You Didn’t Start Out Like This
In this talk, Master Kambiz Naficy explores how the sense of self slowly forms, and how, along the way, parts of our instincts and authenticity can be lost. Through reflection on childhood conditioning, beliefs, and awareness, this session invites you to notice the difference between who you truly are and the learned patterns that shape everyday behavior. A gentle inquiry into ego, presence, and remembering yourself.
Transcript
I'm going to have a talk with you about how you lost yourself.
Baby is born.
There is no subconscious mind.
The mind is clear.
You haven't adopted anybody's beliefs,
Habits,
Cultures.
You haven't adopted this idea of you should be this kind of a son.
You should be this kind of daughter.
That doesn't exist.
At around 18 months of age,
You start to realize that these are my fingers.
This is my foot.
So the idea of ego comes about around 18 months.
Before that,
The baby just knows that mama's warmth is theirs.
The milk is coming.
Somehow I'm protected by natural forces.
And then the moment this idea of my fingers,
My feet,
My body comes around,
That's the beginning of fear.
Because the next thought is what if I don't get my milk on time?
What if mama comes to fetch me from school 20 minutes late?
Many of the students I work with,
They have a trauma about the one time the parents were late in picking them up.
And then as adult caretakers are taking care of you beyond 18 months of age,
You start to watch,
You start to hear their talk,
You start to see their their beliefs,
Their habits,
Their perceptions.
And because you're very trusting,
At that very young age,
You completely believe in trust in what you're hearing,
What you're seeing.
I mean these are your caretakers,
Even the the original school teachers when you're in kindergarten,
Elementary school.
You're just taking everything in with full trust.
So here's what happens.
The reason you lose yourself is that other people's realities that you trust,
Their realities move into you so you believe in their reality.
As I'm talking about this,
I'm not saying that you received bad things from your adult caretakers.
Many of them were useful,
They were trying to prepare you for society,
This and that.
But some of the things that you took on were not aligned with your nature.
Let's say you're a very adventurous little boy and you have a mom who aborted the brother before you.
So she's got this huge fear of losing another son.
And you've got a very hyperactive,
Adventurous nature.
So you want to be climbing on trees and your mom is sobbing and crying and begging you to stay in the house,
In your room,
And study your math books instead.
Something within you is getting inhibited.
Or let's say you're not born with money worries,
But because your granddad went through the Great Depression of the U.
S.
And your dad picked up that worry from your granddad,
Now your dad is scaring you about financial responsibilities.
Take these silly examples,
Multiplying by five million,
And you see that because you were fully trusting,
You took on other people's habits,
Realities,
Perceptions.
Some of them were great,
Some of them limited you in some sense.
So this is how you start to lose some of your own instinct,
Some of your intuition,
Some of the ways that you want to look at the world.
Like if you're an adventurous little boy,
You really thrive when you're climbing trees.
That's how you thrive.
You're very good in sports,
But you have a very worried mom who doesn't want you to scratch your knees.
So that's inhibition.
How is a lady supposed to act?
What is a nice boy?
Who is the right person to marry?
How much money should you be making?
Before you know it,
You have a person within you who is the should-be person.
Now I'm going to give that person a name.
It's called E.
G.
O.
Ego.
Ego is an imposter sitting right on your skin surface.
It's very close to you.
Even if you're a meditator,
You're extremely mindful.
You do deep meditations.
You still have this layer.
It's sticking right on the surface of your skin.
It's called E.
G.
O.
E.
G.
O.
Is everything you absorb.
By the time you were seven years old,
Your entire subconscious mind was already programmed with your principal beliefs about God,
Sexuality,
Whether you're lovable or not,
Is money easy to earn,
Do your parents love you unconditionally.
The experts say by the age of seven,
The main pillars of your belief systems are already there in your subconscious mind.
And then,
You know,
You add on to them as you live out the rest of your life.
The entire collection of inherited beliefs,
Inherited habits,
Inherited cultures,
That entire set,
Plus your own trauma coming out of childhood and junior high in high school,
Everything that you were not able to absorb,
Everything that you pushed down into your subconscious mind,
That entire collection,
That entire house is called E.
G.
O.
E.
G.
O.
Becomes a false self of who you should be.
I would even tell you,
In the role of a spiritual guru,
If you're not careful,
You might get cornered into the role of Miss or Mr.
Nice Guy.
There's always the false self who wants to be the sweetheart to the world,
And that's not the real you.
If you want to really teach people better things about life,
Show them all sides of you,
The way you are.
You know,
If we're going to feel comfortable under our own skin,
We have to be real.
The E.
G.
O.
Is an imposter.
The E.
G.
O.
Has learned that I can only get love if I act a certain way.
Because of that,
The E.
G.
O.
Is very insecure.
E.
G.
O.
Only exists as long as your chattering mind is working.
As long as you have random thoughts,
You're going to have E.
G.
O.
If your mind were to suddenly go very quiet,
Because you're following two inhalations and two exhalations,
And you're just completely absorbed in the breath,
Suddenly your E.
G.
O.
Will vanish.
E.
G.
O.
Is dependent on the subconscious mind and all of the programming it receives.
E.
G.
O.
Is dependent on not being in the present moment.
Whenever you're thinking about the past or the future,
The E.
G.
O.
Is receiving nourishment.
