Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone. And welcome to the spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about understanding ego. Very interesting. Some of it you probably have heard before, and maybe I'll be able to surprise you with some new information. So ego. Interesting. It's kind of a loaded word nowadays, right? Um, people say, Oh, that's their ego and, uh, their egotistic and their, you hear words like narcissistic, egotistical, um, And ego seems to be a bad thing. It's a bad thing to have ego. You know, it's like some kind of a negative personality trait or something. Today, I'm going to talk about ego from a spiritual perspective. I'm going to try to explain what ego is and see how it goes from there and how, what can we do about it? Do we need to do anything about it and what can we do about it? So what is ego? And I'm going to say it's a created self. So how does a self get created? Interesting question, right? How does a self get created? I'm going to say for the sake of this episode that a self gets created when the word I gets created. I am talking into the camera. I am going to cook dinner. I am feeling pain in my hip. I am 53 years old. I am a female. I am a nurse. I am whatever. So the word I is how I create myself, like in language or in action, like how I'm creating myself. The identity gets created by saying I inside. So I wrote here, ego is the self created for the body and human life. So let's say like, even though if I know I'm a soul, I know I'm a soul and this is my body, but I wouldn't go around and say, if somebody says, what's your name? And I say, Oh, uh, I don't have a name. I'm a soul. I mean, that's kind of silly, right? I wouldn't say that. I would say my name is Anne. But as a soul, I don't have a name, right? So ego means that there is a self that is created through language or through behavior or whatever, based on the activity of life as a human being. Now, ego is not good or bad. It's not really a problem. Until we get into the stage where I lose sense of who I really am and I start believing that I am the body, the gender, the nationality, like all the aspects that come along with having a body and being a human being, I start believing I'm that. And I start defending that and, being afraid and feeling intimidated and feeling arrogant and all these experiences that we have. And we call that ego because it's created falsely based on the human experiences that we're having. Is it possible to have a human experience and not have ego? Yes, it is. Because if I have the awareness, remember I said you create the self with the word I. So the first step in meditation in Raja Yoga meditation is to assign the I to the soul. So I'm no longer saying I am an American or I am even, female or I am speaking English right now or like all these I's that we have. Sometimes I call them the little I's all the little I's that we use all day long. The first step in meditation is that we're saying I am really none of those. Even though I'm using them every day, Like when I said, who owns this computer? Well, I do. Who's I, I is Anne O'Hare, but am I really Anne O'Hare or am I a soul? So when we start meditation, the first thing we do is start is assign the I to soul. And what does that do to the rest of the I's? So what is the ego? Then the ego is those other I's. They're not necessarily bad. If you know that you're a soul and you're really just using it just for the sake of, you're using the word I just for the sake of normalcy here as a human being, but internally, you know, I am not this body. I'm not female. I'm not, you know, the age of the body. I'm not the family that the body has. I I'm really in essence, none of that. So ego means all the I's eyes that I'm using around for different things. Now, is it possible, like I said, to use those I's without a problem? Yeah, if I have, if I have the correct awareness, that spiritual awareness in the background, I can say, yes, I graduated from this college and whatever, but internally I know. That I'm speaking and saying I, but who I am is actually the soul. I'm playing the part of Anne. Anne went to college and anyway, I'm getting into this. I don't want people to get scared when I say this. I just want you to understand what ego actually is. Ego is necessary actually, because you have to be able to function in the world. So you have to create some kind of connection with all the aspects of your human life. So it's necessary, but where do we come into a problem? And what does it mean when people say, Oh, that's their ego or whatever? What's happening is in the moment they're identifying with the little I's and they're defending it against others or against some other idea or something. And then the person says, Oh, that's just ego. When they say that's their ego, what they mean is they know that it's not really who they really are. They're putting forth this false self, or they're defending this self. I would assert that the other way you would know that it's ego is because ego can easily fall into what we call the vices. Which is like greed or lust or attachment, anger, things like that. Ego can easily flip into those things because it is locked in. It's a limited I. It's a limited self awareness. So it's locked into whatever it's associated with. So for instance, if I say that walking into somebody's house with