The Power To Truly Change Yourself? Not what you might think...

Hello everyone,
I hope you all are going through an enriching and happy christmas holiday.

Today, a couple of days before the celebration of New Year, I thought would be a good time to bring a subject I believe has the power to change one's life completely.
At least change the way an individual look at life and himself.

Before I go deeper in the subject, I'd like to say something about the famous 'New Year Resolutions' we hear from everyone each year here on ATS and also around us in our families and circle of friends.

There's something I've come to realize through years of observation about this whole phenomena of strong resolutions made just before the new year. This realization is the fact that people will fail more often than they would like to think.
And even though they failed miserably, they won't care and just make the same resolutions over and over again the next year.

I guess this can be easily compared to the famous quote by our well-respected Albert Einstein

Insanity: 'Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'

I also like to call this the law of recurrence, as briefly explained in this quote by Eudemus

“Some people accept and others reject that time is repeated. Repetition is understood in diverse ways. One type of repetition can occur in the natural order of things, for instance the repetition of summers, winters and other seasons, in the way that a new season comes after the disappearance of the other. The movement of heavenly bodies and the phenomena produced by them belong to this order of things, such as the solstices and equinoxes that are produced by the movement of the Sun.”

“Yet, if we are to believe the Pythagoreans, another type of repetition exists. This means that I will talk to you and sit exactly like this while holding in my hand the same stick, and everything will be the same as now, and time, as you might expect, will be the same. Because, if the movements of the heavenly bodies and many other things are the same, then, what has already occurred in the past and what will occur afterwards are also the same. This also is applied to Repetition, which is always the same. Everything is the same.”

Truth is, people aren't far from being insane robots (or zombies?) from this point of view.
The thing they don't seem to understand is that in order to truly change, you've got to work on yourself every second of every minute of every hour of every day. This is the way it works, and it is the ONLY way.

However, in the 21st century, it's the complete opposite that occurs.
People will go on with their lifes, go to work everyday, consume entertainment and make sure they never have to think about their own life and actions. There are exceptions, but let's be honest, we are not living in th era of genuine personnal and spiritual enlightment.

Most times people will miss the point, as simple as it may be, but in order to change yourself you have to:
1st- Observe your problems/weaknesses and then accept them
2nd- Work on them in a conscious and permanent way
You don't need to wait for the end of the year to accomplish the magical shift. It's something that has to be done in the NOW.

This is where I bring the main idea of my topic:
The existence of the powerful yet subtle identification to the mind caused by the ego.

I know for a fact a lot of people are unhappy in the 21st century and they often wonder how to get out of their misery. Even with all the knowledge and technology we possess we still can't aspire to true happiness. There are multiple ways to adapt to an undesirable situations, however, and I say this from my own experience, these adaptation mechanisms will often fail. On the other side, many people will claim to be happy and that everything is fine in their lifes, but is it really? When this whole system of entertainment created by technology will fall, and they are forced to truly face themselves, I wonder what will happen to their 'happiness' and well-being. I've been there, thought I was happy because I had what I believed was good and needed in life, and then life itselfs smashed me to the ground. From this day on, everything has changed... I changed.

Some people truly want to become better persons but they just can't succeed.
They will not fail because they aren't good or effective, but rather because they are completely ignorant to the main source of the problem. In this instance, how could you resolve a problem if you only try to change its surface? You've got to go deeper than that.

Of course, I'm not talking about all kind of problems - there are many that doesn't need what I'm going to present to be resolved.
In this OP, I'm going more into deeper personnal problems in the well being of an individual like;
anxiety disorders, depression, failure to adapt to the loss of a loved one, emotional dependance, hate/anger towards the world, failure to stop looking into the past or future, inability to stop doing the same mistakes, unhappinness, problem of self-confidence, etc. These are all hardful problems that need to be resolved in order to be happy and quite honestly, this is only possible when you start to work on your ego.

So, what is an ego and why is it crucial in personnal development?
Let's hear what Eckhart Tolle, famous writer for his book 'The power of now', has to say on this.

Selfishness, vanity, pride and the perservation of the self is what most of us tend to think of when we think of ego, but ego is much more than an overinflated sense of self. It can also turn up in feelings of inferiority or self-hatred because ego is any image you have of yourself that gives you a sense of identity—and that identity derives from the things you tell yourself and the things other people have been saying about you that you've decided to accept as truth.

One way to think about ego is as a protective heavy shell, such as the kind some animals have, like a big beetle. This protective shell works like armor to cut you off from other people and the outside world. What I mean by shell is a sense of separation: Here's me and there's the rest of the universe and other people. The ego likes to emphasize the "otherness" of others.

This sense of separation is an intrinsic part of the ego. The ego loves to strengthen itself by complaining—either in thoughts or words—about other people, the situation you find yourself in, something that is happening right now but "shouldn't be," and even about yourself. For example, when you're in a long line at the supermarket, your mind might start complaining how slow the checkout person is, how he should be doing this or doing that, or he failed to do anything at all—including packing the bag of the person ahead of you correctly.

