Borrowed Light: The Ego’s Role in the Journey to Self

What is the ego?

In Jung’s psychology, the ego is not the whole self. It is a limited center of awareness, a functional node through which experience becomes conscious.

It emerges from the friction between the body and the world, and forms the “I” we identify with. It selects, organizes, and narrates. Yet it is not the totality of who we are. Rather, it is the tip of the iceberg, floating atop vast and invisible depths.

Beneath it lies the unconscious, both personal and collective, and beyond it lives the Self, the wholeness to which we ultimately belong.

In Jyotish, this idea finds its echo in the figure of the Moon, not in the lunar deity as a distant object, but in the psychological principle of Manas, the subtle faculty of perception, impression, and response. The Moon is not merely chitta or “mind-stuff” in the abstract. It is the felt and lived presence of the one who reflects. It registers the world not only intellectually, but emotionally. It is impressionable, rhythmic, and intimate, just like the ego.

Jung once wrote, “The ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness.” And in the same way, Jyotish places the Moon at the center of the lived chart. Without it, no experience has flavor, texture, or continuity. It is the container of mood and memory, the thread of identity strung through time.

The Moon does not generate light; it borrows it. Its nature is reflective. It sees only what is illuminated by the Sun. And here we meet a powerful analogy: just as the Moon reflects the solar radiance, the ego reflects the deeper Self. The Sun in Jyotish is Atman, the inner presence of being. The Moon is what allows that presence to become experience.

But this reflection is not always accurate. And herein lies the problem.

The ego, like the Moon, may begin to imagine that its borrowed light is its own. It may forget its source and begin to spin its own illusions.

Jung calls this the inflation of the ego, the moment when the part believes itself to be the whole. In Jyotish, we might see this when the Moon is afflicted by Rahu, distorted by the unreal, or when Saturn imposes heaviness and isolation. The mind becomes disconnected from its root and begins to mistake shadow for substance.

When this happens, the rhythm collapses. The Moon, out of sync with the Sun, cannot reflect truth. Experience becomes compulsive rather than contemplative. The ego, mistaking itself for the Self, either overreaches or retreats, and suffering intensifies.

But the answer is not to dissolve the ego or shame it into silence. The task is integration.

The ego, like the Moon, must be seated in its rightful place. It must reflect the light of the Sun, not try to replace it. It must organize experience without becoming its author. When the ego aligns with the Self, when the Moon orbits in harmony with the Sun, a quiet coherence emerges. The birth chart becomes intelligible, the psyche becomes transparent, and meaning begins to form.

In this alignment, the ego becomes a mirror rather than a mask.

The Moon becomes not an obstruction to light, but a revealer of it.

This is the subtle art of individuation in Jung’s language, and of attunement in the Jyotishic vision. It is not a rejection of the ego, but its refinement.

We begin, then, not by seeking to escape the ego, nor by inflating it with idealized images, but by seeing it clearly. We attend to its movements as we would the lunar phases: waxing, waning, hidden, revealed. It is both reliable and impermanent. A passage, not a destination. A mirror, not a source.

And through this quiet mirror, the Self begins to see its own light reflected in time, shimmering not as illusion, but as intimacy.