Understanding Your Ego - Alan Watts 

Its crazy lol we are obsessed with ego death until it actually happens. Its terrifying especially when on a psychedelic, Your brain goes crazy and you fight to hold on for dear life. Then this almost mystical silence washes over everything, silences your racing apemode brain, silences your memories, silences your feelings, and the full presence of what really is, without any influence of your previous identification and understanding, washes over your body. It's the most beautiful feeling ever, then a few weeks after appreciating that you go and chase it again lmao. Just the cycle of things

@@azloii9781 once a person fully understands the egoic nature of the human mind, they are given an opportunity to transcend above it for the rest of their lives. This takes preparation and awareness

you cannot defeat something that is not real you see thru it, and its no longer there

Perfect in a imperfect world

No. No you are NOT. YOU... ARE...NOT

I am the Walrus and we are all together choo choo ka chew

​@@kenwittlief255 sounds stupid I know but it's true. You and the walrus have a lot in common. Both creations of nature with specific primal needs that need to be met to survive. And you both have occurred spontaneously in the universe at this specific time and place. Things that both of you can never truly comprehend.

Gods in control

What does it mean will you please explain to me 🙏🏻

​@@husnadaudzai9176 Nature exists in oneness there is no separate. Hence, knowing. Coming to the realisation.

Person that knows is a knower for IAM

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I like the emphasis that Terence makes when he says that anybody that is 100% certain in their explanation of reality is 100% certain that they are going to bulshit you, because reality is complicated beyond the measure of an ape mind. Almost as if future civilization looks back on theyear 2000 as we look back on the Romans in that we equally can't comprehend the unknown.

It's not a invention

I'm the soul behind watching my thoughts go by

Source?

@@giacomofilippin12 Osho

@@willieluncheonette5843 thanks! ☺️

This is gold. 🤩 I have a question. What if the person asks - isn't it the characteristic of a proper man to be courageous, diligent and virtuous? He is a proper man not good nor bad. He lives as human beings ought to live ie to be the proper man. Is ego involved in this if the proper person doesn't label himself as a good man or a bad one instead as 'how man ought-to-be'?

Yet the idealist is one of 16 personality types established by Nature. The "I" actually has its origins in the soul. The man of no ideals has no values and no vision. Nothing to strive for...nothing to improve...no opportunities for growth. Read Jung.

He never left. :P

He really was/is eloquence personified

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A refusal to change indicates complacency. If you are happy now, why are you still asking for shit?? - Santa🎭

I will only give you what you deserve in the moment. - you earned it! - 🎭

I never knew "Karen" I never new "Caring" "Karin" is BOTH!😘 YAY!🤱

...Who is asking the question.............Seek given Thou art the sought after!......... ...........Who Am I.....RamanA' ❤ 'RUNACHALA 🙏 p.s...'some say' you are not your'(=ego) mind etc........Who is listening.............................................................. ........'he' says that we are our thoughts etc.= Knows ''his' self illusion/paradox! in REALising the inexpressable-' '-.... himself-SELF'-' '- ....... ............ p.p.s. Thanks for 'your' comment='my' pass 'time''/initial birth=death illusion body conscious 'Attachment'!!

In this context I think what Alan is trying to say is that "YOU" cant control your mind. Because you don't exist. The part of "you" that you believe to be "you" is your ego. Which is just a series of thoughts about yourself that you believe to be true. The part of you that considers yourself the general, is actually just a thought. It is not you. Forgive me, I'm struggling to put this into words. The "Thinker" inside you, the part of you that thinks thoughts, is not actually a thinker. It itself is a thought. Like Alan says, there is no controller, there is no ego, there is no you. The human brain loves to label and categorize everything as it makes it easier to understand for our logic based brains. But in reality we are just a part of the universe, and the universe is a part of us. So you need to look at it abstractly, we THINK that we think but really, thoughts just are. So we need to try and observe these thoughts and not associate ourselves with them. This sounds really confusing after reading it again ahahaha. Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say. Also I'm not claiming that I interpreted Alan correctly here this is just how I understand it.