When this happens, the ego has you in its grip. You don't have thoughts; the thoughts have you—and if you want to be free, you have to understand that the voice in your head has created them and irritation and upset you feel is the emotional response to that voice Only in this way can you be present to the truer world around you and see the golden shade in a pound of pears on the scanner, or the delight of a child in line who begs to eat them.The trick, of course, is to work to free ourselves from this armor and from this voice that is dictating reality.

So if you understood what was presented above -
Thoughts control emotions and we aren't our thoughts and the ego want us to think just that.

As simple as it may seem, the response to millions of people looking for happiness and ways to change themselves dwell just in that. We aren't our mind, but much more than that.

Let's take an example to illustrate what that might means:

Problem: Anxiety disorder.
Situation: A person is faced with a situation that makes him really nervous, he 'knows' deep within himself that he always gets really anxious towards it and thefore lose control of himself and live through an anxiety attack.
What really happen: The mind (thoughts) of the person, subtlely amplified by the ego, will go nuts and tell him he WILL have an anxiety attack and that he can't do nothing about it, because you know, that's the way he is. In this recurrent circle, he will amplify the emotions (anxiety) and then completely lose control.

This is only a basic example to show generally how the ego will try to use the mind to his advantage to control one individual.

Let's continue with Eckhart Tolle's teachings:

Observe Your Mind
The first foundational step is to become aware of what kind of thoughts you habitually think, especially negative thoughts: irritation, anger, impatience and perhaps even some kind of sadness. You might, for example, complain about yourself, how useless you are. If you start to hear these repetitive thoughts, then you will suddenly realize, "I've been thinking these same thoughts again and again almost every day without really knowing it."

From my personnal experience, when you stop being your thoughts, and you begin to observe them, you immediately put a HUGE distance between yourself and your ego. You then start to realize the true extent of the problem that has been going on for years without you even realizing it.

Distinguish Between the Voice of Ego and the Actual Situation
Awareness is the beginning of becoming free of the ego because then you realize that your thoughts—and the negative emotions they produce—are dysfunctional and unnecessary. For example, let's go back to the supermarket line. As you stand waiting, you aren't actually irritated because it's taking a long time to get through to the checkout, which is the situation. You are irritated by what your mind is telling you about the situation—which is that all this waiting is bad and a waste of your time. But you could actually be enjoying that moment if you say, "This is simply what is. There's nothing I can do about it, so why not breathe in deeply and look around and enjoy the world around me?"

That means living in the Now and accepting reality as it is, instead of rejecting it. I don't know a lot of people really living the now nowadays. People are always thinking about the past or the future.

'What should I have done different in that situation?'
'Will I be able to succeed in my exam next week?'
'Will I ever be able to find someone to love and care?'
etc etc

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it makes it hard to really appreciate the now, which is the door to every other moment. How could you be fully aware and conscious of yourself and the environment if you always think about everything?

Bring In Your Awareness
When you see the difference between your voice and the reality of the situation, that's the beginning of awakening. This is often a moment—a flash that sizzles and disappears. Initially you still lose yourself again, and the old thoughts arise, but gradually, you gain awareness, and the dysfunctional thoughts subside. It's a gradual transition, this bringing in of your awareness, because the ego doesn't want to change. It doesn't want to disappear, so it will give you plenty of reasons why you cannot be present.

Lay Down Your Weapons
Your challenge will be to become more aligned internally with the present moment. Fighting with your ego by will just makes it stronger. By declaring war on it, you make an enemy. A simple example: You wake up in the morning, and it's raining and gray, and the mind says, "What a miserable day," and this is not a pleasant thought. You likely feel some emotion: dread, disappointment, unhappiness. You suddenly realize that your judgment of what kind of day it will be is based on a mental habit, an unconscious default. That simple awareness creates space for a new thought to emerge. You can look again out the window without that preconception and just see the sky. It's gray. There's some sunlight filtering through the sky. There are, perhaps, raindrops falling. It's not actually miserable at all. It has a certain beauty. Then suddenly, you're free. You're no longer imposing something on reality, and you're free to enjoy what, previously, you had rejected.

That would make the end of my point.

So, in order to truly change yourself, one's need to understand the power of the ego on mankind and the fact that continuous and recurrent thoughts are very unhealthy. They will repeat themselves indefinitely and nothing, but you, can stop them. Just like we see every year, tt is almost impossible to change ourselves if we aren't ready to go deep within our inner hidden truths and work on them. We need to work on the cause, instead of the consequences.

The first step is to realize we are more than just thoughts and unconscious mechanical actions.

I hope you guys understood what I tried to present here. I'm all open for discussions and answering to whatever questions you might add.

I also highly recommend you check Eckhart Tolle website-
www.eckharttolle.com...

StOrD

I have a bad habit of trying to read to much lol hence all these tabs I will eventually get around to reading...

That said I make resolutions regardless of the time of year I do take in the "New Year" as a time to reflect on how I did on them, which ones I wish to continue and ones I no longer deem meaningful or worthwhile.

It is especially fun to watch my local gym get full this time of year only to wane in the following month.