Hey everybody welcome back.

Now we're going to discuss what's probably one of the most confusing concepts in the whole of psychology

that's why psychology doesn't talk about how much this is more like a Zen belief.

There's something out there called ego and it's not ego is.

You know we classically think of it in a western sense or you've got a huge ego which means you're full

of yourself.

No the ego just means you are yourself.

Your ego is a false sense of self created by unconscious identification with the mind.

What does that mean.

Your mind creates and I think of it this way you have a squirrel out in your backyard.

What your squirrel's name.

Your scroll doesn't have one even other squirrels don't have a name for that squirrel.

Why.

There is no I in the squirrels mind.

Only humans have what's called meta cognition.

Now a meta study is when you're looking at multiple studies to figure something out.

Met a cognition is when you have multiple thoughts but it's more than that.

It's when you think about your thinking a squirrel doesn't think about their thinking.

They see in that the ether not they don't think about the not they don't critique it.

They don't have reviews about it.

You know they don't have their friends you know.

Where do you find the best knots and are these tasty nuts or are these nuts going to give me gas.

They don't think about it see it eat it OK there's water Drink it.

Tree climate now this grow come in play or run simple.

They don't think about themselves they don't think.

Does my tail look like it's getting fat.

They don't think about their thinking this is a major defect of the human brain that we have this eye

and we actually think it's art ourselves.

It actually becomes this other character in our mind which has incorporated itself into our mind and

creates a false sense of AI and this is what will and we'll talk about this in the next section.

What ultimately becomes your negative inner critic.

Because once this AI this ego is created it has this running dialogue it never shuts up as if its life

depends on it.

I'm going to prove this to you because you normally don't hear your own chatter your mind.

People say oh no I don't talk to myself my head unless I'm having a conversation or I'm thinking about

something.

Oh no no no no.

You never ever ever stop talking to yourself.

You cannot shut up if anybody else talk this much.

You would choke them out.

You just don't hear it you kind of ignore this background noise but sit alone in a room by yourself

for three to five minutes and try not to think.

Try not to hear any voice in your head.

It takes a Zen master years to learn how to think of like one thing.

There was an old Zen task it says think only tree and you look at the tree and you only think tree and

you don't think about anything else then you have mastery but to be a true master they say OK now the

second step.

Remove the tree in your life.

Well then what.

Then you think nothing.

That's when you're Zen master.

When you can actually stop thinking Now you're thinking.

I know a guy used to sitting next to high school I don't think you ever thought the whole the whole

damn day.

Maybe but I doubt he was a Zen master.

He was thinking about all kinds of things that were completely worthless and he just looked like he

had nothing on his mind because nothing of any value was in his mind.

It's not the same thing.

Your brain called the chattering monkey or the wild horse because it just can't be tamed.

We'll just go blob of Love.

Love love love love love love love love love running commentary on everything you don't even know you

have this problem to till it's mentioned to you by someone like me brought to your awareness in by bringing

it to your awareness you can now see it you can now understand the problem and you can begin to control

it.

Shameless plug here I got a great course on Zen very inexpensive it's worth a thousand times what I'm

charging for it but grab it It's my gift to the universe to just give this away for free I want this

information out there I do not want people suffering I've been a therapist pretty much my whole life

my goal was not to make a fortune because I got broke doing therapy I made all my money doing internet

marketing never made any money doing therapy went broke I would've never retired because I want to help

people.

That's it.

You were the internet marketing was my goal with internet marketing make a boatload of money why so

I never have to worry about money again and I can spend the rest of my life helping people and I can

just give it away for free if I want Bill done nice so check out that course now the ego at the end

of the day its job is to ruin your life so you've got to understand this.

Get a handle on it figure out what it is and learn how to control it you'll be one of the few people

that does and this will make your life better than almost anything else so let's drive on learn a little

bit more so the ego exists to give us a sense of self this is why it's created so you know we say I

or me or we these are things that we kind of point to now we think there's one us we're gonna talk about

this a little bit later is we actually have multiple US I remember I was reading a little piece in between

when the comedy shows I forget the guy's name but you got he flashes it up there for about two seconds

and it's this little script and they're numbered and this guy is an absolute genius everything he says

is like brilliant I'll have to off to figure out who that is and I'd love to get I was thinking the

other day I want to get a collection of his works but he had one on just the other night and it said

something about who is this I that I call me

and if there's an eye who is the person observing the eye that creates a wee and if my eye is bifurcated

which means split in two.

