When Discipline Isn't Enough: The Ego Problem

0:01 Hello everyone. So last weekend, Friday, Saturday sort of time, I had a bit of a wobble. as you know, if you've been following this channel, I follow what I've call the five disciplines that are logged in this journal here and I keep various other kind of routines and disciplines as well. but last Friday, Saturday sort of time, let's just say I was displeased by something or by somebody. And it took a lot of my training and self-control not to fall off the wagon, not to lose my temper, not to, you know, not to break any of the five disciplines. Now, I'm happy to say that I was able to pull through it. We all have wobbles of course. but I thought it was a good opportunity to talk a little bit about ego because one of the things that I have had to do in order to try to get to the root of some of the things I wanted to get rid of, anger being one of them, was to see what the you know what the root problems were. And the only way to do that is to start through introspection.

1:20 introspection. Look deeply into yourself. Think about which traits you have. what are the good ones? But more importantly, what are the bad ones? And how can you know, we make positive changes? How can we convert negative ones to positive ones? Now, one of the things I found in the course of doing these sorts of things is that it's not always the thing looking you in the face that is the problem. So, you know, anger as an example is actually downstream of certain other things. It is not that you have an anger issue. it is that there is some other issue that you know is then expressing itself as anger down the line because you know whatever it happens to be one of the things I found was control sometimes if I thought my autonomy was being threatened then you know this gave me a kind of anger response but there are other things as well namely those things that tied to ego. And one of the things I found is that the techniques that I used to rid myself of various other negative traits like anger and like various other things, negative behaviors weren't working for ego. And in this video, I want to share some of the realizations I came to. Why was ego different from all of the other things? It's not like you know dealing with call it lazy like right let's say your issue is laziness and then you want more energy. Okay, let's let's say that's the issue. You're a sluggish individual. Not saying this is something I ever struggle with, but let's just pretend it's that.

3:19 the solution for ego doesn't quite work in the same way. And one of the reasons for that is that I realized that ego is not actually just one thing. It's made up of many many constituent parts that you need to break down and tackle individually. also ego I don't think is one of those things that you can simply just get rid of. I know they talk about transcending the ego. They talk about ridding yourself of the ego. ego denial. all of these sorts of things. but actually the ego as I've mentioned in previous videos is a kind of inbuilt little defense mechanism. And put it this way, there's one little guy there who's trying to stand up for trying to stand up for, you know, your finite self. Let's put it that way.

4:18 you know, the person that you think you are in your conscious waking life, with all of its history and all of its, you know, all the things going all the way back to childhood, the narrative that you construct around yourself and your life. Let's call that ego or let's call that your persona or your, you know, sense of self. And the ego appoints itself as the defender of that sense of self. Okay? It's like it's a it's an autoimmune system to try to protect all of those little narratives that you've built up around yourselves.

4:54 All of those all all of those external markers of self are maintained by ego. So when we say well ideally I want to overcome this ego. Ideally, I want I don't want that little voice there anymore. this is causing me problems. This this ego. you have to first of all accept that it's not going to go away.

5:25 Okay? It's going to always be there, always be vigilantly trying to fight your side even when you don't want it to. so what is the next best thing that we can do? What is the next best thing that we can do? Well, we can break down the mechanisms of what happens when ego kicks in and we can try to hack that. We can try to reprogram it. Let's say the ego has a script. We can try to rewrite that script. Okay. we can also really think about what is it that's triggering, you know, these ego responses.

6:09 What was it last weekend that threatened to throw me off the wagon here by, you know, rising up in me? Well, obviously that started with an emotion. Started with an emotion, but the emotion is usually an expression of some other thing, some other part of yourself that's trying to rear its head. and when I really thought about it, it actually came down to what the Christians have identified as the as the first sin. If you've ever read Thomas Aquinus's summer theologica, the first thing that tends to trigger you know strong ego reactions is pride.

6:54 Now Quinus argued that all other sins were downstream of pride and in a way I can kind of understand what he's talking about. But for me pride it's you know feeling that you know I've been the thing that I wanted the thing that I was and then I started thinking well it's not simply pride. What are the things that are downstream of that? Well, partly it's impatience. It's thinking, well, you know, as a result of my efforts in this area, that, this area, in this area, I should probably, you know, have the results I want and I want them now. That's impatience.

