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The ego and the unconscious formation of prejudices March 12, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Ego Management.
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If we are to realize our personal development potential, an important goal for us should be to try to diminish as much as we can the role our ego plays in our lives.

The ego – a phenomenon which Eckhart Tolle describes as a constantly chattering voice in our head; a voice which can interfere with taking our personal growth to a higher level of consciousness.

For Tolle, the need for discipline in the conscious management of our ego is one of the foundational requirements for discovering our true inner being. It is the pervading principle underlying personal growth realization in Tolle’s 313-page book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Paraphrasing Tolle’s view of the ego, we can say that, left to its own devices, the ego will construct many prejudices (1), and one of the ways it does this is by continually categorizing practically all of our experiences onto a neat bookshelf of attitudes.

In A New Earth, Tolle comments, “The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality; the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.” (2)

The problem, for most of us, of course, is that the formation of these verbal and/or mental labels about things, people, and situations is something we are not consciously aware of; because the process is performed unconsciously by the ego.

And this ego-process is something must make a constant, daily effort to resist.

One of the reasons why personal development/growth is a lifelong effort, and not a quick-fix program.

(1) I am using the word prejudices in the sense of forming any pre-judgements about externals.

(2) Page 26, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth; a Plume Book, paperback

Overcoming the ego’s resistance to the idea of second chances in life February 25, 2013

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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In trying to implement our personal growth plan towards the development of our individual potential, our ego (that voice in our heads) may try to convince us that second chances in life are not possible.

Instead of focusing on the positive possibilities of the present, the ego often tends to dwell in the troubles and shortcomings past and on fears and self-doubts about the future.  In this emotional environment, there would appear to be little room for the concept of second chances in life.

However, to help us, there is a lot of good material available in personal growth literature about techniques on how to create a positive future for ourselves, despite past “failures.” But, for these techniques to work we first must believe or have faith in the concept of second chances.

I recently watched a brief interview with the actor Frank Langella, which I will paraphrase because I was not able to write down all of his comments verbatim at the time.

Langella, who has had a lot of “ups” and “downs” in his career said that he never became discouraged with the difficult times in his acting career because he regarded these as growing experiences and made an effort to learn from each event in his career.

In the interview he said that he did not believe in the idea that we don’t have second chances in life. In fact there is chance #2, chance #22, chance #108 –there are always second and further chances “as long as you’re breathing,” Langella says.

Because of a lack of belief in second chances, Langella says, many people “decide to shut down and settle.” By not going for second chances these people shut themselves off from “everything that makes life worth living.” He concluded the interview by commenting that we all have two choices in life – we can either lie down or we can get up every day and keep going.

There is a brief Article on Frank Langella available at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Langella