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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video we're gonna talk about what is ego let's talk a little bit about what ego is I'm sure you've heard about it I'm sure you've heard people talking about the problems that the ego can cause for you you've probably heard about ego death you've probably heard about both positive and negative size of ego so let's talk about ego and specifically let's talk about how you can understand this concept and relate it to success and personal development how to get more success in your life by understanding ego all right so what is ego ego is basically that that aspect of yourself that you consider you so that is when I say you and I say your name and you think yeah that's me that is ego ego is basically your self-image of who you are so ego is a complex construct in your mind it's sitting both at the conscious and very very deep subconscious level so ego is that I that you think you are it's the thoughts and the emotions that you are identified with it's the beliefs that you think are rock solid and completely true it's what you think reality is like so that whole construct and it is a very big and deep construct it's like a gigantic iceberg and only the tip of it only the tip of it like the the 10% of it is sticking out of the water and the other 90% are all submerged and really you don't know what they are is just operating is just working so the ego is you and the ego has a couple of features that it does so the ego the fundamental thing that the eeo does is that it separates itself from everything else that's out in the world so if you're coming from the ego and this is 99.999% of people including myself is what you do is you say okay this is me and everything else you look at as not you right that desk is not you that other person is not you that other country is not you so you are a very distinct you or just your mind and your body the skin that you've got and everything beyond your skin is something else so you have that very clear separation this is something that you get as a biological entity as an organism who needs to survive and depends on survival and reproduction and so we as a species and really every living organism has a sense of this the sense of eyeness the sense of this is me this is what's really really important and the other stuff not so important sure you can love your spouse and you can love your kids and you can you can love the business that you built and you can even love your your iPod or your iPhone but there's still a big difference between that and really being identified with yourself so the ego is that identification with yourself now why are you talking about ego what's the big deal okay so it seems that this is kind of a kind of a an intuitive notion well the problem there is that the ego is very clingy and the ego is very self-preservation 'el and so what it does especially if you're trying to get to higher levels of achievement and success and consciousness in your life is that the ego tends to hold you back because it's got a lot of inertia and weight to it and it doesn't always want to go out there and explore reality for what it really is because what's happened is that ego has been built up regardless of how attached you are to yourself right now the fact is that you and your notion of you is highly highly illusory and fictitious and I know you don't want to hear that and I don't want to hear it the ego doesn't want to hear it but it's a very arbitrary way in which the ego came about it just came about through the experiences that you had in the early childhood and then early adulthood all the way up to now and every experience that you had in your whole life from birth to this current day this current second has has added something to your ego and what's created is created this giant yarn ball of all these different strands all tightly interwoven and now it's like an object it's like a thing it's got its own mass to it and it it's hard to reorganize that it's hard to go in there and pull a strand out and and create something actually useful out of it something that's going to get you a better level of performance and so that's what a lot of personal development is about is about working with your ego because if your ego is too big and that's what we say when you would say someone Oh someone yeah he's got a really big ego what does that usually mean that means yeah he's kind of a he's a jackass he's stubborn he's not open-minded right and that's that's kind of what it is but that's very surface level understanding of you go much deeper understanding of ego is that you've got these beliefs and you've got this big network this ball of yarn and that is responsible for all your behaviors all your actions all your beliefs all your thoughts and this is a very arbitrary thing even though we think that this is so precious that we can't change it that if we changed our most cherished beliefs then then something horrible would happen the world would collapse and in reality what happens is that the world would not collapse only your ego would collapse what would happen is that your ego would evolve to a higher level of consciousness to a new state and in that new state if you do this process correctly then that ego will be lessened it will be less judgmental it will have less boundary between itself and the rest of the world it'll be more calm it will be less neurotic it'll be more comfortable and it'll be in a position to perform better so you get better result out of your life when you numb that ego down and you rub it out and you kill it and the ultimate end of this is the process and the state of enlightenment which you can reach in which Buddhist monks for example reach after decades of meditation and contemplation is that what happens is through a very rigorous training process they literally numbed down their ego so much that they dissolve it and they no longer have that boundary between themselves and the rest of the world and they feel a sense of oneness that we can't even imagine I have not gone through this process although something that I'm working on actively right now it could take me some time to get to where I want to be there but they go they've gone through this process and so now they have a sense of oneness with the world with the universe and that's what they talk about oneness that one point in mind that enlightened boot of mind it's that you are no longer distinct from