Ego Is Not The Enemy

I'm going to talk about this concept of the ego and I'm going to question it here because I think there's a good argument to be made for kind of dropping this whole concept of ego or at least how it's used now. The reason for this is I notice a lot of people and they begin to see this ego that they have or when they're being egoic and it's manifesting problems in their life, causing emotional problems, relationship problems, all sorts of things. And there's this idea out there of, you know, you have to drop your ego, get rid of your ego, kill your ego, even transcend it, all these different things. And the real problem I have with it really at this point is that it becomes this kind of enemy within us, this thing that needs to be gotten rid of, which sets up immediately this kind of adversarial conflict that we have. So the reason I think it may be time, at least maybe, I don't know if you agree personally, it's obviously a choice that you'll make personally. But I think the reason I'm beginning to think it's unhelpful is because there's maybe a better way to think about it that I'll talk about here. One that doesn't set up this conflict, this enemy within that's trying to undermine me and do all these different things. The concept of the ego does describe something, you know, people often refer to it as the separated self or the belief in being a separate me and thinking egoically all about my own self-interest, for instance, right? And it does seem to lead to things like self-sabotage and undermining yourself and holding you back and all that sort of stuff. But what I prefer when I'm kind of talking about that phenomenon that we all experience from time to time is just to use the term nervous system. And you may have heard me talk about it in other videos. The reason I like that term better is that there's no real negative connotation with the nervous system. The nervous system is basically just a neutral thing that has a very clear objective, which is safety and survival, okay? And because it's so preoccupied with safety and survival, it doesn't care about creativity, relationships, connection, anything like that, kind of like this idea of the ego. But the nervous system isn't a bad thing, you know, it's just doing what it does. And it's certainly not an enemy. We can come to feel that it's a problem because this nervous system that we have, often maybe because of trauma from the past, it starts to become overly protective of us. It starts to become intrusive or compulsive, and it leads to emotional problems for us. But even still, when that's the case, we can understand why it's happening. Trauma, for example, we can understand why that's happening. And we don't have to have this inner conflict with what we start to do is not think about getting rid of it or transcending it or fighting it or killing it. We start to talk about reconciling with it and calming it, okay? Making it feel safe. Because people talk about the ego has been this illogical, irrational thing. Well, the nervous system could certainly be described in those terms too, okay? The way I talk about the nervous system, it's so preoccupied with safety and survival. And it should be. But it's so preoccupied with safety and survival. It doesn't have to be rational. In fact, it will use any strategy it deems necessary in order to get our attention, to get us to listen to it, to get us to obey it if it feels that we're in danger. And that can sound irrational. That is oftentimes irrational. It's often quite childish. It's often all those bad things we don't like to think of ourselves as okay. But it is understandable. So a lot of this stuff about, you know, transcending and letting go and all that sort of stuff, just a more simple word I prefer to use for that is understand, okay? Understand why it's happening. Because once we understand that we can, that the fear goes out of it, the conflict goes out of it, and we begin to experience less inner conflict with this thing I refer to as the nervous system. So this is a personal choice for everybody. Lots of teachers out there use the term ego and they're, what they're describing is a very real thing or a useful thing, a useful concept. But as long as we're not seeing it as something that's really bad or really scary or really powerful that we need to sit up this confrontation with in order to become a better person after we've gotten rid of it, okay? We don't have to get rid of our nervous system, okay? The nervous system is fine. The nervous system just needs to be calmed down. That's all. And reassured and made safe. That's it. Pretty simple. Pretty simple. Pretty simple on paper anyway, right? The process can feel messy at times. It can feel overwhelming for sure and intense, but it's doable. Your nervous system is not out to get you. I can promise you that. Although sometimes it can feel like that. It's really not out to get you. Once your nervous system realizes there is no real danger here, I can afford to relax. Once it really understands that in the body and it feels that it does relax and it doesn't do any of those self-sabotaging things or send signals of danger when it doesn't need to anymore. So that's our goal. If we're talking about transcending anything, we're just maybe seeing that there's no real need to transcend anything here or get rid of anything. It's just understand and reconcile with it. I'll leave that with you. Hopefully that's food for thought, guys. And thanks so much for joining me here. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.