The Ego - The Broken Program

The Ego - The Broken Program examines the Ego as it was defined in the Session "Brain, Mind & Ego". This is an exploration of the Ego, its function, and how it became overwhelmed and broken over time.

Transcript

Hello,

It's Joe and today I'm going to talk exclusively about the ego.

Before I begin,

I would suggest that if you have not listened to my session titled Brain,

Mind,

And Ego that you pause this session and listen to it first.

The reason for that is that Brain,

Mind,

And Ego will give you the background needed to understand the references I'm going to be using in this session.

If you don't listen to Brain,

Mind,

And Ego first,

You may become a little bit lost when I give you examples or use certain references.

So let's start.

First,

A short review.

What is the ego,

Anyway?

The ego is a defense mechanism that is hard-wired into our mind.

Its function is to protect the mind,

The brain,

And the body from harm,

Like an anti-virus program protects the computer and OS from harm.

What was the ego's original function?

The ego's original and current function is to protect.

The ego normally lies dormant in the background until it detects a threat.

When it detects a threat,

It activates.

It activates the body and the mind.

It increases the heart rate and the flow of blood,

Blood pressure in the body.

It floods the body with adrenaline.

You become more flexible,

More agile,

And it prepares the mind and body for self-defense.

Let me give you an example of that.

You're walking along a trail in the forest.

You notice up ahead that there's a snake on the trail.

The ego comes into play.

The ego detects a threat.

It's a snake.

Snakes could be dangerous,

So the ego is preparing you to meet that challenge.

The mind and the body becomes heightened,

Alert,

And now the ego is giving you instructions about what to do next.

Should you go around it?

Should you retreat?

Should you examine it more closely?

The ego is acting in your best interest right now.

As you approach the snake,

You find out it's not a snake.

It's a stick.

The ego then starts to recede into the background.

It's done its job.

It detected the threat.

It prepared you for it.

But because there's no threat,

It no longer has anything to do.

And the mind,

The operating system,

Takes over the normal operations of the body again.

This is the ego functioning normally.

It is the ego performing the function it was designed for.

Many of us experience a sensation called intuition,

Which is a sense of a threat or unease,

Which is a sense of a threat,

Without any obvious cause.

That also is the ego.

The ego has detected something.

It's not sure.

It has detected something in your environment that is not quite right.

This is the ego functioning properly as well,

Because the ego needs to be vigilant.

And intuition is the most useful tool the ego has when it detects a threat and believes for anything that may happen.

Once there is no sense,

No intuition of a threat,

The ego again recedes into the background.

There is no use for it anymore.

Now,

How did this defense mechanism,

Which is really useful to us to protect us from harm,

How did it get broken?

Well,

Let's talk about that.

The ego has been a part of the mind since the very beginning of humankind.

It's always been with us.

The earliest of our ancestors had an ego.

If it was not for the ego,

I think our ancestors wouldn't have survived.

Why?

Because without the ego,

There would be no sense of threat.

And without sense of threat,

If we came across a danger,

We would either ignore it or we would not prepare ourselves for it.

And in the face of danger,

If you choose to ignore it or not prepare yourself,

You're going to get harmed.

So the ego detects a threat,

Alerts you to it,

Prepares you for it,

And then having done its work,

It goes back into the background of your consciousness.

It doesn't stay at the forefront.

It goes back into the background.

But what happens if the ego detects a threat?

And then it detects another threat.

And then another one.

And then another one.

And then three more.

What happens if the ego gets overstimulated?

Let's compare this to computers again.

One way of breaking or interrupting significantly an operating system is to conduct something called a denial of service attack or as some people may call it a DOS attack,

A D-O-S attack.

What a DOS attack does is it sends so many requests.

It asks the operating system to do so many things so quickly that the operating system cannot manage them all at once.

The operating system literally receives more information than it can process.

And as a result,

Because it can't do that,

It shuts down.

That is what has happened to the ego in modern times.

Our society generates and aims so much stimulation and information at us that the ego does not know whether it is a threat or not.

The ego has become significantly overstimulated in our modern society.

It is now not in the background of our consciousness.

It is at the forefront.

It is operating all the time.

That's how the ego got broken.

It receives so much information from our modern society,

Much more stimulation that it can handle that it becomes hyper vigilant and hyper reactive and no longer works as intended.

Our progress as human beings,

Our technology,

Our media,

Our society causes us to take in so much complex information and make sense of it so quickly that the ego is operating all the time,

Alerting and preparing you for threats constantly.

