"Do People Really Not Understand Ego?"
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- Опубликовано: 27 май 2024
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Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former gaming addict Dr. Alok Kanojia-known as “Dr. K” to his millions of followers-offers a proven, tested plan to help parents define, set, and reinforce healthy boundaries around video games and help kids who have developed an addiction to gaming.
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▼ Timestamps ▼
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00:00 - Preview
01:49 - Thoughts and ego are not the same
04:03 - “The ‘you-ness’ of you”
06:10 - Egoless states
07:01 - The act of witnessing
09:40 - A witnesser beyond the witnesser?
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My therapist told me the vast majority of the population is not self aware. Really makes you understand some things.
That is wild
Even the really intelligent ones
I try to be careful with that line of thinking in order not to fall into the "I'm better than you because I feel bad about myself" mindset
i’m aware that’s why i hide in my bed for the last 5 years 🎉
The annoying thing is that imo it's ideal to have greater awareness, but also it leads to poorer mentality so in a way it's better to have less awareness of others. After all, they say ignorance is bliss and it beats worrying whether you actually made someone feel bad...
dude is slowly taking all of us to enlightenment
*talking
@termitreter6545 language is a vehicle...taking is just as true. Why the need to correct?
You made me curious
@@SleepyMagii if you can answer why you felt the need to correct him as well, I think you can figure out why he wanted to do it
@astroemi I know mine... I was wondering their's 😅
To me it's strange to correct something that doesn't need it... like adding a splotch to someone's piece and saying "there!" But actually not clarifying anything...
So yeah, curiosity.
I guess they were too 😊
@@SleepyMagii Their comment wasn't meant to correct; it was a humorous addition that could help the original post resonate with more people.
Much of the problem stems from our usage of the word "ego" in media. It has a negative connotation, associated with arrogance, overconfidence, corruption, and cruel behavior toward others.
But it doesn't even have to be those things!
It just "is". Ego is not good or bad, it's a feature of our minds and how they work.
True. That makes sense though, if you consider that a very big/uncontrolled ego has most of those negative connotations. Thats when others ego becomes impossible to ignore (and generally a PITA).
A healthy ego is much more subtle.
@termitreter6545 Ego is evil. Please give me an example of a healthy ego?
@@truthseekingfreethinker5214 Everyone has an ego. Are we all evil by default? Pretending you have absolutely no sense of "I" sounds exhausting.
@@ziwuri yes human nature is evil by default. It's not pretending you don't have an ego, it's that we have the ability to overcome our ego. Do you know why humans can't be compared to animals? It's because our brains have the capacity to overcome our primal nature, while animals just become the best at it.
its one word that can define multiple things
often it simply refers to a parasitic amount of narcissism
The realisation of witnessing is the most important step you can take in life. You feel like a child again and the world feels not like a threat but chaotic order.
just don't be all rosy eyed, threats do exist even if your view of the world changed. 😉
you should take less drugs my brotha
The Watcher
@@kittytrailI think what they mean (op correct me if I'm wrong) is that once you gain this self-awareness (the witnessing) you stop seeing everything through the filter of how this affects _you_ and instead start entertaining the idea that there is a much much broader picture that you can ever hope to comprehend and that "there's a method to the madness" in a sense.
That doesn't mean that you, on a personal level, will stop existing in day to day life as yourself, with your sense of self and your ego. It's not an unhealthy ego to recognize that you are still a human and your essence is contained in a sack of meat and bones which would very much love to keep surviving, please and thank you.
"Not a threat, but chaotic order" is an excellent way to put it into words
In response to the comments saying that the majority of people lack self-awareness:
Unless you have personally experienced the lives of every human on the planet, you cannot conclude this. This idea, especially attached to the statement that YOU somehow have self-awareness while others do not, comes straight from the ego.
damnnn ,,, that actually makes sense
A large enough sample makes for a rather conclusive, though not iron-clad, representation of the population.
Thank you it’s so scary that people walk around here thinking things like “everyone else is just an NPC” how dehumanizing and arrogant!
@@RisingChaosTrue. There are objective statistics - and so generalizations.
I think most of the time generalizations and stereotypes don’t stick because people are complicated, different experiences, groups, perceptions/perspectives, impacts, etc.
So you can generalize but you just gotta do it correctly, same thing with stereotypes. It doesn’t mean you’re closed minded or arrogant either. Being open minded is still important. And ‘most people’ or ‘less people’ doesn’t *everyone*
Plus it could be ‘most people’ *Ive* seen, or just statistically ‘most people’.
You need a good balance imo.
I'm just wondering how it's possible to even come up with that statistic. What are the metrics for self awareness?
I find that 'Ego' tends to be used when one is describing 'Arrogance'
yeah and there is some correlation. I think its more accurate when someone says Big ego when describing someone whos arrogant cause a big ego certainly is more arrogant then a small or normal one.
more like people* thinking you're "arrogant", whatever that might mean in their brains, 'cause they have no other words in their vocabulary and/or don't understand the concepts behind some words like those.
* might be only NPCs though... 😏
@@zMarceline for myself I have equated arrogance with false confidence OR the math of building self trust is the building block to healthy self confidence and to simply adopt confidence without it being built from self trust than it is = arrogance or false confidence... Ego is a different topic as discussed by the doctor 😎
@@kittytrail in evolutionary astrology NPC mode is called 'consensus reality'
@@kittytrailI don't wanna start some beef or anything expecially if it was actually a joke, though having read it it didn't feel like one
But belittling the general populous and calling them NPCs is itself a pretty arrogant thing to do
Thousands of books, decades of my life... and he puts in a nutshell video not 12 minutes long and explains the WHOLE thing! That was impressive.
can you share the books that you are referring to? i really appreciate it
@@admitNothing Oh boy... that's a hard one. I learnt lessons through everything I read. Even if I disagreed, well I learnt something.
