can rely to develop a perspective of further experiences in the spiritual dimension.

Intelligence, recognizing the ambivalences of the human psyche and the unreliability of many of the interpretations originating from the psyche aimed at predicting and evaluating the events of this life, on which the Ego relies with naive trust, produces a form of skepticism which then prevents the Ego from considering as true or real what is not ascertained or demonstrable. This skepticism also extends to the possibility that the conscious Ego can experience other mental dimensions after the death of its organism: in this case, intelligence extends the same distrust and the same critical attitude manifested – with very good reasons – towards the human psyche to something that it does not know, which is still tuned through the activity of the brain, that is an organ of our body. Hence comes that almost extreme need shown by a certain number of rather intelligent people to be able to trace back events related to the spiritual sphere, such as mediumistic phenomena or NDEs, to some form of brain activity, forgetting that the interference of alien dimensions with respect to that of our organic life makes ineffective the same interpretative and cognitive methods that intelligence has become accustomed to successfully using towards physical events and human psyche. On the other hand, not infrequently those who experience attunements relating to the spiritual dimension make the opposite mistake, that is, believing that what is valid, meaningful and involving in that dimension can be transferred sic et simpliciter into our organic life, which still remains under the control of the human psyche. However, if intelligence really represents a resource that helps the evolution and liberation of the conscious Ego, it cannot fail to recognize the reality of certain events and their meaning for the Ego: therefore, in evaluating them, it can manifest its own critical spirit only in relation to the coherence of those elements and events that can be traced back to the framework of the reference dimension, which in our case is that of human life or, alternatively, that of the Spirit.

The resource represented by information on the Spirit dimension

Several times in these pages I have pointed out the importance of the NDEs as a reliable information media on the possible experiences of the conscious Ego in alternative dimensions to that of human life, and in particular in the Spirit dimension. Of particular importance in this respect are those experiences that occurred when the experimenter's organism was in a condition of clinical death, that actually turned out to be reversible. Obviously, there is a fundamental difference between those who have directly experienced an NDE, then attempting to translate it into terms of language to tell others about it, and those who – having not experienced it – know about it by listening to or reading the various NDE accounts: the latter are free to believe or not what the experimenters affirm, but they cannot interpret the experiences in terms other than those used by those who have lived them, given the intrinsically subjective nature of what the conscious Ego experiences. Intelligence can be used to compare the events and contents reported in the various experiences, but it is neither correct nor intelligent to discredit the way in which each experience is lived and interpreted by the conscious Ego that had it, or the meaning it attributes to it. Basically, those who have not had these experiences cannot replace, in their interpretation, the Ego of those who actually lived them. With regard to the Spirit dimension, I recall once more that by this term (with the initial capital letter) I mean that Light, to which many experimenters attribute a divine energetic quality, from which radiates an absolute, unconditional love, full of mercy and sympathy, which envelops and penetrates the conscious Ego – who feels irresistibly attracted to it – infusing it with a state of bliss, happiness and supreme grace, in which the Ego would like to dwell forever, often stubbornly refusing to return to the dimension of organic life.

Certainly, most of those who have temporarily been in a condition of clinical death have not had an NDE, and not all NDEs consist of positive, rewarding and meaningful experiences for the Ego, such as those related to the Spirit dimension. However, most NDEs are of this kind, and one could make a very long list of practically coincident quotes regarding the condition of ineffable and absolute bliss experienced by the conscious Ego in its spiritual condition, when it comes to be in the Light dimension. Taken together these thousands and thousands of experiences – for an evaluation of which you may consult the now vast literature on the subject – represent a source of information for the whole humankind, of which those who have lived them seem to be the messengers chosen by the Spirit itself, according to a criterion that we don't know, or anyway by those entities that have the power to determine such experiences, fixing them firmly in the memory of the experimenter when the conscious Ego returns to organic life. Our critical intelligence (which has become skeptical as a result of the experiences determined by the human psyche) may also endeavor to deprive the NDEs related to the Spirit dimension of their meaning and positive value for the conscious Ego, considering them a deception by alien entities against the Ego, perhaps by controlling the brain functioning, who would thus be convinced of the permanent reality of a series of experiences that would instead have a transitory and illusory character. However, the fact remains that all those who have had a direct experience of the Spirit dimension are convinced that they have lived a very intense reality, even more real than the one they experience through their organism and brain, and that wanting to force to such an extent the power of illusion and deception on the conscious Ego attributed to such mysterious and unknowable entities – capable of controlling every aspect of our mental experiences – would deprive any human resource, including our intelligence, of value, meaning, and cognitive capacity. The conscious Ego would thus find itself at the mercy of an absolute nihilism, determined by the powers that tune up and control the brain functioning on which its very existence would depend.

