I believe the writing of Eckhart Tolle on the subject of egos in his book, A New Earth, is profound. Applying these teachings to my life have helped me heal depression symptoms this past year. My thinking has changed. What do you think? Do you think changing your thinking can help depression? Do you think these concepts are truth?
1. p. 59 Chapter 3 The Core of Ego
"Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head---the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it---that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are. This is the egoic mind."
2. p. 61-62 COMPLAINING AND RESENTMENT
Complaining is one of the ego's favorite ways to strengthen itself, and resentment is the emotion that goes along with it. Mental labeling of people adds even more energy to the ego.
"Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego's need to be right and triumph over others: jerk, bastard, bitch ---all definitive pronouncements that you can't argue with. On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness, you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that, physical violence."
3. p. 63 COMPLAINING AND RESENTMENT
"Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right." This type of complaining desires change, the ego kind enjoys making someone wrong.
4. p. 68 IN DEFENSE OF AN ILLUSION
"Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts. Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness--not through thinking---can you differentiate between fact and opinion." The ego is strengthened by a sense of boundary, separateness, and superiority.
5. p. 76 WAR IS A MINDSET
"Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind. When you recognize it for what is is, you no longer misperceive it as somebody's identity."
6. p. 77-78 BEYOND EGO: YOUR TRUE IDENTITY
"When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive. That illusion thinks it is you. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you. And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness an ego are in compatible."
7. p. 79 BEYOND EGO: YOUR TRUE IDENTITY
"What remains is the light of consciousness in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts, and feelings come and go. That is Being, that is the deeper, true I. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance. I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness. The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times?" . . ."Or am I losing myself in what happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?"
8. p. 79 ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE
"Whatever form it takes, the unconscious drive behind ego is to strengthen the image of who I think I am, the phantom self that came into existence when thought---a great blessing as well as a great curse---began to take over and obscured the simple yet profound joy of connectedness with Being, the Source, God."
9. p. 79-80 ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE
"Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same: the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more. And, of course, the need to feel a sense of separation, that is to say, the need for opposition, enemies."
10. p. 85 Chapter 4 Role-playing: The Many Faces of the Ego
"An ego that wants something from another---and what ego doesn't---will usually play some kind of role to get its 'needs' met, be they material gain, a sense of power, superiority, or specialness, or some kind of gratification, be it physical or psychological. Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play. They are those roles."
11. p. 86 Role-playing: The Many Faces of the Ego
"All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you."
12. p. 87 VILLAIN, VICTIM, LOVER
"The playing of negative roles becomes particularly pronounced whenever the ego is magnified by an active pain-body, that is to say, emotional pain from the past that wants to renew itself through experiencing more pain."
13. p. 88 VILLAIN, VICTIM, LOVER
"What is commonly called 'falling in love' is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever."
14. p. 89 LETTING GO OF SELF-DEFINITIONS
"Only rare beings at the time, such as the Buddha or Jesus, saw the ultimate irrelevance of caste or social class, recognized it as identification with form and saw that such identification with the conditioned and the temporal obscured the light of the unconditioned and eternal that shines in each human being."
15. p. 90-91 PRE-ESTABLISHED ROLES
"What really matters is not what function you fulfill in this world, but whether you identify with your function to such an extent that it takes you over and becomes a role that you play. When you play roles, you are unconscious. When you catch yourself playing a role, that recognition creates a space between you and the role. It is the beginning of freedom from the role."
16. p. 95-96 HAPPINESS AS A ROLE VS. TRUE HAPPINESS
"If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to acknowledge that it is there. But don't say, 'I'm unhappy.' Unhappiness has nothing to do with who you are. Say: 'There is unhappiness in me.' Then investigate it. A situation you find yourself in may have something to do with it. Action may be required to change the situation or remove yourself from it. If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, 'Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable'."
17. p. 96 HAPPINESS AS A ROLE VS. TRUE HAPPINESS
"Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness."
18. p. 98 PARENTHOOD: ROLE OR FUNCTION?
"If their desire to control or influence the actions of their adult child is thwarted---as it usually is---they will start to criticize or show their disapproval, or try to make the child feel guilty, all in an unconscious attempt to preserve their role, their identity. On the surface it looks as if they were concerned about their child, and they themselves believe it, but they are only really concerned about preserving their role-identity."
19. p. 100 PARENTHOOD: ROLE OR FUNCTION?
"My parents should approve of what I do. They should understand me and accept me for who I am." "Really? Why should they? The fact is they don't because they can't. Their evolving consciousness hasn't made the quantum leap to the level of awareness yet. They are not yet able to disidentify from their role." . . ."What difference does their approval or disapproval truly make to who you are? All such unexamined assumptions cause a great deal of negative emotion , much unnecessary unhappiness."
20. p.101 CONSCIOUS SUFFERING
"If you have young children, give them help, guidance, and protection to the best of your ability, but even more important, give them space---space to be. They come into this world through you, but they are not 'yours.' The belief 'I know what's best for you' may be true when they are very young, but the older they get, the less true it becomes. The more expectations you have of how their life should unfold, the more you are in your mind instead of being present for them. Eventually, they will make mistakes, and they will experience some form of suffering, as all humans do. In fact, they may be mistakes only from your perspective. What to you is a mistake may be exactly what your children need to do or experience."
21. p. 102 CONSCIOUS SUFFERING
"As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously."
22. p. 103 CONSCIOUS PARENTING
"Many children harbor hidden anger and resentment toward their parents and often the cause is inauthenticity in the relationship. The child has a deep longing for the parent to be there as a human being, not as a role, no matter how conscientiously that role is being played. You may be doing all the right things and the best you can for your child, but even doing the best you can is not enough. In fact, doing is never enough if you neglect Being."
23. p.106 GIVING UP ROLE-PLAYING
"To do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that each one of us is here to learn."
24. p. 112 THE PATHOLOGICAL EGO
"Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected." . . ."Cleverness divides; intelligence includes."
25. p. 114-115 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS
"Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace---if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that. Or it says: I can never be at peace because of something that happened in the past." . . ."The ego doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now. Or maybe it does know, and it is afraid that you may find this out. Peace, after all, is the end of the ego."
26. p. 115 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS
"There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance."
27. p. 120 PATHOLOGICAL FORMS OF EGO
"The collective ego of tribes, nations, and religious organizations also frequently contains a strong element of paranoia: us against the evil others. It is the cause of much human suffering." (Spanish Inquisition, burning of heretics and witches, First & Second World Wars, Communism, "Cold War", McCarthyism, violent conflict in the Middle East)
28. p. 120 PATHOLOGICAL FORMS OF EGO
"The more unconscious individuals, groups or nations are, the more likely it is that egoic pathology will assume the form of physical violence. Violence is a primitive but still very widespread way in which the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong. With very unconscious people, arguments can easily lead to physical violence."
29. p. 121 WORK---WITH AND WITHOUT EGO
"Most people have moments when they are free of ego. Those who are exceptionally good at what they do may be completely or largely free of ego while performing their work. They may not know it, but their work has become a spiritual practice."
30. p. 122 WORK---WITH AND WITHOUT EGO
"They are one with what they do, one with the Now, one with the people or the task they serve. The influence such people have upon others goes far beyond the function they perform. They bring about a lessening of the ego in everyone who comes into contact with them. Even people with heavy egos sometimes begin to relax, let down their guard, and stop playing their roles when they interact with them. It comes as no surprise that those people who work without ego are extraordinarily successful at what they do. Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth."