There are also tons of books I read that have nothing to do with ego per say but were apart of my understanding in some weird way. Some layman quantum physics book by Richard Feynman or something where I pick up pieces and just make connections.
So many great books about the mind and psychology too. From Daniel Kahneman to Lisa Feldman Barrett to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi to all the work on human biases and popular books like Atomic Habits, and I love books like Annie Dukes that talk about probabilities.
The more I say the more I'm leaving out. I could go on forever.
I don't have a specific book on ego per say.
@@admitNothing the tao that can be read is not the eternal tao. i like the tao
In my experience, I‘m nothing but my experience
you could probably try to add the ability to integrate others' experiences into yours to experience even more experiences. 😉
@@kittytrailego?
@@kittytrail Funny, i was writing a similar post a second ago.
I thought: What if we had a brain implant, that allows all people to connect and to access each others experiences? Would the "you" become meaningless? 🤔
@@notconnected3815 that would be permanent chaos, unwanted thoughts and instant information overload even if accounting for the low bandwidth circular brain chatter of NPCs. if you cannot analyse, digest and integrate others experiences on your own with yours without an hypothetical brain implant, well, that doesn't bode well for the future... 😑
How can you be your experience when you are the subject who experiences it's not logical an experience needs a subject and an object you are the subject, experience is the object.
When I was 16, I realized that people lies to themselves all the time. At the beginning, they know they are lying, then in time, they believe their own lies, but deep down they still know the lie and will do everything to continue the lie.
Now, at the age of 30, I think the ego just shut them off, they don’t even know they are lying to themselves and they believe their own lies.
If you've lied to yourself for so long that it becomes ingrained into you, does it not become your own truth? What is a lie? What is truth? A lie can be entirely subjective, and can turn into a truth. A truth can be a lie that people believe in.
@@mayonnaise9993
Accurate profile picture
@mayonnaise9993 ignorance doesn't become truth just because you believe in it.
@@ivan-jg8ht it's called having an opinion or being certain of something. Philosophizing yourself into a cartoonishly simplistic misunderstanding of basics of living as a human is harsly useful
very well observed 👍
i think this phenomenon is called "cognitive dissonance"
kind of an coping strategy
Observing the ego has been the most powerful tool I've begun to develop.
How to do it? Any video recommendation from GG?
@@valexizhexa1786 I can't think of anything offhand but I do kaya sthairyam meditation which helps me a lot :)
I ABSOLUTELY adore that he ended the video the way he did.
"Actually, I'm an idiot, maybe I'm wrong"
I try to move through life knowing that I am ignorant, and every day I just become a TINY bit less ignorant, and that I'll die ignorant. I don't mean ignorant as less intelligent, but as a "I know for a fact that there's so much out there and I'm just a tiny little speck in a galaxy of sand."
I learn and talk with confidence on what I think I know, but understand I might be wrong. That opened up so many opportunities with so many people and in life over the last few years.
I recently made a post about my Realization about my personal ego death on the Subreddit. It feels like I've returned to being like a child (not literally, I'm still a functional adult), but my sense of wonder has returned and I'm planted in the present all the time now. It really is like realizing the most basic thing in the world that you ARE life, ARE consciousness, and not the "ego".
Thing is, whenever I talk about it, people take it so personally. I don't want to invalidate anyone's struggles and stuff, but they always think I am when I say the Ego is not really a thing, but a persona, a mask. Some get it, but most just ridicule me for proposing such an idea, even though...it's lived experience at this point.
So.. You're walking around, poking and peeking behind people's masks, commenting whatever on them, uninvited, and throw a surprised picatchu face when they reject such probing? 😅 At least take them for a dinner first or something :))
ego tries to protect the ego. Maybe because of that people take it personally
@@justb4116 If certain people are into wearing masks 24/7 I have nothing against them and even understand them to some extent. It can become boring, childish or straight up irritating when some decide to wear a Halloween mask every single day though.
No one has ego death....maybe those that self deleted.
If you don't have an ego then you would be dead pretty quickly
@@penderyn8794 empty vessels have no ego. lots of those roaming around... 🙄
Self-awareness is really weird. And I think "ego death" is a misnomer.
When you first observe yourself, you get really self-conscious and you notice how others are not at all self-conscious. You notice how much other people have the same motivations as you and you can predict them. You tend to think of them as not self-aware, as "sheep", just because they don't break out of the mold in a way you would expect someone self-aware like yourself to do - this is wrong. It is a phase some get stuck in.
The next phase is to notice that your ego doesn't really want what you thought it wanted. This phase is often called "ego death", but really, you just recognize that all these material things are not what your ego really craves, and you so you stop chasing material things. IMO, what the ego really craves is the warm glow of having done something "good", something that is in alignment with having empathy with everyone. Once you have empathy, once you stop thinking of others as NPCs, it is impossible to shut it off. The ego is still there as strong or stronger, just the goal is different. And maybe, just maybe, you recognize that you are still the same as everyone else - some people people you perhaps thought of as "sheep" really just instinctively knew from the outset what their ego really craves - you (I) took a little longer.
How would I know what phase I am in?
I do think that others are not self aware as me, I do think that they are 'sheaps' and they are Npc's but I also think that why would that matter, how does it matter... If I'm saying that I am more self aware then that other person that still comes under as 'ego', but let's just say I'm saying that because I'm self aware then that person but I am not saying that I'm better person.....
Hope you understood what I am saying because my English is bad.
@@fiyan6368 As you say, in the end it does not matter: you should treat everyone as you wish to be treated, whether you think they are self-aware or not: (1) my history tells me I make mistakes and (2) empathy towards only some subset of humanity is prejudice and pretty much *the* cause of unhappiness in the world.
What was that quote about enlightenment, again?
Oh yeah, at first, upon starting your journey, rivers will be mountains, and mountains will be rivers, and upon truly being enlightened rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains.
Most people really don’t have self-awareness. In my naivety in youth I thought, everyone did like me. Like my family taught me.