@@bloodaxe1010 I understand what you mean but this is just his view of things, that‘s the beauty of the mind everyone can have their own perspective the mind is what you want it to be. But if I wanna tell a story or make a sentence I clearly am controlling what I said cause I learned how to speak read and write first and now I‘m able to communicate with other humans that‘s how we came so far and if you look at it from a religious view god has given us a consciousness also known as free will and then there‘s things that don‘t happen under our will so if god says you have to pray 5 times a day that‘s his will but you have your free will as a human so you consciously can decide if you want to do it or not because god can‘t control our free will because he wants to see how we control it. So thats why it makes sense that a non religious person like alan watts started to make his own theories.

@@bloodaxe1010 The observer is the observed.

@@antonbyebajraktaraj1349 "I clearly am controlling what I said cause I learned how to speak read and write first and now I‘m able to communicate with other humans that‘s how we came so far" I'm not sure I see how the former follows from the latter? Why does that show that you're clearly "controlling" what you said? Could you possibly have said something else with the same causes and conditions?

@@sondre5174 ???😂

What?

I am not Dead. I am not Alive. I am "ALOOF"... - 🕺🎭⚖️

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you say “I disagree” but who is “I”? who is it that is disagreeing?

@@seanc.fitness By "I disagree", I mean the logic center in my mind rejects at least some of the video's claims and considers them either erroneous or unreasonable. In particular at 1:28, it's that the "eternal energy of the universe" is being asserted into existence while the ego is being declared an illusion. I can comprehend the argument for declaring the ego as an illusion, but this "eternal energy of the universe" is another buzz term that is so vague that anyone can project whatever they want into it. It's pseudo-religious mystical nonsense - taken from East-Asian cultures and alienated and twisted into sounding mysteriously mythical and cool. What even is energy? Energy is a concept from physics and it has nothing to do with this pseudoscience. It really sounds like something I’d say on LSD - that (my) consciousness is eternal and that I am everything.

there is no reason to think the Buddha, 2600 years ago, figured out everything for everyone, and there is nothing else to be refined, corrected, or added to there is a lot of mythology that has been layered on to the Buddha's teaching - and there are other paths to the same understanding and knowledge

I don't need a "reason" to like you. I DO need a reason to NOT like you. Momentum will take care of the rest. - 🎭⚖️🪤

Disagree and agree. 1. It depends on the person. In my case I actually did have a psychotic episode when my third eye opened and I experienced ego death but thats just me. 2. Enlightenment, third eye, pineal gland, enlightenment, kundalini awakening are all the same thing. So you’re wrong about still having an ego. Even with the ego death I experienced (without drugs) my ego was still there I was just freaked tf out cuz I didn’t feel like it was me. I felt like I was watching it think and do everything. I had a different perspective on it and was scared because I felt like I was everybody and everything. Crazy how I wanna get back to that feeling now lol.

some animals do recognize themselves in a mirror, others do not the basis of your reasoning is in error Ego is simply the Latin word for "I", as in I the individual 2600 years ago the Buddha came to the realization that all life is connected, there is only one life form on Earth, and more than that, we cannot exist without the Earth, the moon, the sun, the stars... the entire Universe just as it is. Take away any part today and we would instantly die. Take away any part in the past and we would never have existed. In the years since science has shown us the foundations under what Buddha discovered just from introspection. The elements in our bodies were fused in stars from hydrogen and helium, over billions of years, then blasted into space in clouds of 'dust', that formed our sun and planets, and the compounds in our physical bodies. The discovery of our DNA shows that all life on Earth is a continuation over billions of years, from the simple 1 cell organisms that mutated and divided and changed into all the life we see today. We are not billions of separate lifeforms individually fighting for life, we are all part of the one lifeform that inhabits the Earth: DNA life - a continuation, not a spattering of new individual lives. The Buddha realized we are a part of the Universe - as the cells in your body are a part of your body. There are not billions of consciousnesses inhabiting the Universe, there is only one.