Remember,

Your ego is not designed to manage the vast amount of information it receives.

Think of ourselves living 300 years ago on a farm.

Our threats were normally very basic and very simple and infrequent compared to today's society.

We now have much more complex threats,

Much more frequent threats.

I did an internet search and I typed in how much information is a person exposed to daily.

The most common response I received was 34 gigabytes per day.

You receive 34 gigabytes per day of information.

I don't understand gigabytes very well so I decided to break it down into something I do understand.

I then searched the term how much is 34 gigabytes.

34 gigabytes is the equivalent of 100,

000 words.

It's like being exposed to 100,

000 words a day.

Let me make it even simpler because I had a hard time understanding that too.

If I had a book that was 500 pages long,

I asked myself how many 500 page books would I need to read in a day in order to get to 100,

000 words?

And the answer was 200 500 page books.

Imagine that.

It takes me almost a month to read a 500 page book.

I know a friend who's a very good reader and it takes that person a week.

Two hundred of them in one day?

Impossible.

The ego is processing and trying to manage information equivalent to 100,

000 words per day and obviously the ego can't keep up.

Our society is progressing faster than our egos can adapt to it.

So let's take a look at how the ego is functioning right now in this modern society.

Because the ego does not have the ability to pay attention to every bit of information it receives,

All that information it can't process all at once,

It defaults to categorizing almost all of the information as threats.

The ego receives a lot of information,

It doesn't know what's a threat or not,

So it plays it safe.

It says you know what?

Let's categorize all of this as threats.

In computer terminology this is called a false positive.

A false positive is when your antivirus program detects something in your OS that it thinks is a threat but you actually know it's not.

You download a book,

You start reading the book and when you get to a page the antivirus program pops up.

It says the book is a threat.

You look more into it and you see that this is a false positive.

The book is not a threat.

The antivirus program though thinks it is.

This for us and the ego also has physical implications as well because when the ego activates we become heightened as I said earlier,

Adrenaline starts to flow through our bodies,

Our heart pumps a little bit faster and if the ego is telling us there's threats everywhere that has some serious complications for our bodies and our health.

In addition,

The ego over time because it is constantly operating becomes self validating which means that the ego not only tries to stop all the threats,

It's now seeking to find them.

Where?

It will try to find them anywhere.

The ego now is validating its own hyper existence.

The ego now asks is there a threat here and the ego's answer is there has to be.

To create or perpetuate threats the ego seeks and nurtures conflict.

Let's talk about the ego's addiction and struggle for survival in this society.

The ego needs conflict because conflict encourages separation.

Separation causes division.

Us,

Them,

Me,

You,

Friend,

Enemy and this type of division creates conflict and conflict creates threat and threat justifies the ego's existence.

Without separation there is nothing for the ego to do and of course there are healthy separations.

This is a good apple,

This is a bad apple.

But the ego isn't concerned about those simplistic separations.

It is concerned about what I would call the higher functioning separations.

One tool the ego has to encourage separation is what I call being right.

The ego needs you to be right.

In some individuals the ego causes them to be right about everything and in that situation the ego is so operant and so dominant in so many people that the ego has become their personality.

The anti-virus program has taken over the operating system.

Imagine having a computer where the operating system and the anti-virus program are the same.

You sit in front of your computer.

You want to search for information on the internet.

As soon as you open your internet browser the anti-virus program activates.

Is this a threat?

And it decides.

When you type in a sentence in the search bar to search for information the anti-virus program activates.

Is your typing a threat?

When you press search to find the information you're seeking the anti-virus programs ask is that a threat?

And it decides.

When you receive the information it activates.

When you scroll through the webpage it activates.

That is a situation in which the operating program and the anti-virus are one.

And that is how some people operate.

They have what's commonly called big eagles.

Almost everything is a threat.

So they need to be right all the time.

They need to feel and demonstrate that they are superior.

They need to act as if they are better and smarter than others.

And in doing so the ego believes that it's protecting the operating system and the body from danger.

Remember arrogance is the child of the ego.

When in conflict,

And this is important,

The ego does not care what side of the conflict you are on.

As long as you are in conflict the ego is satisfied that it's doing its job.

The ego has no concern whatsoever what the issue is.

It doesn't care about the issue.

Example,

Let's say that I'm debating with another person and I take the side that God exists and the other person takes the side that God doesn't exist.

We're having a debate.

Now the ego doesn't care what the subject of our debate is.

All it cares about is that any aggressive action I may take,

Becoming louder,

Calling the person names,

Are justified.

Why are my aggressive actions justified?

