Ego Inflation
Ego Inflation is the over-inflation of the Bodily Ego that occurs as a damaged Bodily Ego with unmet love and self-esteem needs tries to meet its emotional and psychological needs. Ego inflation can rise to the level of Ego Pathology when a damaged individual makes a strong connection.
Connection Pathologies
Connection Pathology > Communication Error, Connection Psychosis, Constricted Connection, Ego Inflation, Egoic Collapse, Egoic Explosion, Flooding, Gurutitus, Majdhub, Spiritual Emergency
Egoic Distortions
Egoic Distortion > Ego Inflation
Syncretic Terms
Ego Inflation > Nadir Experience
Related LP Terms
Ego Inflation > Connection Pathology, Egoic Collapse, Egoic Explosion
Non-LP Related Terms
Notes
Ego inflation is represented by unwarranted beliefs in one's intellectual, emotional, evolutionary, or spiritual superiority.
An individual who experiences ego inflation comes to believe they are "special" or "chosen" in a way that elevates them to special status. This is a particular risk following a Connection Experience
"The opening psychic often falls prey to ego when it is assumed that only he/she can 'see' or 'heal,'..."[1]
When speaking about the significance and reality of mental influence over a distance, one researcher, Jule Eisenbud, U.S. psychiatrist, noted that his success at the experiments has "triggered infantile desires for power, for omnipotence, for control over others..." [2]
Ego inflation contributes to and exacerbates already existing narcissism, sometimes to the point of psychosis.
Ego inflation exacerbates the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Aleister Crowley is a classic example of ego inflation, which moved him from reasonable interpretations of spirituality, connection, one's Highest Self, and so on, to claims made later in life that was a new Messiah spreading a new religion in a new Aeon.[3]
Footnotes
- ↑ Stevens, Petey. Opening up to Your Psychic Self. Nevertheless Press, 1983. p. ix.
- ↑ Vasiliev, L.L. Experiments in Mental Suggestion. Vol. 22. Hampton Roads: Charlottesville, 1963. p. x.
- ↑ For some discussion of this see Pasi, Marco. “Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice.” In Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, edited by Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, 53–88. Oxford University Press, 2012.