Let us therefore try to use our intelligence in the best possible way, to examine and evaluate those aspects of the NDEs that connect the Spirit dimension to our human condition, especially through the process of the return of the conscious Ego from its spiritual state to organic life. In some cases the Ego – while being able to experience all the positive and surprisingly gratifying aspects of the Spirit dimension – is warned that its time has not yet come, and that it will have to return to organic life (and the sufferings that it entails), with the certainty that in any case it will be accepted for good in the Spirit dimension to which it feels it belongs, when this life has reached its natural end (agreed or unilaterally established). In this case the conscious Ego accepts, although not infrequently with regret, what is established by a power that it recognizes as superior, whose decisions it cannot refuse, also because it feels that they are inspired by that absolute and unconditional love that itself was able to experience. Furthermore, it almost always feels invested with a mission to carry out, or a task to be completed in this life, for which the immersion in the energy field radiated by the Spirit grants it new and amazing energies, which in some cases also determine an unexpected and more or less complete recovery from the illness that afflicted its organism. This new life is also perceived as an opportunity offered to the conscious Ego to correct some incorrect orientations, behaviors and ways of thinking that characterized its life prior to the NDE, not conforming to what it experienced in the Spirit dimension, the return to which is now considered by the Ego as the only authentic and meaningful purpose of human life.

Generally, those who had a positive NDE interpret the mission entrusted to them in human life as the need to communicate and spread what they have experienced in the Spirit dimension, and to set interpersonal relationships as far as possible on the basis of that love and understanding by which they felt pervaded, avoiding judging others, and above all condemning them. In some cases they also feel the need to deepen their knowledge of various aspects of this world, of human affairs and of the spirit. In these circumstances, there is a good coherence between what happens in the Spirit dimension and the consequences that those experiences entail in the dimension of our organic life, even if it remains to be verified how and to what extent the changes induced by the NDEs will actually influence positively the human psyche on the whole. In some NDEs, however, the conscious Ego is offered what appears to be a reasonable option of free choice between remaining in the Spirit dimension or returning to organic life: it is, however, a kind of test for the Ego, because its decision, often steady and convinced, to remain in that dimension is then not respected, obviously in all those cases in which the experimenters have come back and can tell us about their NDEs. An NDErs expressed herself in these terms: «The only thing I can't figure out is why they kept telling me I had free will and that I didn't have to come back. But I was thrown back against my will». (Quoted from Barbara R. Rommer, Blessing in Disguise, 2000). And another confirms more or less the same concept: «I really wanted to stay in heaven and not come back, but God doesn't give you a choice» (same source).

It should be borne in mind that in these cases there is still, in our dimension, a team of specialists who work hard to bring the organism of the experimenter back to life, and therefore we are not able to say how much what happens in the Spirit dimension is determined by the events related to the organic functioning, so – in all those cases that we are allowed to know – at a certain point there is a sort of spring effect that more or less abruptly recalls the conscious Ego inside its own organism. However, we must recognize that, at least in some cases, the conscious Ego's will is not respected, even when the possibility of a free choice had been proposed to it, therefore the Ego can be led to delude itself that it has a say in the matter about its own destiny, then finding itself to some extent fooled. If we also take into account the fact that only a minority of people whose bodies have been in a state of clinical death for some time report having had an NDE when they are brought back to life, and that some NDEs are characterized by distressing and in some cases even hellish experiences, we must deduce that the influence of the Spirit in human life provides that an element of uncertainty remains in any case regarding the future experiences of the conscious Ego after the death of its organism: this uncertainty seems to be completely erased only for those who have been able to directly experience the Spirit dimension, drawing from it the absolute confidence that at death they will be able to permanently return to it. We who have not had an NDE of this kind, can therefore hope with confidence – if this corresponds to what our conscious Ego desires – to be able to access the Spirit dimension at the death of our organism, possibly asking ourselves what conditions must be respected in order for the Ego to achieve this goal.

The conscious Ego is a resource for itself

The most important resource for the Ego is probably represented by the very fact of being aware of its own existence – at least temporary – and of being able to reflect on its essence. Obviously, in this case I am not referring to the Ego that identifies itself with the dynamics of the psyche by which it is involved and ensnared, also as a consequence of the conditioning cultural programs that influence the functioning of its mind and, consequently, the behaviors deriving from them. Only when the Ego has embarked on the path of differentiation and separation from these dynamics can it take advantage of that process of deepening its self-knowledge that leads it to the enhancement of its spiritual component. The NDEs themselves contain elements and elaborations that seem to belong to the personal experience, for example when the entities met in the Spirit dimension manifest themselves and are perceived by the conscious Ego as its relatives and friends who have already passed away, or when significant events of its human life are relived. Not infrequently in its spiritual condition the Ego experiences a cosmic expansion of its essence, which leads it to identify with every aspect of the universe, or to merge with the Spirit itself. Therefore, although in this life the Ego is undoubtedly limited by the constraints that its organism and the various attunements of the human psyche impose on it, often forcing it to identify with the social role that destiny has assigned to it, it retains in itself at least one spark of its original essence, which can never completely fade away despite life's unfavorable conditions. This deepening of self-knowledge on the part of the Ego may seem a trivial affair, but usually the Ego experiences its own existence only through its identification with the various dynamics of the psyche that involve it over time, if not simply through the actions of its body. Only through a constant training of its consciousness can the Ego amplify and deepen the knowledge of itself.

