The Ego's Illusion: Unraveling the True Essence of Self in Spiritual Development

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Hello and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:51

Hello, hello, hello.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, whatever

As I record this, it is early on a spring morning in Maine, which means we got fresh snow last night. Not too much of it. But it is very pretty.

this psychological, psychospiritual idea of the ego came from psychoanalysis it came from Freud, right, he had the ID of the ego and the super ego and this, you know, all of these things and how we deal with the world and how we deal with ourselves and our drives and all this stuff. But then of these three components.

But when, when I'm talking about ego from a spiritual perspective, what I'm talking about is basically, our ideas about who we are. It's a little bit more than identity, but identity is a big part of it. When you say AI, what are the stories you tell yourself? About I about that person, I or me? What are the stories? What are the definitions? What are the names? So, most people who know me call me John. And that's a label that my parents gave me when I was born. My daughters call me dad, and my dad or am I John? Well, those are both labels. I might call myself by those names, or answer to those names, and I don't have a nickname, but if I had a nickname that might be another thing I answer to, those are just labels. But in English, very often we say, I am John. Not I am called or My name is. So there's this identification with this attachment to our labels. And you might have that if you have a job or you're called by a title. Right? Maybe you're called doctor or attorney, so and so. Right? Those are labels, they're not who you are. At your spiritual core. What are some other things we identify with? And I'm gonna break down identification in a minute. But what are some things we say when we say I would we think about? Do you think about your body most people do. Most people are very heavily invested in the body is who I am. Right? When somebody dies, when a mind body dies, we say we buried your cousin, down in the old cemetery. We don't say we buried your cousin's body, buried the body that was in use by your cousin. At least we you know, in English, I don't know what other how other languages structure this but say I buried your cousin or your aunt is buried here or that sort of thing.

Not the remains not the body where we really, really identify the body with the person. How do we recognize other people by the shape of their face, the shape and size of their body, their gait, their mannerisms, their voice? I remember I had a friend with just not that unusual, but just a very distinct walk. Right, just the way he held himself. And I was in downtown Boston. And look down this long, long street over actually into South Boston. And which is another city actually, and I don't know about a quarter of a mile away. I see this person walking. And I'm like, I think that's Jimmy. And I stopped and I waved and he waved so couldn't see his face. walk down the street. And sure enough, it was Jimmy. So you know, we recognize people by how they walk, how they stand their physical appearance, their name, somebody says, Oh, you know, Bill, that guy work with having a sip of coffee. But the body isn't who we are. How do I know this? How do I know the body is not who I am? Well, for one thing, this body changes constantly. Right? new cells are added old cells die off. The chemical changes in my body. The changes in my brainwave pattern happen all day long, we have cycles. This is completely changing. Is it? Has it been cohesive so far? Has this body stuck together for my lifetime? Sure. But it's constantly changing, but the sense of I when I say I as an I exist, I am aware I perceive my perceptions change the thing in the things in awareness. Change. awareness does not change. The capacity of awareness does not change. It's the same thing no matter what appear. It's like a stage. It's like an empty stage. Awareness. And awareness is what we are at our core. pure, unadulterated awareness. That doesn't mean we don't have a body we have a body. It's important to take care of your body. It's important to take care of your mind you're using it for now. You got stuff to do. Awareness doesn't do anything. but that's who you are. So by extension, you don't do anything either. Sure feels like we do stuff, though, doesn't it? And that's part of the illusion of the ego. So the ego is this collection of ideas about who we are. That is an illusion. And it is a survival mechanism. It keeps this body and mind alive by making it think this body and mind is important. And the thoughts that this body and mind are having, are actually it's sometimes it feels like we are our thoughts, right? You have an, if you have an inner dialogue, it might sound like it's you talking to yourself in there. It could just be noise. Could be your holy guardian angel. It could be you know, who knows? Right? All kinds of stuff. But it feels like it's us, there's a part of our brain called the default mode network. That gets really busy in times of things like boredom, rumination, daydreaming. And part of it. Part of its function is to constantly, constantly try to determine who we are. It's scanning, things like the environment and social cues and all kinds of stuff for us to determine who we are. So those thoughts that come up those thoughts that arise in awareness, very often feel like they are us, or that least they're coming from us. What if? What if they didn't? What if they just arose?