your shoes on is rude. If some, somewhere along the line, I, little I, created that idea, okay, that that's something that happens here in the world that I have to follow. Now let's say somebody walks into the house with their shoes on. Okay, so I can say, would you mind please taking the shoes off? And what if they say, well, I don't understand why I have to take my shoes off and whatever, whatever. So the little I, the ego might get irritated and angry or confused or something like that when that happens, because that little I is convinced that that's the right thing and what they're doing is wrong. So in the last episode, we talked about the middle level of consciousness where you're kind of in a transactional situation. Everything is always based on, I'm giving this and they're doing this and you have right and wrong and you have good and evil and you have, so the ego lives in that world. This is right and this is wrong. And now I have to react to this and I have to get upset that this is not right and I have to... so the little I's The ego is the little I's that are kind of reacting all day long I'm saying this to you, but I want to also say Please understand that I understand That before we start a spiritual journey those little I's is me. I have no other understanding of who I am other than that And that's where the, when we say that ego is negative, we mean that generally now it's causing suffering. This limited consciousness is causing suffering. Things aren't working out, so I'm reacting. People aren't being nice to me, so I'm reacting. I'm not getting what I want, I don't feel satisfied, whatever. All of that is ego. Because the real I, the spiritual I, who's not connected with the world in that way is connected with the heart and connected with the natural qualities of the soul. It doesn't have the same worldview. It's more of an unlimited worldview. There's peace. There's understanding. You can go into solutions. You're not locked in like the little egos. So how can we use this information that I just shared? One thing you can do is whenever you feel upset or angry or disturbed in some way, take a minute in that moment and just shift your awareness and say, okay, something in here is disturbed and tell yourself, okay, who am I in that moment? Who am I? And you'll see in my experience, if you're able to do that, you'll see you automatically shift the awareness out of the reaction. Why would we want to do this? Well, obviously we don't want to feel upset. Obviously we don't want to be angry. Obviously we don't want to be. sad or have sorrow in our life. So ego is a wonderful thing to be able to distinguish. How do we know it's there? You're having a disturbance inside because the soul is not disturbed. If you just stay with me one minute and just bring yourself into like a silent state, bring yourself into a still awareness, your being in your being, just your presence, silent, still, peaceful, powerful, that presence. is untouched by anything else. It's actually untouched by the mind also. The ego is living in the mind. Okay. It's living in all the memories and information that we took in over time to live here. So again, don't make it negative. Look at it like something that's limited. That's that is causing sorrow because I'm identifying with it. I don't have to identify with it. I can identify with myself as the soul in that moment and that's where the power is. So that's what I wanted to share today. Understanding ego is understanding how it's created, why it's created, which we just talked about. Also, what do I do with it? How do I recognize it? Like I said, something you feel disturbed, you feel upset, you feel angry, bring your awareness in, become still and bring the I out of the little I ego back to the real I, I the soul, I the self, I the presence, I the spiritual being, I, the living consciousness. If we practice meditation every day and we study this transition will eventually become possible. In the moment, I'll be able to transition myself out of an upset state into a more open awareness. We call that limited state ego. It's a small, limited I, but I have, like I said, the truth is an unlimited I the real self is unlimited. eternal, beautiful, powerful, benevolent, loving. And you might say, and I'll leave it at this, you might say, well, how is that practical? How is that going to help me practically? I'm going to say that we have been focusing on actions for so long that we don't pay enough attention to our feelings and what's going on inside. It's like we're sacrificing our well being for the sake of the action or for the sake of the result or for the sake of the success or for the sake of the win or something we've sacrificed our well being and our peace. So I'm going to say that peace is valuable and that if I'm upset, no amount of success or no amount of physical attainments is going to make me not upset. There's got to be a shift inside and this is where spirituality comes in. It's not about the outside. It's about understanding my internal world and becoming the master of it So I will leave it there. I hope that was interesting and you can play around with that yourself and see if you can break yourself out of that limited I in the moment and free yourself. So I'll leave it there. Remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And until next time, take care. Um, uh,