If you're doing rock climbing and you are forced to be in the moment,
You lose your E.
G.
O.
If your mind goes quiet,
You lose E.
G.
O.
If the emotion of love overcomes fear,
You will lose E.
G.
O.
The emotion of E.
G.
O.
Is fear.
The emotion of love is the emotion of your soul,
The witness,
Mindfulness.
Because the existence of E.
G.
O.
Is so iffy,
Because it depends on mind chatter,
Approval of others,
Because it depends on all of the stuff that you push down into the subconscious mind,
Because the E.
G.
O.
Knows that it might vanish if you have a deep meditation,
It's a very insecure creature.
Because it's insecure,
It has triggers and it has defensiveness.
Meaning,
If you experienced some trauma in the past,
Like losing an uncle in a traffic accident when you were six,
And at that point you decided love is not worth it,
Because at any moment I can lose my dear ones.
So that becomes a thorn.
You know,
You don't trust love because your uncle vanished in a moment.
That gets pushed down in your subconscious mind.
And that trauma with your uncle is actually food and nourishment for your E.
G.
O.
And the problem is the E.
G.
O.
Gets triggered.
So now,
48 years after your uncle died,
If you hear about a friend losing a daughter,
You're destroyed.
Your entire emotional landscape is in turmoil.
You don't realize that your buttons have been pushed.
It's an old memory that you're remembering.
And then here's the problem.
Because the E.
G.
O.
Has some stored pain from the past,
It starts to live life so that nothing triggers its old wounds.
I was speaking to my first cousin,
And she was growing up in Europe in the early 50s.
And she said,
I was growing up in Switzerland,
And many of the people in Paris would not buy German cars post World War II,
Because they'd seen a lot of horrific scenes during World War II.
And here's what I'm trying to say.
If you start dancing around unresolved issues in your subconscious mind,
Then you have to live life without a German car.
Or if they played a certain song when your boyfriend broke up with you,
You don't want to hear that song again.
So now we have a song that you don't want to hear,
A German car that you don't want to buy.
And then if you grew up in an environment where they told you if your skirt is too high up above your knee,
You are not a lady.
So then now you've got preferences about clothing,
That song that reminds you of the breakup with your boyfriend,
And you don't like German cars.
If you add all of these together,
The culmination of all that is called ego.
Ego has triggers.
Ego has no faith in anything unseen.
So if you talk about charisma,
If you talk about spiritual forces,
If you talk about faith,
Ego says show it to me.
If I don't see it with my eyes,
It doesn't exist.
It has big problems with the unseen energies of life.
Ego also feels a lot of loneliness because ego says at 18 months of age,
Says oh these are my fingers,
This is my body,
So my body is separate from mama's body.
And the moment you start to realize that you're walking around in this body,
This separate from your sister's body,
Then we get the first notion of loneliness.
It's like well what if my twin sister goes to boarding school and I'm all alone by myself?
The entire notion of I am lonely in this big city comes from ego.
If you're ever soulful on a particular day,
You realize that you're pretty open.
I mean there are days when I feel I am more open in the elevator.
I'm not trying to be a sweetheart.
I'm just open.
I say hello.
Certain other days I'm not that open.
I want you to gauge yourself.
In which days do you have more fear versus love?
Those are ego days.
In which days do you feel more loneliness versus sweet solitude?
Those are ego days.
In which days do you feel more self-criticism going on?
More judgment?
Those are ego days.
Mindfulness,
The soul,
The witness is encouraging,
Is loving,
Is more open to other people.
I remember one day I had came out of a deep meditation.
I went to Grand Central Station in New York.
It was a very weird experience.
In Grand Central Station I saw the investment banker,
The shoeshine boy,
And there was this feeling of I know all of them.
I'm trying to put this into words.
There was just this feeling that I know the human being.
I know these folks.
It's not a big deal talking to them.
Which is the part of me that just is and which is the part of me that should be behaving the right way so I can get a little love and acknowledgement.
In my coming full circle approach to healing,
I always ask people which beliefs and habits did you pick up from your older adult caretakers?
Whatever beliefs,
Whatever habits,
Whatever culture you picked up from the previous generation.
Some of them are great.
Keep them.
The ones that are limiting you,
Those become part of the subconscious mind,
Part of the baggage,
Part of the negative side of ego that's keeping you down.
By the way,
Having said all this about the ego,
The ego is necessary.
If you're a managing director,
If you're the head nurse of the ICU,
When you walk into that hospital you need to put on the face of ego in order to manage the other nurses.
So we all play roles in society.
You don't just totally get rid of ego but you know the science of meditation mindfulness says as long as you follow the breath,
As long as you remind yourself to be in the present moment,
You can put on the face of ego just for managing life at that moment but you don't need to become ego.
A couple of techniques for weakening ego.
One is whatever you achieve immediately dedicated to your soul,
Dedicated to the life force coming in with the breath.
So let's say you become the best salesman of the year,
They give you a golden cup,
Immediately in your mind dedicated back to your soul,
Dedicated to the incoming breath,
Dedicated to your version of God,
Whatever you think that is.
That's one technique.
Number two,
Touch the tips of your fingers,
The thumb and the index finger,
Every time you touch your fingertips.
Merge with two inhalations,
Two exhalations.
That immediately melts down ego.