Because I'm right and the other person is wrong.

That's what the ego tells me.

Now when I become involved with another in an argument the ego sees the other as a threat.

The ego then wants to eliminate this threat by being superior.

If you are superior then the other person must be inferior and if the other person is inferior you are dominant and if you are dominant you are safe.

The ego therefore strives for dominance.

If it cannot achieve it then it seeks to denounce the other person.

If the person wins the argument dominance has been achieved the ego is satisfied.

And this is interesting.

If the person loses the argument then the ego tells that person that the reason they lost the argument was because that other person was mean or they're stupid or they're a bully.

In this situation if you're the loser of the argument the ego gives you the dominance of being the victim.

The ego wins again.

No matter what happens in that debate whether you're right or wrong the ego will always tell you you're right and will always seek dominance.

You can kindly and respectfully disagree with a different perspective when you're talking to a person.

When faced with a different point of view you have many many options.

You can decide to pause the argument.

You can decide that you don't wish to argue anymore.

You can validate that perhaps you're both right or perhaps you're both wrong.

There are many arguments to solve that conflict.

The ego only has one solution.

Dominance.

In its attempts to survive the ego has become very cunning and very devious.

It may mask itself in seemingly positive acts.

And this happens sometimes too.

The ego is always looking for an opportunity for dominance.

So if you're doing a positive act the ego will seek dominance there too.

For example a person supporting an issue and they're involved in some volunteer work that helps other people.

What does the ego tell them?

Well it tells them they're conscientious and they're kind and they're responsible and they're caring.

Not like the other people who are not caring at all.

That's the ego.

Look at how special I am because I care and others don't.

Let's talk about another tool of the ego.

Distraction.

Imagine this situation.

You are in a room with a five year old child.

The child sees a cigarette lighter on the table and wants it.

You say no.

The child demands the cigarette lighter.

You say no again.

The child starts to scream and yell and has an anger outburst.

You quickly get a cookie and say to the child,

Don't you want this instead?

The child suddenly refocuses on the cookie.

You have successfully distracted the child.

When the child finishes the cookie she sees the cigarette lighter on the table again and the cycle starts all over.

The child is the ego.

The cookie is the distraction.

The ego will accept distraction because it knows that once the distraction is over it can return to its original demands.

For myself,

Many programs,

Methods,

Approaches on how to manage the ego don't work.

They haven't worked for me.

They don't fix the ego or seek to restore it.

They only seek to distract it for a while.

I have a good example of this in my Buddhist practice.

When I started meditating I was exposed to a lot of different types of meditation and I did try many of them.

I tried meditating while reciting a mantra.

I tried meditating while counting the breath.

I tried visualization as a meditation method and guided meditations.

None of them worked.

They may work for others and they do work for others but they didn't work for me.

Why?

Because when I was reciting the mantra or counting the breath or visualizing something,

What I was actually doing is I was distracting the ego.

And the ego is very comfortable with being distracted because it knows that when I finish counting the breath,

When I finish visualization,

When I finish my mantra,

It comes back and resumes its functioning.

So the ego's message to me during those types of meditation is count the breath as many times as you want,

Visualize your happy place,

But when this is over,

I'm back.

And that is why those particular types of meditation practices didn't work for me.

Again,

They worked for other people but not for me.

Because I discovered that the ego was only temporarily distracted with my counting and my other methods of meditation.

When the ego becomes so strong in a person that it dominates the mind,

Then a life of pain and suffering is guaranteed.

It's unfortunate as well that the ego is so broken that when it can't find a threat,

It retreats to the past or tries to foresee the future,

To find threats there.

How to restore the ego?

That was my primary goal.

Not to get rid of it but to restore it to its original functioning.

Again,

Going to computers as our analogy,

An example of what I'm talking about as my goal was not to erase the antivirus program but to fix it.

If the antivirus program on your computer is not functioning correctly,

You don't delete it.

You try to fix it.

You try to restore it.

And that was the same goal I had in reference to my ego.

Because without it,

As we know,

The mind,

The operating system becomes completely defenseless.

We need the ego.

It is essential.

It is a biological mechanism that keeps us safe from harm.

Getting rid of the ego would not be beneficial as it would make us vulnerable to harm.

So again,

The goal is to restore it to its original form,

To its default settings,

So that the ego serves me and I don't serve it.

Like the antivirus program,

The ego works in the background.

It is alert,

It is vigilant and ready to spring into the forefront of thinking when it feels a threat.

Working in the background,

The ego remains alert and vigilant.

