MusePaper
January 16th, 2004
The Lord of the
Rings, Ego, and Addiction
by Mickel Adzema
Why spoil a perfectly good, in fact, incredible,
work of art with an interpretation, you ask? Well, because its popularity
-- both the book and the movies -- is rife with meaning and that, more than
anything else, accounts for its appeal for decades. Of course, if you
disagree and wish to enjoy it on its own account and don't want your own
understanding muddled with another's, then STOP, right now (do not pass GO
. . . ), click on something else IMMEDIATELY; and forget this page exists.
Otherwise, let's think together and you may see something in this saga that
you've never seen or heard about it before.
The question that screams out from the story is "What
Is the Ring?"
Those who've gone through or who are in the field of Addiction
Recovery cannot help but see the pattern of addiction playing out 
in the figure of Gollum. You use it once (the ring, the drug) and
you are tempted ever after to use it again. It calls to you, telling
you to use it again . . . then again. And the more you use it, the
more it takes over your life. Your life becomes centered around it.
It's your "precious," for which you will do anything. You deteriorate
physically and become a phantom of a human being; you are barely distinguishable
as human, in fact. If ever there were an anti-drug image powerful enough
to sustain and hammer home the "just say no" mantra it is the pathetic, slavering,
slobbering, mean-spirited, tortured figure of Gollum.
But this barely scratches the surface of the appeal of
the journey to destroy the Ring of all Rings. For this journey is EveryPerson's
journey. This story is the story of the existential condition of us
all. "Frodo Lives" is written on the subway walls. Why?
Because we are all Frodos. And deep down we know it. We all know
that daily we struggle to choose one path over another: the path to
destroy the Ring (the ego) or to use it -- for power, wealth, or whatever
the ego desires. We are tempted to use our talents for personal gain,
without regard for how it affects others; our good looks for sexual pleasures,
without considering the feelings of our partners; our ambition to undo others,
so that we might feed ourselves with the overweaning sense of our singular
importance; our money to make more of it, at the expense of others or the
quality of their lives; our time to be wasted in the pleasures and the pursuits
of the flesh -- including the easy drug addiction represented by Gollum --
instead of toward making this world a better
one; and so on, and so on. You know what I'm talking about.
You know, for yourself, what urges your prison of your own Ring of all Rings
desires.
The fact that the tale is one of good versus evil is the
interpretation almost always made. True enough. What might not
be so obvious is that the ultimate addiction, the ultimate evil -- and the
root of all others -- is the addiction to Ego.
Following the "Falls
From Grace
," which each of us undergoes as Spirit meets Flesh in our encounter with
this plane of existence, we are in possession of the Ego -- our encapsulated
Ring of Reality, separated from the All That Is, which is bequeathed to us,
our "inheritance," from the generation that precedes us. Just as Bilbo
hands over -- albeit reluctantly -- the responsibility of the Ring to Frodo,
we are each the inheritors of all that the generations before us have wrought.
And out of this, in its totality, we create our unique Ego. Out of
that total sociocultural mix we construct each bar of a defense and a repression
of Self-Universe-God to create the ring of our prison of Ego. Each
defensive-repressive matrix, each unreal 
persona we present to the world, it follows, is itself a ring, which, exactly
as in the Trilogy, the Ring of all Rings -- the Ego -- controls, "binds,"
and is master of.
Now, if generations before had destroyed the Ring, and
to the extent that they do so, we would not have this responsibility.
But we are not the offspring of mystics; we are lucky, indeed, if we just
have received good parenting. But primal pain, the unreal self created
of it, and hence the Ego, is the unfortunate birthright of all born here.
But therein lies the drama, the existential journey, and the adventure --
and opportunity -- of the human condition. We have the spiritual need
to "make it stop with us." We have this need whether we realize it
early in life or not until it is too late. In the later case we look
back at our life with regret at what we have bequeathed to those who come
after us.
It is no accident that Lord of the Rings was so
popular with the Sixties generation. It was all too clear that we saw
around us the environmental devastation -- as depicted by the environmental
destruction in Mordor. The trees being hacked away to make way for
the industrialization and the epitome of aggrandizement of Ego that represented
was served up to us in the nightly news. There was the wars, of course.