Then who are we.

And we seem to be many.

The multiplicity that I was talking about.

And if we are the many then who is the true eye.

And that's the question because you have an eye you have this ego and then you can sit outside.

Like I said sit in a room for three to five minutes and listen Observe this ego blather on.

Well now there's two people.

There's the ego which is the fake you.

And then there's the Observer which is the real you watching this fake ego for the very first time in

your entire life.

This is amazing for the very first time watching the fake you that was pretending to be you that had

purloined your entire personality.

You thought this was you.

And now you realize it's not a fiction of the mind it's an ego and it's what's causing so much damage

in your life and you the true you get blamed for it.

Matter of fact.

Remember I told you about the Zen Master think only tree then remove the tree.

What happens to the Zen master when he removes the tree or even just gets down to just tree serenity.

All this negative chatter and self talk and confusion and blather goes away.

And when everything is removed which is the ego when the ego is removed and all that chatter and blathering

and negativity and just rubbish is removed what's left you and serenity perfect.

People keep trying to be happy in doing this and achieving happiness.

And you know it creates happiness.

Nothing.

Happiness is your natural state.

When you remove all the crap I used to do a Paul's poopy pile.

Paul's poopy pile.

The three Ps Paul's poopy pile.

What is it.

I would draw a pile of crap a pile of manure on the board and I would draw a diamond underneath the

manure and I said this is your life.

This is you.

Here you are thinking all this crap has happened to you.

And at some point you start to think you're a pilot you are the pilot crap when actually you're the

diamond and there's nothing wrong with you.

You were born beautiful perfect and innocent.

There's nothing to fix.

Here's what we're gonna do.

We've got a boatload of crap to get rid of.

You don't need to be fixed because you aren't broken you are damaged and you're not defective.

You are just filled with crap and we talked about the GIB Gigio garbage in garbage out crap coming in

coming in coming in coming in pretty soon I said you be what do you remember.

You be full of it.

That's the crap pile on top of you gotta get rid of it.

What causes that crap pile.

We've talked about it and accumulation of all these things that we talked about culminate in this thing

called the ego.

So why does the brain create an ego.

Well it helps us feel stable in the world at the same time like we talked about it causes most of our

pain.

It gives us a sense of I a sense of this seeing like we live in our head and we see out through our

eyes.

That isn't actually true.

I mean it's a hard concept to wrap your mind around so I'll keep talking about it as I go through it'll

kind of weave through the layers.

Your brain will almost take quite a period time to digest it.

That's why it's good to read some zen books because they'll describe it than to describe it again and

describe it again.

Then describe it again then describe it again.

It's like trying to explain color to a blind man but eventually you know you'll get it you'll get it

you'll get it but it takes layers it takes repetition now the ego fiction to support the idea of a separate

eye the ego creates a character that is forced to follow certain rules and match a certain self-image

that's what the ego is it creates a character that character becomes a you that isn't really you but

is damaging your life and that becomes your self image so your self image is always false

so the false self image one creates pain so it can live.

The ego needs pain if there's not pain if there's not a problem that it has to solve.

If there's not something for it to think about and it loves to think about the negative.

I used to watch CNN.

Do you know what CNN stands for stands for constantly negative news.

Now we laugh at that but that's accurate.

That's what your false self image is your false ego is it constantly cranks out negativity negativity

negativity like CNN constantly negative news.

They talk for half an hour about nothing but negativity and then it cycles over and over and over again.

This is exactly what your ego does it thinks of negative things.

It's highly repetitive it almost always thinks about the exact same thing over and over and over again

and it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops.

If I made you sit through the same movie every single day all day for the rest of your life that would

be pretty much what the ego does.

You don't get bored because your own pain is fascinating to this crazy ego it loves to listen to it.