What if thoughts just arose? You know?

And what if we are just the awareness, the space in which the thoughts arise, the perceptions arise? Even our perceptions of who we are? What if that were the truth of the matter? So I said before the egos function is to keep this body and mind alive, we have all kinds of survival mechanisms, tons of them. We're not born with too many. This body was not born with too many survival mechanisms, it could cry if it was hungry, and it had a fear of falling, and a couple of instincts, but not much more than that. But very early on, in the life of a child. Least a human child. Almost immediately, we start calling children by name. Right? We start saying, Oh, look at little, Bobby isn't little Bobby cute. And if something happens, you know, baby happens to smile or respond to their name. The adults in the room get really excited. Like he knows his name. He knows these little Bobby, right? Or they talked a little Bobby Hailo Bobby Do you want to eat? Right? And we're programmed to want to eat so that we grow and survive. So we very quickly associate the label with who we are with by being rewarded. Right? It's conditioning. Pavlov stuff. So then, you know, our parents, at least in my generation, they put you in clothes that were color coded for the genitals you were born with. If you were a boy, you're a blue. If you're a girl, you wore pink. I realized things are changing. But that was that was the way and then you're given all kinds of rules. You're given rules by your parents. Some of them communicated openly and some of them not. How many of you have a parent who could just give you a look? And you knew that you should stop whatever it was you were doing or a tone of voice, where they punished you. Or they rewarded you. And so you started to learn who you were and you push boundaries. Sometimes you got in trouble for pushing certain boundaries you learned, you are conditioned to be who you are on an ego level. So all of these experiences happened in awareness. But they feel like they are us, we have these stories about our past. I went to school here, I grew up here

that's all ego stuff, all of those stories. There's nothing wrong with them. Other than we get very, very attached to our stories, we get attached to our labels, we get attached to our body, our relationships, our jobs, all of these things that are not who are what we are.

We get attached. That's ego. an ego makes us also think that being attached to it is good. It feels like an existential threat, if anything, challenges our ego. I'll never forget I had a particular relative who's not not in my life anymore. But she was the kind of person who would always start trouble. At family gatherings. She was always angry with someone, she was always not speaking to some member of the family, she would say nasty things to get emotional responses, and it would it would start fights. And I tried. I tried for a really long time not to get riled up by her I knew what she was doing. You know, we've probably all had toxic people like that in our lives. And what she would do is she would hunt for buttons, she would hunt for things that got you upset things that could trigger you. And sit you know, to say them to you because she wanted she felt this, this perverse sense of, of satisfaction, I guess, pleasure. It was absolute pleasure from stirring the pot or saying horrible things to people and getting away with it. And you couldn't call her on anything because she would fly into a rage. In fact, she got she got violent, which is why she's not not a part of my life anymore. I have no tolerance for that this body mind is I'm trying to keep it safe. And so, um, anyway, she felt you know, I would just stay above it all and okay, whatever, she's doing her thing and she wants to get somebody upset. And she looked at me one day and said, You're not a man of your word. And that hit me like an ice pick to the chest. Because I had egoic ly identified myself as somebody who was profound, a very truthful it was part of my identity part of my ideal identity. Even though you know, we talked to the kids about Santa Claus, and, you know, there were certainly untruths, but that wasn't part of my self concept, my idealized self concept. My ego was that I'm, I tell the truth, I'm an honest person, I make an honest effort. She said that and it it I felt my blood boil underneath. You know, when they say getting hot under the collar, that's exactly what it felt like. And she made some reason we had been trying to we had talked about going on vacation with the these members of my family at one point, and it never, it never panned out. You know, I had I had thrown three or four dates across and it never ever, ever, ever came to pass. And that absolutely no fault of mine, or anybody's really whatsoever. We just could not find a mutual time for that to occur. And that's, and that's what she, well, you said, we were going on vacation together and we haven't gone on vacation together and blah, blah, blah, you know, and I was like, hold on a minute, you know, and then I had to, like, get into the thing where I start to fight about facts, and you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, I gave you guys four dates, and none of them worked for you. And then you had a date of didn't work for me and what what's the you know, what's all this stuff? What is all this stuff? This is cuckoo, this is crazy. But it was my ego that was acting up. So the ego wants to keep the body mind alive. It's a survival mechanism. It comes from the fact that human beings are we're individuals, but we're social creatures, we're wired for social socialization, we have to, to survive as a species. We had to team up, we didn't run faster than most animals or climb trees or have sharp teeth or claws. We had to hunt using cooperative hunting, we had to make tools, we had to shelter together for protection. So you know, at some point in the development of prefrontal cortex and whatever, ego became important, seeing oneself as a separate entity living inside a body, or being the body and responding to the names that our tribe mates were calling us. And having esteem, feeling good. Hey, I'm a member of the jab, jab tribe. And you know, the we're better than the guys on the other side of the river who are in a different tribe. They're awful. Look at those people, let's do warfare against them. It's the history of the world right there. They've got something we want. They're not as good as we are, we're gonna go kill all of them and take it. So the ego develops. And again, the problem is not necessarily that you have an ego and that you need to destroy it or kill it or dissolve it or make it go away. Although a little dissolution is not a bad thing. It's that you're attached to the ego at the level of identity. Is it useful for me to be able to respond to the name my parents gave me? Yes, it is, in certain circumstances. Is it useful for me to play the role of dad? Absolutely, and I love my children dearly.

