Status Updates From How to Do the Work: Recogni...

When they left, I’d panic, running back to the familiar cycle of stress (“always something”) from my childhood. My mind would race, thinking of all the ways a girlfriend failed me (an unanswered text message, an inconsiderate gift, a stray comment of disapproval). No matter what, I could always find something to stress about.

Later, with romantic partners, I sought the same stress cycles. I’d remain emotionally distant and largely unavailable, a pattern I learned with my mother in childhood. I’d only end up growing resentful over time as I held them solely responsible for the disconnection and distance I helped to co-create. Whenever they tried to move close, I’d push them away, unfamiliar with the intimacy.

Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I’d soothe myself (by throwing myself right back into the stress cycle with which I was familiar) by listing all the ways that my family could die—in a fire, in a flood, during a home robbery.

The ultimate goal, really the final step in your ego work, is to cultivate empowerment consciousness, or an understanding and acceptance of your ego. Through practice, this state of consciousness will create a space of awareness that will allow you to make choices beyond knee-jerk ego reactivity. These consistent new choices will pave the path toward your future transformations.

The more ego awareness we have, the more we find grace, humor, and empathy in ourselves—and ultimately in the people around us.

Our projections, or our internal emotions that we externalize onto others, are messages from our shadow self.

Our shadow self consists of all the unsavory parts of ourselves, about our relationships, our past, and our parent-figures that we are ashamed of and try to deny.

As you build up attentional controls and practice self-witnessing, you will be forced to start looking more objectively at your behaviors. Self-witnessing is not enough on its own; you also need to be honest about what you are observing. You will benefit from being open and honest about the shadow self that exists within you—within all of us—and come face-to-face with self-truth.

One example of a way to handle the sister’s comment in the above example is to acknowledge your hurt, not bury it. You could respond, “Ouch. That stung. I think I took that way more personally than you intended it.”

the ego prefers to dump painful emotions onto others, rather than sit with them.

As we expand our level of conscious awareness, we can see that we are not our ego stories. Thoughts happen to us. They don’t mean anything about who we are. They’re simply our ego attempting to defend our identity and protect us from pain.

Before you became aware of your ego reactions, you unconsciously lived out your patterns, conditioning, and childhood wounds. Ego work gives you an opportunity to choose a new narrative.

The goal of this work is to become aware and conscious, instead of deferring to our ego’s reaction of our world. The work begins with simply witnessing. When we exist on autopilot, our ego holds the reins, so actively engaging the conscious mind helps loosen our ego’s hold on our daily existence.

The more disconnected from and ashamed of ourselves we become, the more we see the same in others.

Often when disagreement does occur, the goal is not to try to get closer to a shared truth and is instead to invalidate each other’s realities, to destroy the other person to establish your own worth and power.

“All hands on deck,” strong emotional reactivity (acting out of a protective wound) False confidence (narcissism), more often than not a bravado that emerges from feelings of insecurity due to lack of connection to the authentic Self Lack of nuance in thinking—everything is right or wrong; there are no gray areas Extreme competition (a belief that other people’s success undermines or conflicts with your own)

It’s rigid, often hostile to counterviews, and refuses to compromise or even offer compassion. The ego is in a near-constant defensive stance, ready to spring into action if it experiences any opposition at all.

When our ego is activated, everything is personal (as in the egocentric state in childhood, when everything was about us). Everything that happens to you, it assumes, happens because of you. It’s why so many people are obsessed with pleasing or impressing others—and it’s a significant part of the reason we feel “stuck.”

If we do not practice witnessing the ego, it will fight to assert itself and dominate, leading to feelings of insecurity and low self-worth as the ego works overtime to defend “us.”

The ego interprets any disagreement or criticism as a direct threat to our very existence. That’s because when we are in an egoic state, our beliefs and thoughts are who we are; anything that even questions those narratives is adversarial. When our opinions are questioned, the ego believes that our core self is being threatened.

The ego needs to be an inflexible protector in order to make sure that the softer, more defenseless part of us (namely our inner child) remains safe. That’s why the ego is so defensive and fear based. It views everything within the context of a rigid dichotomy: good versus bad or right versus wrong. It is staunchly attached to its opinions and believes that we are our opinions.

The ego, attached to its ideas, opinions, and beliefs, runs as an endless stream of thoughts keeping us locked in our identity. The ego’s core objective is to protect our identity at all times and at whatever cost.

The ego works to keep us living within familiar narratives because, though often painful, they are predictable. The predictable, as we now know, feels safer than the uncertainty of the unknown.

The ego is our sense of self, our personal identity, our self-worth. The ego is a master storyteller (When my partner leaves dirty dishes in the sink, it means I’m not considered), creating and maintaining narratives about who we believe we are. The ego itself is not good or bad; it just is.

Despite its pronounced impact on our lives, most of us have no awareness of the ego and how it drives our behavior. The ego, the great protector of the inner child,

Picking this audiobook back up

Combining neuroscience and practical tools in this book with my own Christian spirituality to take on a holistic approach to healing. So far, so good

I read this prior and had some tough times recently. I'm hoping this can help again.

Enlightening

👏🏽