anything else you see yourself as part of everything else connected to everything else and you no longer judge things as good and bad and you no longer cling to your beliefs so much and you no longer resist suffering and you no longer resist pain you just kind of go with the flow and when you do that well you get a tremendous sense of a personal power control over yourself emotional stability because nothing can shake you because what do you care you are one with the world literally you do not care because you see as everything being part of you you see you being part of everything else so there is no good and bad there is nothing that needs to be corrected there is nothing that is distinct from you your body getting cut or even death is not a big deal because it's you're just part of the system this kind of a deep deep notion the first time you hear about it you might think that's kind of kind of wacky kind of far out there and metaphysical and not really not really the thing for me but the fact is that this is what happens it's just that most people this happens to everybody I would argue it's just that most people do not reach that complete state of enlightenment what happens though is that throughout your life whether you even undertake this process or you don't you're going to be forced to adjust your ego to the circumstances that are happening to you except what's gonna happen there's gonna be a lot of resistance so for example maybe you have a horrible breakup you have a divorce and that just has a big traumatic scar on you on your ego and now your ego has has had to change to adapt to that to that pressure that was put on it or maybe you do meditation meditation makes you feel you do a little bit of meditation everyday and that meditation makes you feel a little bit more calm more relaxed a little bit more connected to the world you're not completely connected you've still got your ego but it's a little bit rub you know rubbed out a little bit numb numb down and so through this this kind of process of just living life and learning about life and experiencing the ups and the downs your ego your ego kind of evolves and it goes from the kind of ego that it was when you were a kid basically it was all me me me me me me me you know yelling at your mom to come to come help you to come give you give you some assistance give you some pleasure give you some safety and some comfort kind of going away from that and becoming more responsible more independent more open-minded and slowly as you're exposed to more experiences in life you become more and more open minded and you start to see that good and bad is really a more relative thing than you ever thought it was and as you're getting that as you're getting that notion and your egos is kind of expanding out and it's dissolving you start to notice that it's easier to control yourself you start to notice you're not so neurotic you're not so anxious you're not so worried all the time your thoughts do not have a a grasp over you maybe you don't identify with certain thoughts the way that you used to in the past simply because you've you've suffered too much from that I mean and that's basically what Buddhist monk do is they sit for hours and hours every day for tens and tens of years until eventually they kind of just they're they're eager just kind of like like it it crumbles under its own weight and then they get this relief but I think all of us are go through that process this is a gradual process that you go through and so that is basically what ego is and I think that you know all of us mortals unless we're Buddhist monks all of us mortals I have a really strong sense of ego and I'm not really expecting you to go out there and to to solve that problem right now I just want you to be aware of it I want you to understand how judgemental you are this is huge how many judgments are you making per day practice just spend a day monitoring how much you're judging things and by judging I simply mean putting a value on it because there's two ways to go about life one way and I there's something there's it's a spectrum but we're going to talk about the two poles of this spectrum the two ends one end is where everything is judged according to some sort of metric some sort of value so everything I look at I'm like The Terminator I'm scanning it and I have like a target in in my mind and this target is saying target acquired good bad do this do that that's one way the other way is to just be in life be totally in the moment and everything's okay nothing is bad nothing is good everything just is it's being right those are the two far ends of the spectrum and most of us are somewhere in the middle although I would argue much much further towards this scanning and judging type of type of mindset and then the scanning judging mindset everything that you're looking at you're judging and you're evaluating you know oh he didn't do that oh he just threw a cigarette butt at the window he's littering that's bad oh she told me that she didn't like my shirt she was rude that's bad or it's like oh she didn't approve me because of what I said that's bad or oh he did something here which is good and we go through our whole day and a whole week and a whole life like this judging everything has some sort of purpose things that happen to us that are favorable to our ego we love and we're excited and happy about and the things that are unfavorable we're depressed about we're miserable about we're frustrated about and so what happens is that we go through life in this up and down playing this up-and-down game this whole game of chasing after things that are good and and avoiding the things that are bad and as your ego is dissolved and you see yourself as more part of the whole universe and just start to take in the being and be more in the present moment then you start to dissing you move away from the judgment and you become more at peace more calm more your natural you you raise your level of consciousness so that's ultimately what do you go is about it's about raising the level of consciousness I'm going to wrap it up here I'm signing off please this is a very deep and fascinating topic leaving your comments also like this and share this that's why I released this content for free and then of course if your curiosity is piqued by this and you want more you want more tips techniques and strategies for how to work with your ego and how to really shape it 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