But in the realm of spiritual development of spiritual truth, the ego is a little bit of a trap. It's not an enemy. It's a survival mechanism. It has good intentions. It's just very, very powerful for most of us, and it can take us out of spiritual truth. spiritual truth is the reality that you are pure consciousness. And that there is only one consciousness, there's one awareness. Awareness is one thing.

This is part of non dual thinking or non duality, non dual meaning not to.

At certain levels of spiritual awakening, one can have a persistent experience of non duality where everything feels like everything feels like it's the same thing. That's how you experience you're experiencing. Everything being part of the same experience. So if I'm having a conversation with somebody, awareness is both sides of that conversation. It's just like a little play that's acting out.

So

ne and, you know, interviewed: 1000

But what if you abided What if your attention, abided lived from spacious, still blissful, peaceful consciousness which is what you are? What if you lived from that place, all the time. And your body and mind just kept on doing what it was doing appropriately. That's a profound step into spiritual awakening, it's a profound place to land. It's a profound you know, way, I guess it's a profound shift in consciousness for most people. But that's their that's available to you right now

can live from that awakened state, you can, you can reach back right now and touch on that. Just with your intention. You don't need to sit for 20 years and watch your breath. Although I highly recommend meditation. Meditation turns off the default mode network. In other words, it the default mode network being the part of the brain that ruminates on stuff and thinks it's you. Meditation deactivates this to some extent. So it loosens the grasp of ego. It loosens the identification with ego.

Now, one of one of the meditators with me last night, in this workshop that I taught, you know, we did this, you know, we did these series of recitations in the beginning. So just, you know, repeat after me. And part of that go through this series of recitations that were meant to loosen up the grip of ego. And then ask ourselves the question, What am I and rest in that space of whatever comes up? And one of the meditators asked, well, when you had us ask the question, What am I? The word one came up, is that okay? Is that okay? No, that's not No, I'm just kidding. That everything is okay. Everything that comes up, particularly in meditation is okay.

And, you know, that is an accurate, you know, if you're going to put a label on it, if you're going to put a label on, and we have to, to talk about it a little bit. It's hard. A lot of people who were there who were like, I can't really describe the experience too well, and I get it. You know, and they tried, and they like, my edges disappeared. And I said, Ah, yes, boundary lessness are like, Oh, that's it. That's it. So it took a group effort took more than one brain to come up with a good description of what some experienced

and people can just float in this boundary LIS, peaceful, blissful state, and the body doesn't die. The ego might rebel a little bit in the beginning. Because it thinks if you let go of your grasp on the ego, your attachment to the ego, it thinks your body's going to die, or it'll let you know it'll feel like that. Or I won't be me anymore. The me who I think I am will disappear. That's another form of death. So my comments about that are kind of twofold. One is that who said death is a terrible thing. You have a body, you should take care of it and keep it alive. You've got stuff to do. But death isn't all that scary once you realize that you are pure awareness, and that you were never born and will never actually die

