The ego and the unconscious formation of prejudices March 12, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Ego Management.Tags: A New Earth, awareness, controlling ego, Eckhart Tolle, ego management, managing the ego, personal development, personal development potential, personal growth
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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
The Tao Te Ching and the futility of naming March 1, 2013
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Tao Te Ching.Tags: awareness, beyond ego, controlling ego, ego management, eternal tao, Lao-tzu, managing the ego, subconscious desire, Tao Te Ching
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One of the tendencies of the ego (the mind, the voice in our heads) is the propensity to apply labels to everything in life.
Perhaps this is a manifestation of our subconscious desire to feel a measure of control and understanding — a way to intellectually manage or make sense of the universe by categorizing all elements as we perceive them. But the “control” afforded by labelling can be illusory because many of the components underlying the real world cannot accurately be named universally.
By placing labels on phenomena, we are coloring everything with our own brush, which in many cases is not a reflection of the true colors of reality.
There is an interesting reflection on labelling or naming which I found when reading a passage in the Tao Te Ching (composed by Lao-tzu, in perhaps the 400-500 BC period) as interpreted/translated by Stephen Mitchell.*
In Chapter 1 Lao-tzu writes:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
If we can resist the temptation to label, if we can accept things as they are, if we make a decision to try to not judge, then perhaps we can then better see reality.
*Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching, A new English Version, HarperPerennial edition, 1991, paperback.
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