How to handle ego authority battles?
Ego authority battles may, and usually do, follow close on the heels of “Complicated Spiritual Tween Angst”. The question is how do you handle these ego authority battles? Should we forcibly resist or should we calmly surrender?
Unfortunately, there is no one, straight-shot answer. In all likelihood, a blend or mixture of responses may be appropriate across a person’s life. When we are younger, both biologically and spiritually, we may more naturally tend to resist the ego authority battles that arise in life. For example, if one feels themselves to be too emotional, an ego authority battle might ensue. A person might choose to forcibly over-ride their emotions, becoming stoic in order to win ego authority battles. Plain old denial may be another form of winning ego authority battles, where the importance or non-importance of some event, habit or thing is simply denied.
For a while, these harsh and resistance tactics might actually work. But over time, as one lives their life and life happens all around them, that familiar strategy may no longer suit. What else is there? There’s plenty really, but a great starting point in addition to the ability to fight and win ego authority battles, might also be the ability to neutrally hold and witness the same ego authority battles with love or open-ended compassion. Certainly this takes effort and discipline to accomplish. But, over time, the effort and discipline can morph into less resistance and more surrender and acceptance of those ego authority battles and the situations within which they arise.
Ego authority battles take whole theories to explain
What do ego authority battles look like? It’s an inside job, or an internal deal, but you know when it happens. Basically, we really do know the right thing to do and we do know how to act better. Sometimes, however, we don’t do it! Whether it’s due to the force of egoic habit, or the lack of disciplined will power, sometimes we succumb, or take an easier path, losing the battle. And there are many levels to this idea of ego authority battles. Several theories or typologies exist to help explain these levels of ego development. Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics or Ken Wilber’s Integral Life are just a couple of popular developmental levels theories. There are many, many more.
To keep it very simple, you could just think of it as seeing a $100 bill fall out of someone else’s pocket, and then dancing through ego authority battles to decide if you will pick up that $100 bill yourself to keep it, or if you will give it back to its proper owner. At a more global level, a simple idea of ego authority battles might be a large corporation deciding to pay attention to the needs of its local area citizens above the board member’s need for profit and ROI (Return on Investment).
When we are younger, and less sophisticated, we easily fight our ego authority battles and generally “come out grinning,’ ” as our Monday Music selection artist John Mellancamp sings in his famous “Authority Song”. However, as we mature, things-life-situations become less and less black and white. The fighting and the grinning and the winning, are not always hand-in-hand.
“They like to get you in a compromising position
They like to get you there and smile in your face
They think they’re so cute when they got you in that condition
Well I think it’s a total disgrace”
Mellancamp has a point that “they” and “life” can create compromising positions and then “smile in your face.” While continuing to fight ego authority battles may seem like the only relevant option, the whole scenario is, as Mellancamp names, “a total disgrace.” This is where having access to some other skill set besides fighting or denying may be very good indeed. Acceptance or surrender in the face of ego authority battles becomes important, in scenarios like this one. Creating space for and holding dissonance with neutral acceptance is definitely a life, and spiritual, skill we all could choose to willing develop.
A built-in human practice of tolerance and surrender?
For example, as we all age, our bodies’ change, as do our physical good looks. Some people resist that with plastic surgery, pills, drugs, and even fantasy. Sometimes this works, and sometimes the results are tragic. Acceptance into reality as it is—for example, humans age!—could ease and buffer that transition. And perhaps the physical changes humans experience as they age is actually part of the evolutionary process? These physical changes in strength and endurance, or even mobility and the ability to keep moving, is a great, built-in practice of tolerance and surrender, provided by Mother Nature, The Universe or God, for every human on the planet. Fighting and winning may not always work; having other options is good.
Take a look and listen to a youthful John Mellancamp, singing about authority and winning. And then, as you go through this week, think of this “Authority Song” and contemplate how your ego authority battles are playing out. Do you possess both the fighting and winning skill set as well as the accept and surrender skill set? Enjoy the music, and use the Grounded Relating Monday Music Challenge to stay present to your own versions of an ego authority battle this week.
The “Authority Song,” as posted by JohnMellancampVEVO on YouTube:
Full lyrics for “Authority Song” by John Cougar Mellancamp, as posted on GooglePlay:
“Authority Song”
They like to get you in a compromising position
They like to get you there and smile in your face
They think they’re so cute when they got you in that condition
Well I think it’s a total disgrace
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
I fight authority, Authority always wins
So I call up my preacher
I say, “Give me strength for Round 5.”
He said , “You don’t need no strength, you need to grow up son.”
I said, “Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying
“And dying to me don’t sound like all that much fun.”
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
I fight authority, Authority always wins
Oh no oh no
I fight authority Authority always wins
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
I fight authority, Authority always wins