the second thing is the, the the eye that you think you are, when you say I am, changes all the time, we've talked about this already in this podcast, this, you that you think you are, is not who you are, but it also changes. You ever get hangry your body chemistry changes, your personality, your perception, your how tired you are, whether you've just exercised physical processes that are changing, you have natural body rhythms, you have a diurnal rhythm. Right, you have all these bio rhythms, you might have a monthly cycle. Right? So does that profoundly change who you are? Well, it can, it can change your experience profoundly from moment to moment. So you're constantly dying and being reborn as something someone new from a from a strict ego perception. So when I stopped doing this episode, I start recording this episode of the podcast if one of my children called me, I would shift into dad mode. And the the me that was recording this podcast would change significantly would go away, would die off to be reborn another day? It's not that serious. It's really not, it's really not that serious. But the ego will have you think the ego will lie to you, you will die if I go away. has no qualms about lying to you to get its way. So what do we do about this? How do we begin to unravel the ego or not the ego itself but attachment to the ego. First of all, let the ego take care of itself. You don't have to add anything, you'd have to take anything away you don't have to fight with it.

But understand that you are pure awareness and everything that comes up including your experience of having a body is coming up in awareness. And that's what you are, you are aware of your body your body is the object in the I have a body I see my body, I is the subject. Body is the object in that sentence. You are not objective, meaning you're not an object. Nothing that arises as an object in your awareness can be you, you are the subject you're the witness, you're the observer. But even those are objects you're the capacity you're the stage you are the movie screen on which life is projected you can have a very direct experience of that in a very with a very short meditation

so what we can do is to start recognizing the egos effect on our perceptions on our life. How does identifying with my name? How does identifying with my self image as an honest person or this kind of person or whatever? How does identifying with the labels or the body? How does that affect my perception of spiritual reality

and being your beingness being what you are at your core doesn't require any effort at all. None whatsoever. It's already who you are. It's sort of like looking at a bird and saying, how much effort are you putting into being a bird? Well, that would be a silly question, right? But we put effort into being our ego, to thinking we are our ego we put effort in, or wear certain clothes that match who I am my style. I, you know, act like, Dad, when I'm in that role, I act like a podcaster. When I'm recording a podcast, the body mind is F is efforting. But the self is not. And there's an expression I really like I don't know where it came from, I learned it from Hale Dwoskin of the Sedona Method, fame, wrote the book, The Sedona Method, and teaches the Sedona Method. And I really like him as a teacher, I've I've been with him live a couple times, and online a whole lot and read his book and really, really liked the teaching of the Sedona Method. But one of the things he says is, and this might have come from his teacher, or somewhere else I don't know, is being not the doer. Be not the doer, meaning the body of mind is doing stuff. Don't identify with that. Don't identify with doing anything, you're not doing anything you're being

you are awareness, and there's no effort in awareness. Look at something wherever you are right now, whether you're listening to this and in your car or somewhere else, you can look at something that's in front of you, even if you're driving, it's totally fine. I'm not going to do any meditation here. Just look at look at something, see something in front of you. Or hear something or touch something doesn't matter perceive something.

How much effort did you put into seeing or hearing or whatever you might have looked you might have directed your awareness at something you might have directed your attention, your awareness, you directed your attention at something. But beyond that you didn't do anything?

How much effort do you have to put into experience the fact that you have a body? No, I know you might put effort it might feel like you're putting your body's putting effort in to maintain your body have to eat things and exercise and drink things and go to the bathroom and what you know, wash your face and all kind of you know, whatever it is that you do that, that feels like effort to take care of the body. And if you didn't, eventually the body would disappear. But I'm talking about right now in this moment. Whatever perception you have, that you have a body whether you you know can feel it or see it or hear some part of it. Some aspect of your body. How much effort is required to perceive the body? None. None. Because awareness doesn't put in effort. awareness does not effort. It is effort less. With that, I'm going to leave you a little bit with a little bit of, you know something to do just start noticing. When ego comes heavily into play, when you're over identified with the body, and ask yourself what would happen what would I be if I'm not this body? What would I be if I'm not this name that my parents labeled me with or whoever labeled me with? What would I be? If not the thoughts running through my head that change every 10th of a second? What would I be if not these perceptions that arise in my experience?

start looking at that. And your attachment to Eagle will start to unravel a little bit and will take you deeper and deeper. Anyway, I hope you're well I love you all. We'll talk really soon

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