I realized it was a rarer thing than I knew.
Edit: People sure love making conjectures from the smallest stuff on the internet. Amazing.
2 realizations:
1) people are dumb
2) people aren't even self-aware
what does this mean? we are surrounded by NPCs?
in other news water is wet
How do you know you have it though? How do I know I have it?
@@12Daniel34 Fact you are asking in the first place shows you got it somewhat to begin with. It’s just how self aware you choose to be at that point I figure.
@@AspieMemoires I don't think self awareness is something you either have or don't have. it certainly can be improved by training and some people might indeed be better at that than others... ironically accusing most people of not having self-awareness, unlike yoursef, seems like an egotistical statement to me.
My ego told me I didn't have an ego. When I put myself in a situation that my ego values were opposed to (values I previously set for my subconscious), that confrontation caused my ego to cower and back off. @@12Daniel34
Put a different way: Tony Robbins has a set of vocal tapes he used to sell called "Personal Power." How do you take your personal power back? Well there's 50 tapes from a great motivational speaker to help you rout your ego mind and help you stop relinquishing this volitional power in what I'd call "Compartmentalization."
How can you stop being compartmentalized in an even more intuitive and simple way? Meditate (find a meditation that works for you) and "decompress."
Mindfulness is exactly what allowed me to, let's say, reduce my narcissism to the point it's no longer problematic for myself or others.
However, I've not yet been able to heal the traumas in which the narcissism was rooted. IOW, I no longer mask the self-loathing with false-competence, so now I experience the self-loathing so strongly that I don't know what to do beyond distract myself from it. In practical terms this has led to the inability to cope with the accumulation of real world small stressors (though the stressors of simulated environments, i.e. video games, are manageable).
My therapist wants me to work on accepting things as they are without judging them; which, based on my understanding of Taoism, Zen, & Advaita Vedānta I fully agree with.. The difficulty is converting the knowledge I accept into actionable behaviour. When I don't know what to _do,_ I end up "crashing" and doing nothing. I understand that it's about becoming comfortable with "being" rather than "doing," but there's still some hang-up there.
Well, as an outsider with only this comment as background info, it seems to me that you've got a plan, and kinda know where to go and what to do (or not😅).
Keep going
@@JeremyHansPatrick Thanks 💖
I guess I kind of worked something out there in real time 😅
I just don't know what the hang-up is and just sitting around "trying to just be" doesn't help my anxiety of running out of money.
@@RubelliteFae self-loathing because of what you call _false-competence_ would probably disappear when you'll understand that being and doing are the exact same "things" viewed from a different standpoint. start *doing* what you've put under that _false-competence_ moniker until you master it and there's _competence_ instead. then you work from there and will find that both are the same. everything human needs to be repeatedly done countless times to be mastered, failure is not only an option, it's par for the course for everybody. staying on course long enough, even with some lying down introspective thinking sessions, is the only way unless truck-kun has isekai'd you recently... 😼
@@kittytrail Sorry if I write confusingly. What I meant was that narcissism is a mask of false-competence people wear in order to hide their self loathing from others because they already feel it so strongly themselves, the criticism of others becomes unbearable.
Not to get to detailed, but self-loathing is rooted in other things starting from early childhood and going all the way up to the recognition that my narcistic behaviours had hurt people.. i.e., it's because of many things over ~30 years.
As for spending time working to improve the things I want to do, overwhelm from that is a major factor in my most recent breakdown/shutdown. I attempted to try again after a 7 month break, but could see the signs returning. I'll get there eventually.
What I meant is that I have the inclination to work to solve a problem, to do something. But I'm unsure what action will help me lead myself to acceptance of what is without judgement. I totally agree with the concept, but I've always been better theory than practice. I suppose more accurately, I know actions which will help, like various forms of meditation, mantra repetition with mala, etc. And this has helped with other things in past.
The challenge is that I have ignored so many self-criticisms through distraction (i.e., bottled them in) for so long that any time I'm in silence the chatter of my mind becomes so unbearably critical. All of it comes up at once. So, I haven't been able to tolerate it long enough to allow all the thoughts to happen and experience the silence after. But it's worse than that. The suffering of the chattering is so great that I can't even last through a shower-which has had downstream effects on my ability to allow myself human contact, go outside, work, etc. It's so embarrassing that I'm shocked I'm even able to post it on the Internet where it will live forever. I suppose I do it in hopes that putting it to words helps me accept & break through.
Thanks for reaching out. 💖
@RubelliteFae thanks for your detailed reply. 😽
looks a lot like a classic chemical imbalance, as in lack of basic vitamins, minerals and other stuff like C, D, K, Mg, Zn, proteins and iodine you should normally get from your diet but that's seldom the case nowadays. try to look into that if you can as it may be one of the causes of that relentless, unstoppable brain chatter, speaking of which, do you feel you _need_ to have constant external aural stimulation, i.e. noise like radio, tv or music on to not get overwhelmed by that negative ruminating chatter?
of course that's just a hunch based on past experience and not knowing you nor being your doc (i'm just a random blob of pixels on your screen, ok?), don't take it as any kind of medical advice but only as directions that i would explore first as, as those bloody romans said, *_mens sana in corpore sano_* is even more valid today with modern sedentary lifestyle. oh yeah, lack of exercise might also take you in a downward spiral very easily and is quite also easy to eliminate as a possible adjunct cause on your own in a few months of _daily_ low key effort even without a gym or going out of your home. if that helps then investigate the others one by one by keeping a diary of what you try and the effects it has on you.
TL;DR.: take care of yourself, _body_ and _mind_ a step at a time, as if you don't now, you may not be able to overcome what is _parasiting_ your brain and crippling you anytime soon. 😘
(it sounds cheesy but i couldn't put it any other way. sorry)
Please make more content on that topic. It is so interesting and you explain complex and abstract concepts very well. Thsbk you for the amazing content as always!