As gradually the Ego recognizes and explores its own spiritual component, at some point it can also tune into immaterial entities that it perceives as distinct from itself, but to which it feels somehow connected. The way in which the human psyche interprets these entities entails that they are sometimes designated as spirit-guides, at other times as demons (in the Socratic, not negative, sense of the term): in general it seems that the Ego attributes to them a function of orientation along the difficult path of human life, and sometimes they can actively intervene in the events of this reality, making so that the Ego never feels abandoned to itself. In fact, in many cases, the conscious Ego is able to concretely perceive the intervention of these entities, on which it relies to be guided, helped and comforted in the difficulties of life. But since the human psyche is bipolar by nature, the conscious Ego can more or less easily be involved in the sphere of attraction of dynamics of the psyche that seem to be determined by the influence of wicked, malignant and demonic immaterial entities (this time precisely in the negative sense of the term). Generally the influence of such evil spirits is connected to the obtaining by the Ego of advantages, real or presumed, in the course of this life or, to put it simply, to the satisfaction of desires of various kinds. Often, however, the effects of this influence are preceded by a destructive action of ideals, values, or simply illusions, on which the Ego naively relies in the phase of its life when consciousness is still consolidating: experiencing, still at a young age, the effects determined by the reactions of the psyche to mistreatment, misery, injustice and violence, the Ego becomes vulnerable and is conditioned by a vision of human life as a rather infernal project, in which the strongest dominate and the weak succumb and are exploited. This belief acquires all the more power over the Ego, the more the dominant socio-cultural programs propagandize and promote a self-referential vision of human life, which is presented as the only possibility of conscious experience offered to the Ego.

It is quite evident that in the context of a vision of human life as an experience which ends in itself, the conscious Ego, in its function as a sensor subject to the tensions of the psyche, can feel justified and gratified by the search for what it deems advantageous and pleasant, trying to avoid what is painful and does not satisfy it. If, on the other hand, human life is perceived as a commitment that the conscious Ego assumes in function of an evolution of the experiences which it will encounter once its organic life is over, it will be less acquiescent towards the dynamics of the psyche determined by the functioning of its organism. The fact remains that faced with the bipolarity of the human psyche and the extreme variety of environmental and social conditions that influence personal destinies, the conscious Ego of every human being reacts in a different way, often manifesting its own autonomy that makes it difficult – if not impossible – its classification within one or more standardized models. In engaging to deepen the knowledge of itself, the Ego tries to unravel the mystery of its own existence, doing everything possible to free the pure gem of its essence from all the slags of the psyche that encrust it, preventing it from shining. There are, however, many types of gems, some more widespread, others rarer, and thus a particular dedication and attention is required for the work of liberation that the conscious Ego performs on itself: this work of purification brings to light something that sometimes does not correspond to a standard model, but represents a surprise for the same Ego which, to use a metaphor, reflecting itself in its own mirror at the end of the work, discovers an image of itself different from what it expected.

Let us not forget that – in this life as in other dimensions – the Ego functions in any case as a sensor, which is attracted by what it attributes a value to because it takes advantage of it, in one form or another, and in the meantime does its best to avoid what harms it or causes pain and suffering. The problems, in the context of this organic life, arise from the ways in which the dynamics of the human psyche, which involve all of us, interlace and entangle in a more or less chaotic and deceptive way the stimuli which the Ego has to face, the consequences deriving from them, and the programs on the basis of which the Ego should develop the strategies to be adopted towards the psyche. This organic life seems to be predisposed to put the Ego in the least advantageous conditions to successfully perform the function entrusted to it, as a result of the limited resources it possesses and the strategies – often conflicting and counterproductive – that are transmitted to it by the cultural system in which it was brought up (also conditioned by the collective dynamics of the psyche). It is no coincidence, therefore, that the balance of experiences that the Ego encounters during organic life can be unsatisfactory, given that it is forced to get by as best it can in a dimension that can prove difficult to face and even hostile towards it. Furthermore, the Ego must face organic life by having a limited amount of energy, destined to be exhausted as life goes on: in this case too, it is a resource with which the Ego is endowed to a greater or lesser extent, that it invests and consumes as it gets gradually involved in the affairs of its human adventure, in all their variegated facets. It is no coincidence that those who have experienced the Spirit dimension during an NDE often return to organic life with the feeling of having received an extra dose of energy, in the form of unconditional love, which allows them to even radically reprogram the strategies their Ego relies on to deal with the deceptive and conflicting dynamics of the human psyche.