Nobody else would want to listen to it but I said strangely you will because you're not really really

listening.

It's going subliminally in the back of your head and again alone in a room by yourself in all the noise

all distractions gone.

Not only we hear it you will not be able to avoid it drives people nuts at first when they start hearing

it over and over again because now it's like you know I said Don't think about a pink elephant and all

a sudden you know that's all you're thinking about.

So next the false image makes us feel bad about ourselves.

It constantly distracts ourself.

The ego doesn't want you to focus on it because if you focus on it you realize how stupid it is how

negative it is you'll want to destroy it.

You'll eventually get rid of it.

So what it does is it distracts you with different things.

All kinds of distractions.

It puts you in pain and then distraction is the way that you get away from the pain.

You focus on something that isn't the pain.

So we're constantly using distractions.

Look at how people tried to quote unquote pleasure themselves.

They don't pleasure themselves by thinking happy thoughts in the room by themselves.

Oh no no no no.

We need something outside ourselves to make ourselves feel better about ourselves to distract us.

We distract ourselves with sex and alcohol and gambling in the a number one with a bullet.

TV shows yakking with other people talking on the phone talking on Facebook talking on Instagram all

these ways that we communicate about absolutely nothing.

Most of what we talk about is absolutely worthless.

If I said to you Hey do you know that the average person spends an hour and a half to three hours every

single day on the Internet on the web on their phone that's about a thousand hours a year.

I say so every every two years actually is a little over of seven days and weeks are gonna be about

twelve hundred hours so about every two years.

That's about yeah about a year and a half of work.

That's huge.

And I say in all that talking all that blathering all that whatever the hell you were doing on the Internet

did you learn one thing that made your life better.

And they probably can't think of one over 2000 hours you can't think of one in twenty five hundred hours

you can't think of one.

Did you make even one dollar.

Maybe you got some monetary value.

No it's a distraction.

TV shows are all about distractions.

Matter of fact they're very fast paced.

If you watch they won't go more than five or six seconds without changing the scene or changing a character

or changing an angle or a shot they have to keep moving moving moving.

Why.

Because if it's not distracting enough your pleasure will go down.

The more distracting it is the more pleasurable it is because the only goal was to have it be distracting.

TV has two goals to mangle psychologically well three.

One is to sell you something that's why it exists.

But the second two things that I was thinking of was major distraction and for you to have things in

your life that you're never gonna have you're never gonna have the hottest girl or man you're never

going to be incredibly wealthy.

You're never going to go to all these exotic locations you're never going to be a superhero or a super

agent or a super anything for the average person.

Their life is boring it's work in a factory twist bolt on nuts.

Look through the yellow pages it's insane how boring jobs are bookkeeping automotive.

You know it's the same thing over and over and over again.

I became a therapist because at least there'd be a little bit of variety and I switched jobs multiple

times because even that got boring at times you know I'd do therapy that I teach that I'd want to do

stuff on the stage and I want to do stuff on the Internet.

You know they don't want to go out and do flooring or some do something completely different.

You know I work security I didn't care.

I had multiple multiple jobs that I would get bored easily why.

Because most jobs are very short period time.

They're boring and repetitive.

So TV takes us away from all this.

They called the opium of the masses so distraction is huge.

It's one of the leading pains that you get from the ego because you're spending a life in distraction

you're not actually living it.

When you're in a movie you're not living your life you're living somebody else's.

When you watch TV you're not live in your life.

You live in somebody else's when you guys are talking back and forth about absolutely nothing.

You're having somebody else's experience not yours.

It's not in the now it doesn't exist.

These are all fictions most your life ends up being a lot of fiction and the self image is going to

cause guilt anxiety remorse.

Remember remember number one look back up there.

It creates pain so it can live.

So where does the guilt the anxiety in their mores come from your ego.

More on that later

now.

The ego is actually the problem posing as the solution.

I actually came up with this phrase for addiction.

The addiction was the problem posing as the solution.

Oh you don't feel good.

Have a drink snort a line take a shot.

Pop a pill.

You'll feel better.

Cops pull you over for DUI.

Screw let's talk crap about cops and drink her ass off to we don't care anymore.