He did 2 lectures just on ego during February for the RUclips members content. If you’re able to afford it, I personally found the value incredible. Next week he’s doing a double lecture on tantric meditation for the members content followed up with discipline later in the month.
@@BrassyDel Thanks for the tipp. I will check it out.
Most of what he says in these newer videos are concepts that he has already talked about for hours and hours a few years ago. So I would recommend you looking through his older videos for more content about EGO.
why is dr k wearing his couch
For those that are partially color-blind, when you see it, you see it.
that made me chuckle
6:10 I really love that Cold Plunge example. It's 100% true and a fascinating experience. It feels like your running down a tunnel, getting faster and faster until you pop out the other side. In my experience I could move around in the cold plunge without feeling the cold after experiencing this. I would highly recommend this practice for people with ADHD. It's like a forced meditation.
And here i am being too self aware for my own good, having an entire boardmeeting with board of directors, ceo and myself discussing why i am lazy piece of shit.
00:00 🧠 Thoughts, emotions, and ego can all be observed as parts of the mind.
01:50 🤔 Thoughts and ego are not the same; ego involves identity and judgment.
04:04 🧘♂ Moments of egoless states can be experienced, where one exists without identity.
07:01 👁 The act of witnessing experiences is beyond the ego, residing in pure consciousness.
09:42 🐢 There is no infinite regression of witnesses; the witnesser is the end of the road.
Damn.
I am the Reddit OP. It is obviously true that language messes this up sometimes. I refer to the ego as the all encompassing mind (thought)/persona/character. Perhaps we could come up with a different term to help encompass the entirety of the character. For now, I will use the word “character” because it seems to be closely related to antahkarana.
You refer to thoughts being separate from the sense of “I”. Thoughts generally do have an “I” attached to them. For example, a thought could arise that says “I like this dog, it makes me happy”. There is a sense of self there or ego. Also, a thought could arise that says “dog=happy”. As you can see they both have the same meaning, although there’s not a sense of “I” in dog=happy. It’s still arising from mind. It’s still arising from thought. Thought in which I have no control over. Regardless of what the thing says, I am not those thoughts. I am not these words I type. I am not these words I speak. I am encompassing all of this into the character.
Since I have no control over what thoughts say, I have no control over if theres a sense of self in the thought or not. I have no control over if the mind says “I” or the mind says “dog=happy”. To me, in that scenario, the mind has just found a loophole to pretend it’s not the ego or sense of self.
Yes egoless states are possible. But not while we are communicating while on this plane of reality. There’s “I’s all over my comment and your video.
The problem I see is that people say they’ve transcended the ego. This, in my opinion is not possible. We all have these different little personalities going on in our minds. For example, the voice could talk to itself. It could say, “I want that chocolate bar”. Then another voice could come in and say “No! You don’t need to eat chocolate” and the prevailing voice will win based on your prior causes and conditions. You end up thinking that the winning voice is you when in reality its just the same voice. It’s tricky. What you are is behind that.
Yes I can drink water without ego. I can walk straight to the fridge without even having a thought about it. But you cannot communicate without the character, without the mind. And there’s no way to transcend it. So, while on one level, we are pure consciousness, on another level we are this character. Pure consciousness can witness the character. But the character aka program can also realize it’s a program.
Witness consciousness can observe the character and that it’s a program running, but the character itself can also discover that it’s a program. I know this because I am now using thought from the mind/character to coherently formulate these thoughts into sentences. Sentences that understand that the mind is a program.
So while in meditation, a thought can arise that says “oh shit, I get it! The mind is a program and I’m watching it.” Well, you also just witnessed a thought pretending to not be the program itself that has just realized it’s a program.
Anyway, thank you for reacting to my post. Would be happy to chat about this further. I feel as if it could be helpful to me, you, and other listeners.
Edit: another user commented that ego is just a pronoun for psyche. Perfect. There you go
Hey!
What is it precisely that you wish to achieve with this discussion? I don't mean this in any condescending way. Like really, what is your motivation for discussing what ego means. You are absolutely correct, when there is a thought that realizes the "minds program", that is too part of the minds program. You know what is also part of the minds program? The part that wants to discuss all this discussing.
I understand that all this ego talk, ego death, ego transcendence etc can get really confusing. But that's precisely the point. Don't even try to figure out anything more. You understood that when witnessing the minds program, you can come to an understanding of the minds program, which can then trigger another part/or is the minds program.
Okay, so what's the problem with that? Can you just exist right there. No need to take it any further, no need to find anything out, no need to compare definitions. I'm not saying force yourself to believe these things, but if you want to find out whats beyond ego, mind, etc. then you can't search in the thing you are trying to "leave" (so to speak).
@@RosentwigMusichi there! Thanks for your response. I totally get what you’re saying. More so the original post that he made this video on was seeing so many folks talk about the ego in the third person (persona, psyche, character, mind, whatever).
Truthfully so many people do it, that it led me to believe that potentially I missed something. This ego (lol) was looking for clarification. And to see if it was correct.
I know what we are cannot be put into words. Just so many people seem to think they’ve transcended the mind. It’s not possible. The mind had to comment. The mind had me reply. It’s a program.
We can watch it all day long though.
I think Mr. Gamer didn’t fully understand what I was alluding to. So I tried to clarify with the best words I know how.
But at the end of the day, yes you’re right.
It seems to me that the Vedic definition of ego, ahamkara, tends to come with a language that entails an "identification" with a self, and can at least be increasingly distanced from as you cultivate awareness. It's still "you" doing the witnessing and experiencing and detaching, but I believe the Eastern traditions would argue that the witnessing "I" is not the same thing as the egoic I. But outside of that experiencing itself, to be able to think about it and to communicate these concepts with others necessitates the re-introduction of the ego, which leads to the phenomenon you described.
This reminds me of the Buddhist idea of "conventional truth", which is not actually the truth, but merely a convenient construct that the world requires to function at all, and that there's an "ultimate truth" where reality is completely empty and without form that cannot really be talked about in a way that really makes sense until a practitioner gets to a point of directly experiencing it.