Human interpersonal and organizational relationships are often based on exchanges of energy mediated by the dynamics of the psyche that determine the quantity and quality of the energy transferred and received by each of us. Although it is evident that collaboration within an organization can give rise to forms of energy of higher quality, it is also true that often there are those who, in this way, take advantage of the energies subtracted from others, given that the quantity of human beings who currently live on our planet is such as not to allow their survival as autonomous organisms, but only in the context of complex, organized and highly specialized social systems, in which the quantitative factors relating to the available human material prevail over the understandable needs of each individual personal case. Even in this respect, there is a vulnerability of the conscious Ego, which often does not even have the resources to successfully adapt to the needs imposed by a well-established social system, which cannot be changed without causing a collective trauma that would jeopardize the very lives of millions of people. It therefore seems inevitable, always taking into account the bipolar character of our psyche, that in the context of the enormous number of energy exchanges that occur between humans there may be substantial imbalances, and that many people are destined to give up their energy at a loss for the benefit of other individuals: the conscious Ego must take this into account when evaluating the use it wants to make of its energies, especially in relation to what it can offer to others and can receive from them. In our complex societies, the primary element on which energy exchanges are based is represented by the power of money, whose function, however, is currently guaranteed only by the trust collectively attributed to it as a valid means of exchange and expression of value in the transactions of materials, products and services. The quantification of these values shows enormous differences between one person's time-energy and the same time-energy commitment by another person.

Therefore, in the context of organic life – as it is lived in this world – the conscious Ego must necessarily experience those tunings of the human psyche that destiny reserves for it, regardless of whether they have a positive effect or, as very often happens, a negative one. If life does not end prematurely due to an illness, dysfunction or trauma, the Ego also experiences a terminal phase of exhaustion of the body's natural resources of life energy, which usually involves very few gratifying emotions or positive feelings. It is understandable how, in such conditions, human life can be interpreted more as a commitment or a task to be completed, despite the difficulties that it entails, than as an opportunity for recreation or happiness. Nevertheless, the Ego's aspiration to happiness remains, since it is innate in its very essence, and the experience of this state is transferred to a spiritual dimension distinct from that of organic life: most NDEs attest precisely the possibility for the conscious Ego to access the Spirit dimension, as long as this is granted to it by a form of energy that shows its own autonomy with respect to the resources that the Ego can dispose of, even in its spiritual condition, and to the same Ego's will. But what has value and meaning in the Spirit dimension cannot be successfully transferred to the dimension of human life, precisely because this is conditioned by the needs of the organism, which must be taken into account unless we want to deprive of importance the same experience of organic life, as some cultural and religious orientations unbalanced in favor of the spirit have done and do. On the other hand, precisely those powers that determine the dynamics of organic life are reflected in the contradictions and conflicts of human psyche, which can make the experience of this life so unrewarding for the Ego.

By accepting the task of living, the conscious Ego can feel an inclination towards one or the other of the human activities that the social organization of which its organism is a part offers as a possibility of work or a prospect of commitment to the community. These activities have very different features, and each of them requires particular resources that the Ego may have at its disposal or may be lacking: the farmer, the industrialist, the merchant, the doctor, the politician, the athlete, the military, the religious, the entertainer, the jurist, the teacher, the scientist, the designer, the artist, the philosopher, the philanthropist, and so on, are all figures of reference to whom a precise positive social role is recognized, as long as whoever carries out these activities behaves correctly towards others. Many people then put their resources at the service of other people or organizations by which they allow themselves to be directed and commanded. It is understandable how such a complex system can only function imperfectly, taking into account the characteristics of the human psyche: not infrequently the Ego is unable to find an activity adequate to its resources, and not always is it successful in the activity undertaken, not to mention the negative effects that ambitious people, prone to deception, prevarication and exploitation of others, have on the functioning of the social system. However, in the attempt to carry out a positive social activity, the conscious Ego evaluates its own resources and may feel stimulated to deepen its self-knowledge, examining the dynamics of the psyche that drive it to orient itself towards one or the other activity: it is a very effective exercise, because it allows the Ego to recognize the usefulness of its social role, but at the same time to distance itself from something that is determined for better or for worse by the historical development of humankind, based on the prevailing needs of the human organism, and therefore destined to fade away at the end of organic life.

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