7:37 Secondly, it's attachment. What is attachment? Attachment is I mean, we've I've talked before about lusting after result or attachment to the result. you've done something then you're kind of eager anxious to see how it's gone or you've done something and you feel that the reward should be there you know now so tied to impatience but also thinking focusing obsessing about the result is because you have an attachment you have an ego attachment to the work that you've done and you then expect to see the result all of these things are also tied to what you might call entitlement.

8:22 Because I have done this, I am entitled to this reward. I you know my ego believes in reciprocity. It believes in fair game. It believes you know justice must be done. Who who is the world to deny me this? It is my it is my just desserts. I I demand it. Okay. This is entitlement speaking. It's not a good thing. Okay. But it starts to kick in. This is where ego starts to creep in, you know, unexpected when you when you're in a weak moment. This is the sort of stuff that happens. And the final thing which is related of course to anger and many other things I've talked about in this channel is reactivity.

9:09 Reactivity. The number one threat to riding the tiger. The number one threat to high having the highest vibration that you can, the number one threat to the being your your highest self, reactivity. And in fact, it's all of these things. It's pride, impatient, attachment, entitlement, reactivity. So, there was me thinking, well, I've mastered this game now. I've kind of I'm I'm rocking and rolling. I'm free I'm free sailing, living my new life.

9:42 I've made all these transformations. I've been successful in all these different areas. I've managed to kick my old Twitter habit. I've managed to, you know, get all of the aspects of life under control that I wanted to get under control. And yet, here I was on this Saturday afternoon. Something had crept up. Something had crept up unexpectedly. I'm not going to go into what it was, but it brought up all the old patterns, brought up the ego rise, brought up the pride, made me impatient, made me feel I was denied what I was entitled to, brought back attachment to that. And it's not just attachment to that. It's attachment to the old pattern. It's attachment to the old narratives. It's attachment to the old script. And thankfully owing to my owing to my various disciplines, I was able not to react. I was able to keep calm. I was able at least not to let the rising feelings bubble up into explosion in that moment.

10:54 But I thought, well, something in my little system here is incomplete. something. I need to diagnose what's gone wrong and I need to have some weapons in the arsenal. I need to have some go-to little tricks here to help, and I've talked about this before, transmute these negative things into positive things. So, I then sat down a little bit like Thomas Aquinas thinking, well, because if you've ever read the summer theological, this will make sense to you. What is the opposite of pride?

11:30 Right? If pride is the bad thing, what is the good thing I can embody instead? If impatience is the bad thing, what is the good thing? Now, some of these write themselves. And the same with attachment, entitlement, and reactivity. And the list I came up with is this. Okay. So, instead of pride, I want to embody humility. Instead of impatience, I want to embody patience. Instead of attachment, I want to embody acce acceptance.

12:02 Remember attach part huge part of attachment is worrying about result, focusing on result, getting caught up in you know your works that you've done and then eager to see the feedback and things like that. you don't want any of that. What you want is acceptance. Whatever will be will be sort of thing. It doesn't it actually matters not it will be how it you know as I talked about in the productivity video let the thing perform as it does let reality reconform to your new reality whichever way you want to put it let things rise to whatever vibration you're on at the moment have patience that things are going to re-calibrate Great. Okay. But these things can start impeding.

13:01 Okay. Even if you're doing all the best practices, these things can start to rear their heads. So and then we've got the opposite of entitlement of course is gratitude. And you have to genuinely feel that gratitude. And then reactivity. Instead of that, what you want is calm presence. Okay. I didn't put detachment because detachment suggests someone who's kind of checked out or they've like you you know words have got certain the way you know when you're doing this kind of auto suggestion type thing when you're reprogramming yourself a word like detachment can have which has multiple different meanings can you know you don't want to be kind of like numbed out or you know not there or something like that. What you want is a calm presence as opposed to you know simply non-reactants or detachment or or whatever. That's why I've used positive words as opposed to just the negative versions of them. One of the things they talk about when you you know with mantras or auto suggestion and things like that is you shouldn't have negative words in there. It should always be framed in a positive. So, one of the things I thought is like, well, how am I going to hack? How am I going to cut off? Okay, little old ego trying to leap to my defense. How am I going to cut that off and change the script? And what I came up with was actually inspired from the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. in Dungeons and Dragons, this well since about fourth edition. And I don't know if if these things were there in the second and third, but at least in fourth edition onwards, as well as your regular spells and powers and so on, there are these little things called cantrips, which is like a little like a little simple little spell, I guess, that you can do all the time. Little can trip. Okay. And you know, I was thinking, well, wouldn't it be cool if I could develop little cantrips that I can use in everyday situations when I feel ego rising up in any of these five things.

