Ego vs. Self

The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.

The group accentuates the EGO, one becomes braver, more presumptuous, more cocky, more insolent, more reckless; but the SELF is diminished and gets pushed into the background in favour of the average.

The self comprises infinitely more than a mere ego...it is-as much one's self, and all other selves, as the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world-to oneself.

To concern ourselves with dreams is a way of reflecting on ourselves-a way of self-reflection. It is not our ego-consciousness reflecting on itself; rather, it turns its attention to the objective actuality of the dream as a communication or message from the unconscious, unitary soul of humanity. It reflects not on the ego but on the self; it recollects that strange self, alien to the ego, which was ours from the beginning, the trunk from which the ego grew. It is alien to us because we have estranged ourselves from it through the aberrations of the conscious mind.