Ego

Speaking about an illness Robert Butts had experienced, Seth said: Your  subconscious healing abilities and the hidden subconscious vitality beneath became damned up, seemingly with no means of release.

The ego, as I have said before, is extremely important. It is however only a part of what you call yourself. Your artistic ability does not belong to your ego, dear Joseph (Robert Butts), though I understand as I speak that anyone on your plane identifies himself with his ego, and when he says “I am,” he means he is his ego, or his ego is.

Nevertheless, the ego is the tool by which the hidden self manipulates in the physical universe as you know it. The ego enables you to use or focus your artistic ability along the lines necessary to make it effective on your plane.  However, when the ego becomes involved with fears to a greater or lesser extent, it ceases to be an effective tool and becomes instead a hammer hitting you incessantly over the head.

… The ego must sit lightly, otherwise it can smother the talent that lies beneath.  … You are more than your you know. Your subconscious is a greater part of you than you know, and the ego is nothing more than the top most portion of your subconscious. There is after all no dividing line, and you are as much your subconscious as you are your ego, and more.

Now when this ego becomes overly concerned over practical matters it becomes overly conditioned to negative responses. The outer senses are not as quick or as fluent. The creative energies build up their thickly-dimensioned pseudo-realities of pain. For a certain amount of time, according to your condition, they automatically create the patterns of fear that belong to the ego.

These fears do not belong to the subconscious. Then these materializations of panic and pain play about the physical body, projected by the ego and stealing the powers of the subconscious mind from their natural constructive tasks to do so. In other words, the ego becomes a tool to disrupt rather than to create. … I am not suggesting that the ego be ignored in any manner, merely that the tool is not allowed to become the master.  (From ES-1 (The Early Sessions, Book 1 of The Seth Material, by Jane Roberts) Pgs. 107-8)

Dissociation

Your own subconscious is the fountain of your individuality and personality. From it springs your talent. When the ego becomes too concerned with daily matters, with worry in other words, then the works of the tool become clogged. It becomes ineffective. Dissociation … unclogs the tool and is absolutely necessary.  The freely working subconscious, or the inner you, is completely capable of taking care of all practical considerations, and will use the ego as a tool to see that this is done.

… Your few experiences with autosuggestion upon falling asleep have been ego-bound. Think of this in terms of muscle-bound and you will see what I mean. Be in a drowsy state and suggest, Rubert (Jane Roberts), suggest, Joseph (Robert Butts); do not attempt to bully or command the subconscious. Suggestions are all that are needed. Your love of nature, Joseph and Rubert, your love of nature, is another method of dissociation, or can be if you use it as such.  ES-1 Pg. 108

 Contrast with outer sensing:

The conscious mind deals directly with survival as far as the particular camouflage patterns are concerned. But there is no actual dividing line or distinction between the conscious and the subconscious, nor among the apparent levels of the subconscious itself. 

… The mind contains the conscious and the subconscious, but the conscious and subconscious are fluid. At various times the conscious become unconscious, and the unconscious becomes conscious.

… The brain is the mind in camouflage  … the part of the mind that reacts to camouflage pattern.

… The camouflage patterns of course do belong to the inner world also, since the camouflages themselves are formed from the vitality stuff of the universe by mental enzymes, which have a chemical reaction on your plane. … Mental enzymes are actually the property of the inner world, representing the conversion of vitality into camouflage data which is then interpreted by the outer senses.  (ES1 Pgs 144-6)