15:25 So all the canrip is is simply when you start your pride being you know when you feel ego stepping in to defend pride for example you simply say imagine yourself as obiu and kenobi I choose humility I ch just cuts it off I choose humility when you feel yourself being impatient I choose patience I I choose patience that's it you It overrides it and you'll be amazed and especially if you can make yourself feel it. If you can make yourself feel humble, okay? Or if you can make yourself embody patience in the moment, use patience.

16:08 You'll be amazed how much you can override or another word is transmute the negative thing into its opposite. They talk about emotional alchemy. Well, here we are transmuting impatience. I choose patience. Attachment. Now, attachment is all of those things. Lusting after results, worrying about you know, focusing on the wrong thing, being attached to works that you've done, getting needlessly caught up in you know feelings of whatever attachment to whatever whatever it is. Okay. How do you cut it off? I choose acceptance. I ch You just cut it off. I choose acceptance. Same. You start feeling yourself being entitled.

17:00 Okay. Now, for me, how does entitlement rear its head? How does how does a feeling of entitlement end up leading to, you know, in the worst case scenario, an explosion of anger or me, you know, having strongly negative emotions. Well, it's thinking things like, "Oh, well, I've done this for you. How come you have not done this for me then?" Or, "I put all this work in. Why aren't I getting, you know, why don't I earn the recognition for it?" These are the This is entitlement. Now, this is not just something that I this is something that everybody's got a bit of all of these things. all of the neg all of the classic cardinal sins and all of the the vices that Aquinus lists. everybody has the capacity to have these and the ego at its worst taps in defends and makes copes and brings up what the ego is very good at is coming up with little post talk justification narratives for all of these things.

18:02 Yeah, I've been hard done by. I'm actually the victim in this situation. you know, I deserve better. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah rather than gratitude. I'm blessed to have these things. I lucky to have all what I have. I choose gratitude. You're just cutting it. Cutting off the old narratives. And everybody's got them. Everybody feels hard done by sometimes. Everybody has attachment issues. Everybody's impatient.

18:41 Everybody's got pride in the negative sense. I mean, and what I mean is bad pride. Pride in the Christian cardinal sin sense. And then finally, when you start feeling yourself reacting, okay, reactivity is the most dangerous because when you start reacting, you're deciding, right, I'm going to allow my emotions to control me now. I choose calm presence. I choose calm presence. Okay, those are my little cantrips. You can try them out yourself.

19:14 because these are little less obvious things that creep up that creep up and you can only really see them when you've really thought about what it is that's happening. If we want to get into the mechanics of let's say the three parts of yourself that dictate what goes on in any one time, how you react, how you are. Let's say you've got your body. your body. There's a physical element to everything that you do.

19:48 There is your mental capacity, your mind, and then there there are, I guess you'd say, emotions. Now, emotions just like thoughts, just like when you meditate and thoughts bubble up when you least expect them and you can sit and observe those thoughts. Emotions can also come when you least expect them and they can bubble up.

20:19 You have to be able to have the discipline enough to be able to absorb to observe that emotion and maybe even observe that ego. And you can even do a little narrative in your mind as this is happening. There he is. little ego trying to defend my honor cuz somebody has to. There he is. Look, leaping leaping in with sword and his shield.

20:53 Bless him. So, you can just try to take a step back and see what's happening. And then and then if you're able to do that, you can actually start to observe why it's happening as well and start to think, well, it's not just okay, what else is it? It's not just pride. It's something else. I see. Right. It's not only that. I feel like I'm entitled to something here. I'm reacting to something. I'm really attached to this script, to this narrative.