Disclaimer that I'm a pretty casual meditator whose education is just some non-fiction books and electives in uni, I might have gotten some things completely wrong.
@@RokujyuuyonShouthanks for the reply! I also agree that the witnessing “I” is different from the egoic. But both paradoxically exist at the same time. In my main post on Reddit, I was just pointing out that we cannot fully transcend the mind or whatever. You and I need it to have this conversation. We can observe it sure, but it still has power. It had enough power for you to respond as well as I. Boom, we’re right back in the matrix as if we’d never left. It’s all paradoxes. The Both And.
@@hippieinatent I believe perhaps that transcending it could simply mean that it no longer impels you and that you are free (at least freer) to choose what to do with it.
The Buddha for example is said to be fully enlightened and transcended all these things, but that did not preclude him operating within the realm of conventional reality for the rest of his life to be able to teach anything to anyone at all, while at the same time, he'd be asserting from that space that neither of those two kinds of "I" we talked about are even real at all to begin with
It's trippy as hell, and I think what can be frustrating to read on places like Reddit are strongly egotistical proclamations of having transcended ego when the proclamation itself seems a direct contradiction to what is being proclaimed!
Ive had 2 therapists, one dropped me due to me not wanting the force of religion and the other just didn’t feel like it was helping much. I started listening to your videos everyday since I’ve found your channel, and it more and more makes me want to talk to you. Mainly on the topic of trauma. It’s something that weighs heavy on me, and intrudes my thoughts all the time affecting my day to day life. There is a lot of the same thoughts but theres so many that change constantly and at any time. I really hope you see this and i love listening to your content
All of spirituality explained in 11 minutes. Thank You!
My last breakup led me to being significantly more self-aware. It was a case where they were in the wrong, I knew it and they didn't... but there were also times where I was in the wrong as well. Their fixation and inflation of my own wrongs helped me more accurately gauge the truth. Their lack of understanding/acceptance of their own wrongs led to me becoming exponentially more aware
This explanation in English is so very calming...
I've watched this 6 times now...
Thank you, ☺️
I really needed this Dr. K thanks!
My favorite kind of Dr K videos
Thank you for these videos man !
Thank you Dr. K for spreading awareness about awareness. If anyone is more interested in insights on identity, ego, beliefs, and consciousness, look into non-duality.
Thanks Dr K. You're out here doing good work and helping people like me. Was definitely a 😮 moment for me. Love the attitude, can't wait for the potential day I may be able to 'prove you wrong'. AOE ftw!
"I am an idiot"
O haha that the ego speaking 😁
I think opposite: that could be said by a person who does not stuggle with ego anymore.
@@farenough5878 it came after the statement of what The Thing is. so self doubt in your own "belief","assesment of reality" is quite an anti ego thing to do. people with ego don't doubt in the things they assume are 100% correct. or am I wrong here? ;)
@@farenough5878 Dr. K did a previous video talking about what is a healthy ego. What was mentioned is that the healthiest ego is the reduction of ego. In the video it was addressed that ego does assign both positive and negative statements. So, "I am dumb" is an ego statement. I felt like the statement was done on purpose so I found it comedic... But, I might be dumb too.
@@kubasek1111 i'd say that having an ego and being aware of it is what fosters doubt. but maybe i'm wrong... 🤔
@@farenough5878 you are confusing ego with arrogance. Ego is any "I" thought. It is the self, and Ego can be self-deprecating.
This was an interesting video. Thank you for posting!
This Video gave me more Questions then I had at the first place
Oh wow, good timing. I was just struggling with my ego and trying to figure out how it affects me.
I pre-ordered your book through Audible today. I can't wait.
I like the TV analogy because it is very easy to visualize. You are the witnesser, watching your life's movie play on the TV. While your ego, memory, and emotions are characters in this movie. If you self-insert into the characters too much, you let them control and alter your perception of the movie. Instead, try to view the whole picture and watch the movie truthfully and honestly. Only then will you begin to notice and appreciate all the small details in this movie, as well as the overarching plot and even foreshadowing.
More on this topic please ❤
Excellent video ❤
thanks for explaining the ego so well! :)
nicely explained ❤
Talking about BPD and NPD, I wonder if you would like to make a video about people who have more personality disoders, or how are they wired exactly.
Keep up the good work😊
3:43 when the difference interacts with you it entangles itself to your differences like a wave taking the shape of a cup, that difference in your body’s alignment is reflected through the differences and travels to the neurons and the differences reflect through the organizations and sharing they do, that reflection is shared with the rest of your integrated differences aka body and parts to react. It’s a flow or wave that can crash or expand or do whatever. It’s your portions that you focus on that guide your nature.
I believe the reason why it's difficult to think without an ego and the reason why I agree with the writer and the confusion.
All of your thoughts and everything you do is also just a baseline compared to what you're doing right now. If you are bored and you don't feel like cleaning and you just want to take a nap or you don't feel like dieting you just want to eat a cookie whatever it is. If you were in a different situation the same thoughts wouldn't cross your mind. For example if you're starving and you're in the middle of a war zone looking for your family, hoping to find somebody still alive. You'll take whatever food you can get and if you were teleported back home, you would eat a can of beans and you would love your family more than ever. You'd clean your house and you wouldn't complain. So even just thinking even without the word I it's still an influenced thought.
The only thoughts that are not ego thoughts are the ones that are about the present tense. If it's about the future or the past it has ego in it.
I was very unconscious until my first big break-up.
Pain, Loss and doubt of myself, asking myself why I have become the way I was resulting in that painful outcome made me start my journey toward consciousness.
My Ego broke back then.
Before then I felt invincible and had insane drive, testosterone commanded my life. Now at 32 I'm still healing from my unconscious teenage years up until 20.
I guess I adopted the behavior of grinding my body nonstop from my Father, who still does it sometimes, when he's not sick, with soon 70 years age.