Well isn't that how we got the DUI in the first place.

Yeah but don't say about that.

Let's get back to the solution.

No we're getting back to the problem getting back to the drinker drug.

So addiction is the problem posing as a solution.

Oh you got a pain in your shoulder.

I've got a pill for that.

You can drink for that.

Wife's a pain in the butt.

Just drink till you don't care anymore.

You know you're a pain in the butt drink until you don't care about you anymore.

You know can't sleep at night drink yourself to sleep take a pill for that snort a line you know it's

the problem posing as solution so the ego is the same thing.

It makes you feel pain and then says Don't worry I'll distract you and make you feel better.

I'll come up with his great solution like drinking drugging sex gambling all these distractions to make

the pain go away.

So it creates the pain and then says I'll help you solve it.

And most the way most the time it's not even solving it sometimes is just the problem posing as the

problem.

It puts you in the problem than what you do.

You sit in it.

You sit in it like an acid and it just burns you.

It's nasty.

The ego is nasty.

It is not your friend.

That's why I say take the Zen course because why you really need an in-depth education on how to get

away from this thing so we actually defend our ego.

Remember we think we are the ego so we defend it like when somebody says something negative about us

we feel like we have to say something back.

Why.

To defend the ego.

Otherwise you yourself in a quiet mind the you the observer the real you wouldn't care what somebody

said about you.

So he says to me Hey Paul you're a jerk.

I don't even understand what that means because my ego would say hey you can't say that about me and

we get all upset but the real me says well I know I'm not a jerk.

So obviously you're confused.

Okay.

We got a confused person in front of us.

I can't get upset about that I could feel pity in my heart for him but that's about it.

I can't get upset.

Why.

Because not true.

I don't feel the need to defend myself because I know it's not true.

When you're not sure and your ego is never sure.

It's always insecure.

It's like Hey it's gonna to defend itself.

You can't say that to me and I'm going to get you back and I need revenge and blah blah blah.

That's the ego.

You yourself don't care or if somebody came to me said Hey Paul you're a jerk.

And I thought about it for a minute.

I go you know what.

I haven't checked on that for a while.

Thank you.

I'm going to watch for a day and I'm going to see when I'm a good guy and when I'm kind of a jerk and

I'm I'll look at that two ways.

Sometimes I'm a jerk to other people and sometimes I'm a jerk to myself.

I better live with that for a day and see if you're right or not because you might be seeing something

you know.

So you're either wrong and I don't feel bad about that or you're right and bless your heart for telling

me it's the ego that feels bad when people say things about you.

So we have all kinds of different defense mechanisms to protect this false ego.

Let's take a look now.

Some of these are helpful.

Most of these are hurtful but these are your basic defense mechanisms.

Now there's more.

But remember this is the course on why people do what they do.

So a lot of why they do what they do is them acting out these defense mechanisms so when to spend a

little bit of time with them not too much time but some the first defense mechanism is acceptance Hey

they said something about me you know that's going to happen X number of times in life.

I guess you know just let it go.

You know if it doesn't apply let it fly you know and have some acceptance.

That's a good defense mechanism.

Now sometimes it's a bad defense mechanism.

If you're an abusive relationship and somebody says you're a jerk and you go Oh my God.

Yeah.

He's right.

I'm not always nice and I had his dinner laid and did it a day.

And you know you start accepting that hey I am a jerk.

I maybe maybe I should apologize.

You know how can I do better.

I know I got to turn this around.

I don't want to feel like a jerk my whole life.

That's the wrong kind of acceptance.

Okay.

But it's common isn't it acting out.

Hey you can't talk to me that way and blah blah blah blah.

You know I act out a different way.

You know I go home and you know kick the dog or something you know or you know grumpy with my wife or

whatever.

That's another kind of acting out avoidance I just start avoiding people places and things that cause

me pain.

Now avoidance can be helpful.

You know if you have nasty people in your life and you don't want that kind of negativity and you don't

want to feel bad avoiding them is a beautiful thing to do.

I used to call it the proximity rule you know.

I would try to you know almost like a restraining order.