What the ego doesn't like,

Because it can't function properly when this happens,

Is awareness.

Becoming aware of the ego and seeing it is the equivalent of creating a glitch in the system.

The glitch,

As with any program,

Interrupts the process of the ego.

If you are reading a book and I interrupt you,

What happens?

You stop reading.

If the ego arises and you become aware of it,

What happens?

It stops functioning.

So let's talk about the steps needed to restore the ego.

Number one is that we have to accept that we have an ego.

We all do.

Some of us have big egos,

Some of us have smaller egos,

But it's always there.

Step number two,

Accept and understand that you cannot eliminate or turn off the ego.

It's always on and it always will be on.

Number three,

Accept that you and your ego are going to be together forever.

What you will.

Once you have accepted these points as reality,

The next step is to learn to identify the ego by revealing it in the present moment.

The way I've learned to do that is through a meditation practice called Shikantasa,

Which is a type of meditation from the Zen Buddhist branch of Buddhism.

Although Shikantasa is different from other meditations,

Is that it enhances awareness.

Some other meditations enhance a sense of calm.

Some other meditations reduce anxiety.

And that's great that we have so many practices to manage so many issues.

But what Shikantasa does is it enhances awareness.

It will allow you to sit still and observe the ego without reacting to it.

In this type of meditation,

You are doing two things.

One,

Learning to see the ego in operation and two,

Learning not to react to it.

If you sit in meditation for a period of time,

The ego will show up.

It cannot create threats while meditating,

So it may either try to break the meditation by putting thoughts in your head like,

How long is this going to take?

I don't think this is working.

I don't think I'm doing this meditation right.

Maybe I should start over.

Maybe I should just stop and do something else.

That's the ego trying to stop you from meditating because it knows that you're going to become aware of it.

And if that's not successful,

It will try to look into the past or the future and pull information from there to create distraction and anxiety.

It will introduce thoughts like,

I'm worried about that meeting tomorrow.

I shouldn't have said that to the other person that day.

What am I going to do?

How am I going to fix those things?

And at that point,

You're no longer meditating.

You're listening to the ego.

Awareness slows down and stalls the ego.

The ego does not function well if you are aware of it.

When you learn to identify it,

Declare you know it's back,

It stalls.

It glitches.

Why does the ego slow down and stall when you are aware of it?

Good question.

Because the ego cannot be observed and react at the same time.

It can't do two things at once.

Awareness of the ego interferes with its functioning.

Remember,

The ego likes to work in the background.

When you're aware of it,

It's no longer in the background.

It's at the front of your consciousness.

If you become more and more aware of the ego over time,

You'll be able to stall it before it starts to do damage.

For example,

You could be at work and you're walking down a hallway and you smile at a colleague and the colleague doesn't smile back.

The ego arrives.

What a rude person.

I smiled at that person to wish them a good day and they didn't even smile back.

I don't think that person is worthy to be my friend.

I don't like that person anymore.

There's the ego.

But because you're aware of it,

Your response is going to be,

Hello ego,

I see you're back again.

What are these thoughts about?

Where is the threat here?

I smiled at a colleague,

They didn't smile back.

There are many,

Many reasons why that person didn't smile back.

Perhaps they're having a bad day.

Perhaps they got something important on their mind.

There's no threat here.

I'm perfectly safe.

And in giving you that example,

I want to emphasize that it happens very quickly.

The ego pops in very quickly and over time your response to it will be very quick as well.

For the purpose of this presentation,

I just slow it down so that it's easier to understand.

In my next session,

I will be speaking more on Shikantaza,

The meditative practice that I use,

And speaking more about awareness and how it will help us restore our ego to what it was originally designed to do.

Once again,

Thank you very much for your gift of time.

I hope you found this session useful and beneficial.

And I wish you peace and kindness.

Reviews

I will be listening to all of your talks referring to ego, utterly fascinating! 🙏

Hey this was a really well-thought-out talk. Wonderful.

Great learning packed into a small amount of time!

Fascinating. I'm looking for the next one to go deeper.

Excellent information! I will need to listen more than once.

This is a really useful insight. I have been attempting shikontaze for several months now and finding it far more positive than breath counting etc., but this has made me realise that there are far too many unnecessary distractions in my life. It’s so easy to dissipate energy in superficial distractions & neglect the important stuff, the practice and the relationships that really count. Thank you

I can’t thank you enough 🙏. As if a veil fell off my eyes - I saw the reason to all of my sick reactions - and more, I saw a path to avoid those in the future. Highly recommend!