Latest / We Are The Same / Recognizing the Ego: Personal Happiness

Transcript

Recognizing the Ego: Personal Happiness · We Are The Same

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone, I hope you've had a beautiful week.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we're going to discuss how to recognize the ego every day in order to be more mindful of the stories it tells us and the control it has over our mental peace.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: This comes down to a single, simple practice, and that practice is simply noticing duality.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It can be tiresome at first to be mindful every second of every day in order to see how your ego is perpetuating duality.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it becomes like muscle memory, where the more you pay attention to it, the more you'll notice it without having to try.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Duality is how the 3D world works, and thus how the ego works.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Duality is taught to us in everything from morals, right versus wrong, to energy, light versus dark, to personal happiness, good versus bad.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can find duality in pretty much everything, and it is the ego's way of leading your life and controlling your beliefs, feelings, and thoughts.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: This practice of recognizing duality is not to force yourself to stop thinking dualistically, but rather notice how every dualistic thought creates judgments, expectations, and mental strife.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago we spoke about recognizing the ego in morality, and today we're going to talk about recognizing the ego in perceived personal happiness or unhappiness, seeing how we cultivate dualistic thoughts and the intrinsic issues found within.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: When you say anything and utilize the words good or bad, it is 100% egoic subjectivity.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: No one is a good person, no one is a bad person.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Negative thoughts aren't bad, positive thoughts aren't good.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: No one is a good partner nor a bad partner, a good friend nor a bad friend, a good parent nor a bad parent.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Places aren't good or bad, food isn't good or bad, weather isn't good or bad, nothing is good nor bad.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even biologically, there is no good nor bad.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: These are terrible throw-around words that mean absolutely nothing while attempting to mean everything.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Good and bad are the ego's way of trying to express what it's feeling, but instead of being deliberate, it speaks like a child who just learned their first word.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but we like to state our opinions of good and bad as if they are fact when they are not.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're a good person, I was in a bad relationship, good dog, bad dog, X is a good movie.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: None of these things are true.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: They are all subjective.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: The duality of personal happiness has a lot to do with verbiage and the stories that we tell ourselves.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: As a personal anecdote, I have seasonal affective disorder.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm in gloomy weather for a prolonged period of time, my ego has a tendency to get depressed and look at everything gloomily.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can say things like, the weather is shit, or New England has the worst weather.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of those things are empirically true by any means.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm meaning is the gloom affects my brain, which ultimately affects my ego, and I allow everything to have a tinge of negative perception to it.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: The awareness of your own ego's propensity for duality when it comes to good and bad is important with regards to mindfulness, and being aware of what you allow to make your ego happy or sad will make all the difference.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't allow your ego to utilize meaningless phrases like good or bad to dictate how it feels.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Put definitive and explanatory words to it so that you can get to the crux of the problem.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Surprisingly, when you use the terms good or bad, the ego ends up putting a lot of expectations and judgments on other egos around you who don't agree.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you think a certain restaurant is really good, but your partner hates it and never wants to go there, you're going to judge their preferences, which may ultimately spiral into expectations.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if we take this restaurant that you love, and instead of saying it's great, we change the terminology to express how and why you feel this way instead, it makes it a more personal conversation in which you understand yourself better.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I quite enjoy the atmosphere of the restaurant because it makes me feel comfortable, or I think the crispy breading on the calamari is perfectly fried.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We realize that you don't love the restaurant, but simply certain aspects of it, and your ego is just being lazy with its expression.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: If the other ego you're speaking to comes back with, I think the atmosphere is stifling, or every time I eat something there, they always put parsley on it, and you know how much I hate parsley, then you have an actual discord going on.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You don't think the restaurant is good and they don't think the restaurant is bad.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're just both exemplifying personal preferences.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't make the restaurant empirically good or bad.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes it preferable to you and unpreferable to your partner.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you move within this and find happiness by adjusting your perspective?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: The same concept applies when you're stating that someone is a good person, a bad person, etc.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: No one is intrinsically a good or bad person.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is subjectively a good or bad person.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this has to do completely with societal viewpoints and expectations put on every single one of our egos.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we're told that philanthropy makes us a good person because we're acting selflessly, does it make you a bad person if you don't have the time nor money to be philanthropic?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: If society tells us that having a good outlook on things makes you a positive and good person, does that mean that if you are depressed, you're a bad person?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: We all have to get out of this realm of good versus bad thinking.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is good and nothing is bad.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is perception, everything is perspective.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is egoic programming based on what your ego has been taught and as you move through this incarnation.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can remember that and notice your tendencies to use or want to use the terms good and bad, then you will breed more mindfulness within yourself and ultimately realize that you are in charge of your own personal happiness and unhappiness.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Change your perspective from dualistic to an ebb and flow of emotions instead.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And try for a month, a week, a day, an hour to not say the terms good nor bad.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: My guess is that you'll be shocked at how much your ego wants to use the words.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to how often you think in those terms as well, and you'll be on your way to understanding that everything just is.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, all of my best and highest vibrations to you.