I tried to restrain myself I keep myself 100 feet from any negative people.

Why.

Because they can't shout much farther than that or you know I won't even garner their attention I'm

outside the zone the area of operation if you're military you know you're not going to get hit because

you're not in the area.

You know the area of operation so stay outside that hundred foot zone you'll be good.

Now if you're avoiding things like problems or dealing things obviously not good but avoidance is one

of the major defense mechanisms that people use to survive.

And strangely enough I misstated exactly this way their own attack on themselves

denial denial can be me denying it to you even though I know it's true or I partially deny it to myself

I go that's not really true but I'm kind of you know I'd take a little by the apple or I completely

deny it that's not true because I'm just simply ignorant of it or there's the kind of denial where I

heard it it was true but I suppressed it I let it go I blew it off I gave an excuse why it wasn't true

and later I just plain forgot about it and it becomes unconscious denial humor I deflect I laugh it

off sometimes humor is a good defense mechanism used too often or you know if it's one of your only

tools not very good humility I think that's almost always a good defense mechanism OK unless you're

just being humble all the time because you're just insecure you know you don't want anybody to think

you think you're too great and therefore you know you never try to let your star shine you never say

anything you never take credit for anything you become you know Manby pamby kind of wishy washy that's

not good either.

So again some are helpful some are hurtful and it depends upon how I use it.

Intellectual ization big fancy word means you figure out new and exciting ways of this doesn't pertain

to you know I can have six glasses of wine a day because it's essentially grape juice and is full of

you know rebel flavors and flavonoids and you know my doctor told me you know a couple of drinks a day

is good for your heart remember he said a couple not six a couple is two one two Oh look at that lovely

couple there's not six of them.

A little reality therapy there right.

Okay that's intellectual ization I used to think in recovery because I did a lot of addiction recovery

work with people that the smartest people would be I be able to teach them faster because they were

smarter I could teach them higher level things and they be excited about learning.

This was absolutely positively wrong.

The smarter somebody was as an addict the more new and exciting ways their brain could come up with

the new intellectual ways their brain could come up with why everything I said did not pertain to them

and why they were fine and keep going the way they were going they were great at defending themselves

against logic with their pseudo logic their intellectualized Asians give me a good mentally retarded

closed head injury borderline intellectual functioning salt of the earth moron and they be like OK Mr.

Paul and they listen to stuff and they couldn't figure out why it wasn't true.

So they would just believe it.

Then of course it was true so that was very helpful.

They would follow directions because they wouldn't figure out why they didn't have to do it that way

and they were special so they didn't have to do it you know that they were unique ways to call terminal

uniqueness you thought you you were unique you were special and it was gonna be terminal you know you're

you were special so you didn't have to have sponsors and go to meetings and stay away from you using

friends.

No no no no no.

You're one of the special ones that because of you know all these intellectual reasons you can still

do those things.

Intellectual ization is a mental defect rationalizations are similar to intellectuals Asians that's

why I put them together they're almost the same thing you figure out a why a reason why it's OK to do

something that's actually not okay.

So intellect intellectual ization you can use towards anything rationalizations are I'm gonna do it

I still gotta be able to live with myself and I gotta be able to explain it to other people it's like

buyer's remorse you know I bought this fancy sports car I paid too much it's really eleven but I got

to justify it so I go home and I tell my wife you know I don't tell her I spent forty thousand dollars

sixty thousand dollars on this car I say no no no.

They gave me a good deal there's a hundred thousand mile warranty and you know sweetheart you're gonna

look great in this and look there's there's safety features for the baby and a place for the seat.

And you know they gave me free oil changes for a year and that's why I bought it and you're like No

I thought I looked hot in this car you know I love the turbo it just stimulated me I love the surround

sound I want I want these since I was a little kid this is on my bucket list but I'm going to rationalize

it and say it's totally worth it and it's not projection top of the next list is that's not me that's

you I'm not annoying you're annoying that's why you're so annoyed when I'm around not because I'm annoying

but you're annoying I annoy annoying people but I'm not annoying that makes sense.

Sure why not.

Repression.

