Two distinct meanings
Freud's Ich is a structural component of a healthy psyche — the part that does the actual work of negotiating between desire, prohibition and reality. Strong ego in Freudian terms is good; weak ego is associated with psychopathology. Tolle's ego is closer to what Freud would have called narcissism or false self — the constructed image one maintains and defends, the running internal commentary that calls itself me. Tolle's transcending the ego is not a Freudian regression to weak ego; it is something different from what Freud was describing.
What the spiritual sense is pointing at
What Tolle, Adyashanti, Spira and most non-dual teachers are pointing at when they use ego is: the assumed centre of experience — the me who appears to be having all this experience — is itself part of what is being experienced. There is no separate observer behind it. The continuous reinforcement of that assumed observer (through worry, defensive narrative, comparison with others, identification with body and history) is what they call ego activity. Recognising it as activity rather than as an entity is the doorway out.
Where to read it cleanly
Eckhart Tolle's *A New Earth* is the most patient long-form exposition of the spiritual sense of ego in contemporary literature. For the Freudian sense, the introductory clinical literature on object-relations theory (Winnicott, Kohut) is more useful than Freud's own, which is now of mainly historical interest. Conflating the two senses is responsible for a lot of muddled spiritual conversation.
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