Living without Ego and Super Ego
More Reflections on Life
It’s hard to articulate what’s been happening over the past few weeks. The reality of my experiences doesn’t quite fit the norms or expectations of everyday life. It’s not that I’m defying the rules intentionally; I’m simply existing in a way that most people can’t fathom. My journey has unfolded without rigid planning, without a clear map, yet it’s been moving forward with surprising ease. For most people, what I’m doing shouldn’t be possible.
The cost of shelter, transport, and food alone could drain anyone’s resources quickly. In fact, many would expect someone in my position to be broke after just a few days. Yet here I am still going strong. Usually, people without a financial safety net struggle to stay afloat. Yet somehow, I’ve been able to thrive without a cushion. Instead of hitting major roadblocks, I’ve had doors open for me constantly. The city hall has offered help, strangers have become allies, and random professors have taken time to engage with me. One of the most baffling aspects of this experience is how easily I connect with others. People seem to instantly trust me, even though they don’t know me. Whether it’s strangers, city officials, or fellow travellers, the main response has been kindness and a willingness to help. Including the ability to connect with others on such a deep level without effort. Which has been utterly bizarre for me.
Like a local restaurant owner giving me free snacks and food. Such things not being a one time event either. Let alone in the hostels I have been staying, and just on the street even people giving me hugs, and especially women (8 in two weeks). I could even walk into an university building, guarded by security to keep non-students out, and they looked at me and smiled. Let me inside. It’s like everyone just trusts me.
Becoming a Symbolic Embodiment of Phanes
Yet there is something deeper at play. I already hinted at it with my article Forgotten Daughter of Nyx: Lucia Nyktelios, Nyktelioi: The Path Beyond Ego and further also The Difference Between Personal Enlightenment and Nocturnement. That is that what I wrote about for me was, and is, not a mere hypothetical or theory, nor anything purely intellectual. In the article The Forgiveness of Persephone, I wrote about the Orphic process of death and rebirth, which also ties into the work of Sylvia Brinton Perera, the Jungian analyst. I however pushed both her work on the scapegoat-redeemer complex (which I realised is the ego-super ego structure), together with the teachings of Orphism and Neo-Platonism far beyond the tension of duality that it meant to hold. Not just as a theoretical state but an actual embodied one.
I in that sense moved beyond the tension of duality all together. Realising what lies beyond all dualities entirely, which at the same time applies to my body and overall state of being entirely as well. This is what it means to truly be a Nyktelioi, so a child of Nyx, in the Orphic sense. This goes beyond the Dionysian death and rebirth, and goes even deeper back to Phanes themselves. The androgynous deity of life and death, creation and destruction, Eros and Logos. For to push the boundaries of the cosmic order, which is the order of the psyche, as I have, is to step outside all dualities.
So one is free from all societal and civilisation constructs, yet can move freely within it. Minimal need for food or sleep, as the body and nervous system are in a constant state of relaxation and rest. Which itself creates the effect of a calm that people then also unconsciously perceive and label as very calm. Which is the lack of ego and super ego that they notice. Which makes me seem completely non-threatening for the homeless to city officials and all in between. Yet at the same time, I actually hold a strength and capacity for destruction that they can’t even perceive. As I lack the super ego constraints that keeps my emotions within the more conventional human limits.
Effects on the Mind and Body
Yet this also has an effect on many other factors. Like a complete lack of fear, which includes a lack of fear of death and the unknown. Yet this does not mean I act on impulse however, or act recklessly. It actually makes me completely strategic and efficient in my focus. No distractions, no worries, no doubt. Just full trust in Life, and my own ability to navigate all what happens, when it occurs. My body is completely free of all tension as well. Where my endurance and strength increased, same with my reflexes, and my reaction speed. And total freedom from suffering, whilst fully being immersed in life itself.
Which made me realise how much of human potential is shackled by the mind and civilizational trauma more than actual limitations. To return to Phanes and become like them as we all can, as they are a symbol of the Self, is to return to the full potential of what we truly can be. The wholeness and limitlessness of life itself. Yet it also made me realise that this is what the ancient talked about to step outside the cave, or to see through Maya (illusion), or realise the divine play. To realise one is Brahman, but also Atman, and so is all of life itself as well. This does not mean one literally is such figures, but embodies what they symbolically represent as a state of consciousness.