As someone with BPD, its honestly really difficult to live with. Mindfulness and Meditation has helped me a lot not with just my BPD but other mental illnesses
I feel like this guy should re-name his channel to "Beneficial psychological advice for everyone"
I feel like I stumbled into this only recently. Since then I have been having panic attacks and what not. It just drives me up a wall internally. Somedays I am relaxed, but some days it makes me to stressed.
Knowing your own ego and others is a valuable tool.
It means EVERYONE will always act in THEIR best interests NO matter what they are doing.
Whatever and everything they do is for ego.
Was Mother Theresa altruistic?
F no! She felt the pain of the orphans and to make HERSELF feel better she helped others?
Is that bad. NO that's reality. That's EGO!
Not everything is black and white. In fact most of everything is a shade of grey.
@@Mrjoe_i_think Is it less about indentifying the ego and more to do with how we act with is.
Yes Mother Theresa acted with her ego to help others, but at the same time she could have just ignored them completely.
Thing is I just started working in healthcare and I got a position where I am a salesman. I am a firm believer that there is a difference in “profiting off of healthcare” and “getting paid to practice healthcare”. Yes money runs our society now days. I want to be able to buy food, afford a house (lol right) and do fun things. I don’t need a million dollars .
So does that make me bad?
Furthermore I ask about team goals? What if people’s egos share the same goal?
Is the ego just not the filler for what we do while we are alive. Things like going hiking, skiing, traveling. If life is just a trip to a box at the end then why not skip to the box part?
Interesting ... this reminds me of a friend. Maybe he is in the same process too.
this reminds me of hegelian philosophy like the term sublation (or in german "aufheben"): " to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same time "
I am self-aware to the point of damage. Then I came across the point that problematic narcissism can manifest as this kind of self-obsession as self-awareness. Now I can't break out of the spiral of worrying whether the awareness of my awareness is the (symptom of the) problem, or if it's the (start of the) solution, and whether or not I should just let it all go.
To me it is like observing the world and myself from a 3rd person's perspective who is completely separate from me.
It doesn't have any characteristic, preferences, or bias.
All plays before awareness 🥰👌
I find or define ego as, your sense of self, not so much consciously, but subconsciously. It is what makes you, you! most of that is ingrained from childhood, which is why trauma really needs to be healed or it controls your life.
I always associated ego with pride and honour. Your ego is the thing that helps you feel proud of your accomplishments, but it is also that which fears to lose whatever honour and respect you have. It's the thing that helps you structure yourself on a social hierarchy (because those exist whether we like it or not).
It was Bertrand Russel who said "A legitimate child is a continuation of a man's ego, and his affection for the child is a form of egoism." in his book Marriage and Morals. That means, our ego does not wish for our achievements and respect to end at the grave, but to continue on into our children. That's how generational wealth and respect is gained as well.
There is a witness
But we want to testify
The ego doesn't want to see something it wants to be something
When discussing this stuff, I feel like we need to spend more time acknowledging that these are just frameworks for understanding our minds that we are slowly combining with our understanding of the physical reality of the brain. To talk about people "not understanding that they're just egos" as if the ego is a clearly delineated thing is ridiculous.
No it's not ridiculous... well actually it is, but he address that.
How are you supposed to explain how something works if you don't define it?
Ego is a BIG word...
It's emotionally charged...
It is VERY real and has very REAL consequences.
It IS a thing. Not in and if itself but it is an undeniable human trait.
If be humans... be ego!
@@Mrjoe_i_think You're right, in this sort of discussion it is helpful, if not necessary to be able to talk about ego as if it "IS" a discrete "thing." But that doesn't mean that it actually is--and we should remember that. Dr. K's line of reasoning is good--we agree across cultures that there is some part of our minds that feels 'personal' and 'us,' we've even found some potential physical corollaries. But we have to acknowledge that the idea of the ego as a "thing," while very useful, is an incredibly simplified and inevitably somewhat inaccurate way to talk about something we absolutely don't fully understand. Again, obviously it's still useful, but I think we could do to keep that more in mind in this discussions and be a little less hardline in our statements. This is primarily a criticism of the reddit poster, but I feel like this is true of most discussions of this stuff. I think Dr. K kinda thinks of it as obvious so he doesn't mention it, but I think people in the audience (of pop psychology in general) don't realize that and that's how you get people making ridiculous blanket claims like the one in the reddit post.
@@theangryginger7582 Absolutely fantastic post. All true. Dr talks with a lot of confidence about surface level abstractions, as does popular psychology, without saying much.
Will continue... this is a placeholder.
I have more to say but no time now.
@Mrjoe_i_think "talks with alot of confidence about surface level abstractions" pretty much nails it. I've been trying for a while to put it that concisely.
Perhaps confidence and finality?
Im just imagining the deep conversations in the comments like people gatherings on a round table and talking formally, challenging arguments and such
Ngl I love it lol
The first time I fell into an international meditative state I witnessed my center of being. I felt in charge of what thoughts I could have and how I could react. Like allowing a disturbed pond to settle so that you may see what lies within.
Jewels being shared here!
This is profoundly validating to my pain and having "ego death" to the point of existing in my own lonely. I don't understand the turtles all the way down theory. Can you break it down even more? I feel like it's a wall of comprehension but what is the "TV screen" in my head? It's not my eyes?
Edit for spelling but for context, I've done a lot of internal work to heal a very fractured identity. I am working on integrating my sense of self and identity into my body, hoping to help with somatic pain. I appreciate the work you and your team do.
Let you're Ego see Pride and Humble as the same'
What is the problem?
Be Objective and rational based to what truth and lies in life and see Pride in Being Humble, wrong and learn from mistakes.
Good video. Explains things that are confused by many people, including me. One thing bothers me afer it though. Awareness can lower impact of ego on a person, but can ego be healed in a way it does more good than harm?