This is called emotional stuffing just push down the pain push down the pain we had to say people like

this were emotionally constipated and they need to take a big emotional dump that made me laugh my ass

off when I was a young therapist I'm like on the first day on the job and they're talking about emotional

constipation you know I'm like I must have been like 23 years all the time and I'm like you know still

my early early 20s which is like late adolescence that I'm giggling You know it was like something told

a fart joke they said constipated funniest thing I ever heard but that's exactly what you are you've

been stuffing all this crap and eventually you're full of it and you've been repressing and you literally

do need to take a big mental dump and get rid of it so they weren't wrong self-serving bias we talked

about this a couple of course chapters before we shape things through our biases to make ourselves OK

with things to protect our ego and to defend ourselves so it's also a defense mechanism it's not just

something that warps reality it warps reality to defend us comparing Well at least I'm not as bad as

so and so or I'm doing better than so and so so I guess I'm doing pretty good.

It's nice we even compare against ourselves at least I'm not as bad as I used to be.

You can see where some of these things are not healthy comparing.

OK.

Wishful thinking wishful thinking is well maybe though they'll be kinder to me tomorrow.

Maybe things will get better tomorrow.

Maybe that won't happen again.

I remember my mom she used to do wishful thinking.

She heard a sound in the car and then eventually you know her brake seized up.

She could have died.

She said Well you know I heard there was a noise in the car but I thought maybe after a while.

Kind of go away or get better and I said Mom you don't know a lot about cars.

I don't know a lot about cars but I I'll tell you one thing I know about cars.

Now wait for it they don't he'll she was using wishful thinking she thought magically this awesome was

magical thinking wishful thinking magical thinking they're interchangeable that the car might heal over

time because that was the only way her logic could have been right.

Oh I thought maybe go away it would the car would have to heal it would have to heal.

I said Mom this isn't going happen.

That's what wishful thinking is blaming.

Oh I've got all these problems because a blah blah blah blah blah.

And they go down their excuse list of blaming everybody in their brother.

It's always anything except me.

Now there's sometimes when you blame stuff and it's true why really it was just snowing outrageously

and you're not lying it was.

That's blaming you're blaming it on the snow.

But you know what.

The snow did it.

So that's not blaming in the therapy sense or this kind of sense.

So we blame everything.

Rarely is it actually that thing like the snow or the traffic that we laughed about in an earlier section.

But we do it over and over and over again and you gotta really catch yourself.

Say is it really this.

You say well I would hear people all the time to say well I can't get ahead because my boss is a jerk

or you know the companies keep me down.

No you can't get ahead of your job because your boss doesn't work for you.

Why.

He's been there longer.

He's got better qualification.

He must be smarter than you or you don't have to be at this job.

There's 100 companies that do what you're doing.

This is a large company.

This is a large country and this is an even larger world.

You don't have to be here.

If you're right and you're blaming is correct and the boss is really keeping you down he's not keeping

you down.

He's being himself and you are letting him block you.

So is it his fault for holding you down.

Yes.

Is it equally and even greater your fault for taking it and staying there.

Yes.

The correct answer is yes.

So he's so I can tell you that people that have moved on from bad bosses when it really was the bad

boss and now they are the boss and the boss's boss.

They no longer blame the bad bosses Mass Effect they think they taught the person how not to be that

bad boss and how to move on.

OK.

Passive passive just means you take all these insults you take all these things you just let it go.

Passive aggressive means you're passive you act like you're blowing it off but then you have the little

dig you know hit year you're always doing little tiny things they say what is not worked out will be

acted out OK.

You and your wife argue about the paint color for a room.

She says fine we'll take this one but you know she's not really happy you can tell by the expression

of tonality later that night.

You want to have some play times with the wife.

OK all the sudden that ain't happening.

She's got a headache.

She's not feeling good.

She got to get up in the morning boom.

Passive aggressiveness.

Next day you get leftovers instead of you know fresh cooked food all a sudden your clothes aren't clean

and all kinds of things.

She's ignoring you on and on and on.

This is all passive aggressiveness.

Bull.

OK.

That's it for this section.

I'll see you in the next section.

We're gonna go over some more secrets of psychology.