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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

Why does personal growth advice often sound the same March 10, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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In our search for ways to realize our personal development potential, we may find, after reading a lot of books, articles, blogs, and specialty websites, that the basic principles or fundamentals seem to be similar from source to source.

There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that the basic or primary principles of personal growth are, in fact, well established and recognized.

From religious texts thousands of years old to the new materials of today, the fundamentals of ideal human behaviour have not changed significantly.

And, if we are honest with ourselves, we often already know (even intuitively) what the main foundation blocks are for reaching our personal growth potential.

So, knowledge of the basics is the easy part.

The tough work is the implementation.

We know what we should be doing (the basics), but we have trouble figuring out how to do it.

We know our personal-change challenges – what we are looking for is solutions or ways to succeed with meeting our challenges.

That’s why there can be real value in reading a varity of writers on personal development.

When we continue reading information from a variety of experts we can find  new ideas, tips, plans, or templates for implementing the basic principles.

For example, even though I already know I need to change some of my attitudes (such as not being judgemental) it’s important for me to find some practical suggestions and advice as to how to accomplish my goal.

And I may need to read a lot of material from different experts to be successful.