21:26 And all of these things that are bubbling up as impatient in me. And all of these are precursors to busting out his anger, which is another sin. Of course, wroth in Aquinus. Okay. And I mean this is just one example, but you can see the whole process plays out and how you then end up in a situation where your emotion, you're allowing the emotions to lead as opposed to trying to step in and be like, okay, the emotions are there.

22:02 We're not trying. And you see this is where it's it's kind of delicate. Just put it this way because some of the stoics talk very eloquently about this if you've ever read them. Imagine your anger or imagine your emotions. Any emotion if it's a strong emotion and if it's a negative emotion is like a rabid dog or a wild beast and it's lashing and it's gnarling about. Okay, gnarling and nashing.

22:41 >> >> Now, there's all sorts of things. You can try to put it in a cage, but putting it in a cage, it's going to make it, it's not going to stop, calm it down. It's going to keep on wanting to lash out. Or you can try to control it and try to take the reins and repress it repress it down like that's like a fight. That's like a fight with a beast. remember that film where Leonardo DiCaprio was taking on a bear and you know sometimes these emotions are very big if it's anger if it's lust that can be really I mean if you're a a redblooded male that is a extremely explosive and powerful you know energy how do you how do you you can't purely all you can do is redirect.

23:37 Okay? It's better to try to use the energy of that thing of the wild beast and be like, "Look, turn it around, turn it around and feed into that thing." And this is where the transmutation point is pretty powerful because as as angry as you are or as impatient as you get or as you know entitled as you feel, you can use that power par and this is really paradoxical.

24:09 You can use that power and bust out the other and feel that as strongly as you were feeling the other thing. Okay, this is a strange alchemical wonder that that can happen. You can also put it into a different area. So I'm talking about using mental mental control in a way to redirect emotion to redirect energy, you know, to to do a kind of mental alchemy. You could also do it in a body sense. Okay, all of those huge energies I was talking about, you could just like go and have a real hard session at the gym and energy comes out that way instead. And lots of people do that.

24:57 and it's very I mean, you know, for my things, the bits of weights that I do, I I don't do it. I'm not like a hard muscle freak or something, but I do, you know, I do my three by five reps whenever I'm at the gym, you know, in three, four different areas. And that helps use up some of that excess energy that you've got because if you're doing all of these things that I talked to you about, you will have a lot of energy and that energy needs to go somewhere.

25:34 So you can channel some of it back into back into your body energy. You can channel it that way. you can channel you can redirect the emotions especially if they're negative in a positive direction. and if you can do these things consistently whenever they rise up if you almost again try to take out the willpower element try to simply make it almost like an auto response.

26:06 Okay, you observe it and just like in the meditation that I talked about last time, oh that thought's coming in. I'm going to send it down the river. Well, this is kind of just like a real life kind of souped up version of that where I'm just using what I'm calling can trips to send I mean in a way sending them down the river as well. Turning my impatience into patient, turning attachment into acceptance, turning entitlement into gratitude. And if you keep on doing these things, it will turn the pride into humility, which is a bigger pride is obviously bigger than those smaller things. and turning reactivity into a calm presence.

26:49 So that's it for today. If anybody has any experience in these sort of things, be sure to share them in the comments. I thought I'd share this one with you today. Let me know how you're getting on. A lot of people have said that since I started these videos, they've been putting the things into practice. They've started journals. They're starting to turn, you know, their lives around for the better or they're they're making improvements in themselves. They're feeling good about themselves. They're exercising their demons. And this is good. This is all a good thing because if you're doing all these things correctly, you should also be trying to bring up other people.

27:34 One of the whole reasons that I'm making these videos is to try to try to bring up ideally want to try to bring other people up as well. rather than because again the back doors to things like pride and all these sorts of things. Oh well, you know, you don't want to have the spirit of oh well look at me. I'm I'm I'm I'm doing all this stuff. I'm great. Look at all the things I've achieved. Look at all the things I've done and look at you down there type thing. That's just always the wrong attitude to have. You should try to bring other people up with you or try to help them out as best you can and then you will, you know, be embodying some of the good things that you want to that you want to embody. All right, ladies and gentlemen. See you next time.

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