Loving these new thumbnails
What alok mentioned at the end of the video is 'Moksha' . Thats the ultimate end of life and if you are without thoughts, emotions and ego then you may be able to experience it. Thats the purpose of our life and it is difficult to understand but it is absolute peace if anyone is able to understand it
Iirc there have been a few studies that showed that people will behave in a more "socially moral" way when being observed, even if there is just a set of eyes painted somewhere (the kind that follow you around the room).
Whatever the cause behind it, it could be that some people have their own "eyes" that push the same type of response so that they do good things even when no one is looking. And/or they may just be nice people who like things to be nice regardless of if any other person is going to notice
I wouldn’t say most people aren’t capable of being self aware, everyone has the ability to but it’s a matter of their environment and how willing they are to disconnect from the ego.
Great question! I think it can be answered simply by saying, it’s just easier to talk that way, it’s probably not that people don’t understand the nuances (at least not the people talking about it) and more likely that it’s just easier to talk about it without mentioning the nuances every time like a disclaimer
Amazing video Dr K., as always! Does anyone have recommendations for free resources (books, podcasts, literally anything) to read further into this topic, especially the sanskrit teachings? I've read tons about mindfulness from a western perspective but would love to dig a bit deeper
I have good self awareness so your videos are very useful. Can you make a detailed video on loss aversion(especially in trading)
Thanks, Dr K.
i would love a video from you about out of body experiences and what's going on there
An important observation I made about ego by observing myself that many people seem to overlook is that ego isn't necessarily tied to arrogance or boastfulness. Sure, someone who boasts a lot has a big ego, but someone who on the contrary belittles themselves a lot has a big ego too. The focus here is that the sense of 'self' is inflated--the importance of 'self' takes precedence over most things, and whether it's belittling yourself or boasting, both stem from that large ego. So if you find yourself overly critical of every action you do, belittling yourself, etc., you may have a big ego. I find that people with depression often have a big ego. Of course, people with narcissism have a big ego too. That does not mean that narcissism and depression have the same roots (as in I don't mean to say that depressed people and narcissistic people are the same), just that ego is more of an encompassing element in our lives than we'd initially imagine it is.
The portions of your integrated differences will scream through the subconscious if you neglect yourself. Integrate and self reflect, align and run parallel with reality and expand in symbiosis. It’s like they say, if you are out of line on the inside then your outsides will match. Just like victim mentality or chasing the happiness through the drug. No one is alone.
Came from The Diary Of A CEO, great work doc, subscribed.
Place to rise hand for anyone else, who read the comments and completely lost understanding of what self-awareness is too.
I just wanted to say that that green shirt really suits you! (also thanks for helping me be a better person I will always be greatfull)
Yes. Next question.
It's a common misconception for people to think that thoughts are the ego. It's a deep individualistic identification/self-contraction that affects every cell of the body. The "I" thoughts part of it is the most surface layer. It's why most people can't just get over their thoughts and become enlightened. It's not that simple.
Love this video. I also wonder if the person asking the question is confused about the act of self-expression (in sharing the thoughts or writing a post on reddit) being nearly impossible (or maybe impossible?) without some involvement of the ego. The closest thing to expressing thoughts to others free of ego might be stream-of-consciousness writing, or “flow-state” art. Certainly not posing philosophical questions on reddit. I think your point of view ”you can’t compare to others without ego” kind of gets at this. But philosophical thinking in general will probably always involve some sort of ego involvement because one is constantly drawing on their own experience and memory to solidify the thoughts. And I agree, this does not mean the witness *is* the ego.
in short, Yes
Hello, neuro-divergent brain just trying to see if I understand correctly!
Ego is your emotions, I-statement thoughts that include you, and feelings.
Living in the moment is an egoless state, so the moment after when you start reacting again (deciding the water is too cold and you want out of it, that it was fun/scary, that maybe you want to do it again) THAT is your ego.
Almost like a function of your brain to assess whether a situation was worth experiencing or too dangerous/painful? Then we add it to our identity: I am a person who likes to jump into cold lakes
I believe what is described here as witnessing or pure consciousness is what philosopher Immanuel Kant calls the transcendental apperception or the unity of “I think” that has to accompany every thought and every perception. He says that there is an empty space within our mind that holds every content and that is the notion of self just as a form as opposed to the notion of self that contains specific characteristics, inclinations and beliefs. In case somebody is interested in ideas of the western philosophy of the mind.
The way Dr. K talks about egoless states reminds me of how some people describe dancing.
I’ve been aware of my observer for quite some time, I have become aware of the observer or me and then other parts of my brain and it somewhat messed me up because of the realization of all the inconsistency’s of everything
I used to think I had self awareness and I think I did have it at some point. This reminded me of that time ...and how far I've drifted back into unconsciousness T_T
How does the ego react to what the witnessing consciousness realizes if the ego cant recognize anything itself? How is the ego manipulating perception that it's not aware of? I cant block a punch if my eyes are closed, no? The only thing I can think of is that ego is the form witnessing consciousness takes when it forgets that it's the witnessing consciousness, so they are in fact the same thing. Otherwise how in the world does this make sense?
It's so weird sometimes when I wake up, from a nap, or in the middle of the night. I have this weird experience that I don't know who or what I am, it's trippy.
I was made aware of this whole observing your thoughts and ego by listening to Swami sarvapriyananda and his podcasts on Spotify
yes
Beautifully said brother!! May I indulge in understanding of this understanding..if I may. The quality of "I" ness .....? How do you have any idea or even formulate a idea in the first place is it thought or is it mind ..... Or are we made after the the image of God!
-the more self-centered the person is, the less self-aware they are. if we raise awareness and promote mindfulness, we could really improve this problem
-the witnesser is beyond the ego. but there is nothing beyond the witnesser
-the ego is separate from thoughts and emotions, they aren't the same
-the ego is not always present - i.e. when you fall into a frozen lake
-the ego is the "i-ness", the "mine-ness", "me-ness"
More ego content please 🤗
I always understood the ego to be the character we play here on earth... my name is (insert name here) I am (insert definition) and that this character is basically a result of language and that there really is no self....