Always there was the geopolitical drama -- whether World War Two, the Korean,
Vietnam, or the the Iraqi war, or the War on Terrorism. (See
"Sixties Generation
" and Drugs, Consciousnesses, and Generational
Cultures
" for background perspectives.)
But outside of those who actively engaged in those wars,
represented in the Rings Trilogy by the Race of Men, are those who understood
that evil can not truly be overcome by more violence and that their ultimate
ending can only come from the individual journey -- EveryPerson's individual
journey -- to destroy the evil within oneself, to make the personal journey
to Mordor, the heart of evil itself, within oneself, to give up that "precious"
inheritance which causes one always to put oneself before others, above others.
Those who do not take this journey are the vast majority.
And in the trilogy it is so depicted. Yet there are those who feel
that kinship with the trials of Frodo, and who recognize their own trials
in his. Because of the popularity of this Tolkein masterwork, it can
be deduced that those are no small number either.
And what of us -- "nasty hobbitses" as Gollum pronounces
us -- who deem it necessary to leave our Shire of cherished fellow-feeling
to "take the path less traveled"? We feel the weight of the ego, like
that of the Ring, as the weight of responsibility to make a different world
than that which has been presented to us. Like those who keep our heads
in the sand, blocking out the evils of the world around and within us, there
are those who never leave the Shire. The drama does not exist for them,
or else it seems that way to us. Whether it does or not, once we have
been made aware by our inner Gandalf -- who represents the higher Self, the
small, still voice, the conscience; and on a more base level whatever spiritual
teacher, teachings, spiritual path, or religion that guides us -- of those
evils within and without, we know we have the Ring; and we cannot forget
it.
So whether in fits and starts nudged by conscience, or
"jump started" into action by some precipitous, often calamitous, event
of our lives, we are on the journey to Mordor. Like Frodo, we are ever
tempted to use the 
Ring, to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is oh
so easy to go along with the crowd. It is tempting to forego the courage
to pick ourselves up and go naked within. But when we are pulled and
pushed along, as we ever are by that Inner Guide -- our own personal Gandalf
-- we have our trolls and monsters, our orcs and Nazguls to face. We
must ever continue onward, even as we become increasingly more aware, as
each phase is followed by another challenge, of the seeming hopelessness of
our task. And in doing so we find that the Universe provides us, not
only with monsters and tribulations, but with allies, guides, "elves," and
words of wisdom. The Universe guides us synchronistically, magically;
and even our Gollum has his use in the end. We have also our
moments of pleasant hiatus, with a repast of roasted
hare and taters, or the too rare, but indescribable wonder of a stay in an
elf kingdom, representing the rewards of pleasant times and joyous moments
on the path. Though we are ever aware that the journey remains; the
task looms.
It is the journey of the spiritual life, of EveryPerson's
life on some level or other; as each of us take from life's lessons the need
to become less of ourselves and to make our purposes more and more aligned
with those of the Self of us all. Some may only frame it in terms of
doing the things that will leave the world a better one than the one they
came in to, rather than taking from it all that they can get at whatever
cost. It's the same journey.
Take this for what it is worth, fellow hobbitses.
At least remember that there are others of us, also, carrying our rings of
primal pain and ego, trudging onward beside you to our own personal Mordors.
You may not see us. But
you will recognize us as your own Fellowship, your own
allies. And you will occasionally see us as the elves, the dwarves,
even the wizards. You will be rewarded, without seeking it, with blessed
sojourns in elven kingdoms, which your fellow journeyers create in their fellowship
with you or which the Universe blesses you with in the clarity of the occasional
joyous meditation or dream . . . in the Fellowship of "angels" . . . awareness
of the nearness of the Divine. . . .
And take heart. For even one's journey is the game,
the illusion, the play of the Universe, the leela of God, who is the
real "Actor" in this drama after all, and who cannot fail, whether sooner,
or later. So we will be rid of the Ring, which is our burden.
It will return to the fires of the Mount of Doom of which it was wrought.
For peace is our birthright. We will be carried along and welcomed
into the Grey Havens. We will meet there and see each other clearly,
without the veil or burden, as the One Consciousness. Which is all
that ever really existed anyway.
Related Article: Go to "
Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots
of Human Violence and Greed
" by Stanislav Grof, M.D.
Related Article: Go to
"Reunion With the Positive (Self): The Second Half of the 'Cure'"
by Mickel Adzema.
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on:
mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel Adzema