I think many people misinterpret and misuse the concept of self-awareness. Especially here in the comments. If you think you're self-aware in comparison to others then that's your own ego talking. Being self-aware is not a valuable trait that you want to posses to have more than others.
Dr. K, have you actually ever seen a person with NPD get better with mindfulness (or some other type of meditation) and become a basically normal person, with emotions and everything? Because most psychiatrist seem to agree that it's incurable
I've heard him talk about helping those who are at least highly narcissistic (not sure about full PD) with mindfulness, but the trick is, they are the ones who came to work with him. So they must have had some insight or sense of dissatisfaction to want to work with him in the first place and to do the work??
@@jennw6809ah, so it may be a case of survivorship bias.
Can you do a video on trichotillomania?
You can think about things without ego until bodily wants remind you that your thoughts are directly related to your body. :)
You can test this yourself. Ego and Thought are indeed separate. When you hear the words in your favorite song, is that your ego speaking the words to you, through one of your Indriya? Or is the ego central as suggested and merely one section of the brain?
@Dr. K Would you say the best strategy for an optimal life then is to stay a witness as much as possible and let ego, emotion, and thought just "happen" to you? Basically be in a meditative state as much as possible? I'm still working out how to let the ego, doing, and effort just happen rather than feel like im exerting myself
For LLM enthusiasts:
"I" (Ego) is pre-trained neural network that takes inputs and forms outputs. (It already has biases in place and does recursively train on feedback)
"It" (Consciousness) is the process of taking inputs and forming outputs
Except that IRL, in humans, "It" runs on a poll cycle
And in LLM's "It" exists only until all tokens were generated, and perishes right after.
Not sure, what makes the witness different from other witnesses, and can you pin point where can you move "the witness" to other neural networks,
Cloning the neural network probably doesn't make the witness suddenly able to perceive through 2 neural networks,... but idk
Can the witness be brought back from a state of none-existence to another time another place.
What happens to people in deep anesthesia then, during and after it
If so is it really the process or is it because it uses the same "existence" the same "witness" to momentarily be the process.
I think consciousness is more complicated than that, the center of the so called subjectivity
@@theeyeofomnipotent Probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Overall humans are complicated biomechs using both cognitive and emotional processes to regulate their behavior in different ways, while an LLM is just an absurd number of pre-set weights generating continuation of a phrase very very fast, and it's questionable if they're even being "aware" if all they do is just smart prediction and autocompletion.
My analogy is probably factually incorrect but it feels the same, cuz "ego" ("my" opinion about "myself") only exists as long as i can perceive and process. And perception is done by our senses, and processing is done by different brain areas and hormonal centers and stuff.
I probably use the word "consciousness" in a different meaning here - "Conscious" as in "Awake and Aware", not something "out of the body".
@@BoopyTheFox I see yeah, though we're almost like eldritch beings playing a videogame character lol,
Ye the english language needs more words, "the witness" i guess fits it, the word has a more mystique vibe to it complimentary to the weirdness of consciousness,
Ey also LLM could be "witnessing" but not self-aware, a witness doesn't have to be selfaware to witness afterall, just a bit better to exist being self-aware (bias from a self-aware being here)
@@theeyeofomnipotent Each time i watch DrK's content and stumble upon some really fitting word in Sanskrit, i'm incentivised to learn it 😅.
Sometimes i create my own words for personal use.
For example, "innerment" (like "inner world" but phonetically similar yet semantically opposite to "environment") for me means this dynamic inner state - actual "state" (physical, cognitive, and emotional), and behavioural patterns (habits, practices, preferences, aspirations. "Faith", for example). Why do i feel the need to make them sound similar? Because environment affects innerment and innerment affects environment, and it's really easy to visualise and refer to, internally.
Another example is "Preject" to "Project", except used not in the sense you can google, but in the sense of "something i do that i lost the plot of, yet am aware it does bring value and is needed to complete some larger thing". For example, getting better in some skill that requires completion of a large roadmap is a "project" on itself but is also my "preject" to complete an actual practical project where this skill is needed. But it's not "sub-project" even if it works the same way. If we go into etymology, "pro ject" is "thrown forth", and "pre ject", although not used, would be like "thrown back".
It's useful for me in 2 ways: 1. when i think of some thing, decide that it's a project now cuz it's too big to tackle, and am not sure where to research, so i ask "ok what are prejects" and work backwards. 2. When i lost the plot of something and am not particularly motivated to keep going, so i think forward and quickly discover "oh, it's a preject to X, and i want X, gotcha!", and keep going.
Idk how i got here but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As soon as we admit that ego is result of self-awareness it's essential to recognize how we are wrong determining ego as solely negative inner mental subject when generalizing understanding egoism as only evil.
From perspective of Yin and yang theory we have ego that can be positive as well as negative.
I mean if I want the best for me only from me.... yes it's egoism in a sort of way but there's nothing disputable about healthy lifestyle preferring body-mind-soul and relationships to be as good as possible. And when I want all this for my family it isn't negative egoism either.
The bad egoism begins when for achieving and acquiring all life benefits I place my needs and my self-importance over everybody and everything else overvaluating myself as superior and legit to get everything at any cost of damage, misuse, abuse or suffering (that can be internal as well as external impact - some people knowingly harm themself for getting some extraordinary value).
Nevertheless the fact remains that due to lack of social education based on human solidarity we have become society where being egomaniac enforcing own goodwill like psycho is tolerated as legit part of successful lifestyle....
Dr. K you are great check out Transference Based Psychotherapy and Mentalization Based Therapy. People with BPD think DBT (which is great) is the only supported treatment. Linehan trained under Otto Kernberg. Granted I don’t think she liked him much. Neuroscience is backing a lot of contemporary psychoanalytical assumptions of the mind.