@@kenwittlief255 Firstly, I don't think 2600 yrs ago (or whatever), Bhudda (not really certain if there was such) set out to figure out everything for everyone upcoming, he was just lost to understand his own "I" .. that's it and that's all, rest is very likely all made up crap about him. Secondly, I don't think Universe gives a crap about human species, it doesn't depends on any life forms to operate, life forms such as humans are just one of infinite byproducts of ongoing Universal operations of the cosmos. Nothing revolves around humans. Thirdly, the "I" / EGO is only human specie specific property / condition, rest of the 99.999999.... % of life forms don't have such problem, they have no EGO as such are classified as nature / natural. Humans are not special at all in any sense in the grand design / scheme of the universe, if we think we are then we are just utterly delusional.

Random Elvis : Feeling of love can be traced to chemical changes in the brain mainly the hormone oxytocin which makes you feel that way. So in a way even love is an illusion.

@@rahulmohanan2026 Is that so?…. Depends on if you know what “love” truly is… You wrote “feeling of love”…. I think you’re talking about “happiness “….maybe 🤷‍♂️ A question for you: What is “Love”?

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@@randomelvis3359 do you have the answer? Plz share… I was told love is a verb. #WW

@@renegarza793 It is that in you that is asking, it is this in me that is answering… it is all everyone is motivated to do in each day, yet is found at the end of searching , (life illusions) … you’ll know this as it resonates somewhere…. Is this what love is? I think so. …. Be well 🙏🏻

In the same way ego isn't something bad. Ego is a survival mechanism that keeps you alive. The most important thing is to find a balance in life.

Ego is, as Alan himself said, nothing more than a radar. If you life as if you were the radar then you are going to be constantly stressed and tense

or just sleep without dreaming which we all do for about 6 hours every night

I’ve been there before 😂 mushrooms 🍄 5g an ayahuasca

@@kenwittlief255 Yea but you are not consious of that.

what how

@Silumesii Lunda Exactly. Your external or physical world is a reflection of your inner world. If you want to change your life,. You must first change your feelings, thoughts and perceptions. Life is beautiful, it's all about the IAMness, drifting in and out of different states. Go read about THE FEELING IS THE SECRET by Neville Goddard if you want to learn more

@Silumesii Lunda trust me, if he wants a house and sees himself getting it, he will definitely gate a house. A homeless man will be homeless if he chooses to remain homeless

@@Sciptopia that's not true at all. This is why people hate spirituality. Some problems can't be fixed by thinking positively. Not when Jeff Bezos exists

@@JimmyneutronwasokayIguess Reality is only a point of view my friend, if you choose to see it that way, then so be it. You're paying attention to the fact that Jeff Bezos exists. What you pay attention to will grow in your awareness. It will grow in your life because your life is about what you flow energy towards how the energy flows. Everything is energy. It's fact🙂

@@Sciptopiawhen you find the energy that conjures the kind of cash that could make a homeless man rich then let me know

🤮

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You are an awareness (soul) that is behind the thoughts. If you can watch your thoughts then they are not you. If that makes sense. And your ego is an abstraction that exists in your mind.

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thumbs up . . . one of the best

This is the most Mindblowing thing I have read under Alan Watts videos. You acknowledge Alan Watts limitations of not being able to come to peace with his own Ego. He denied his own reality. I think Alan was too convinced off his own ideals and never thought them wrong or Subjective. He spoke like he gave himself authority over the Truth. We are what we are given. In this iteration of Life we are Humans. Thank you for your comment.

@@sandisiwenkomba8346 Thank you for that. I came to this after wasting many years walking in small , purposeful circles and getting nowhere. What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Watts even says things like this without understanding that he is doing this himself. Self-awareness is almost impossible, and yet I persist. : ) I think that any measure of clarity, understanding, truth, etc. in this human iteration is hard-worn because anything worth a Damn is not easily gotten. Not that it matters, but I happen to have advanced degrees. I greatly value intellectual intelligence, but I eventually understood that the only intelligence that actually matters is emotional intelligence, hence the importance of being able to detect authenticity and learning to walk away when something begins to seem false regardless of who is delivering the message. Again, thank you for the comment and for your own smart words as well. : )

@UNSTABLE Thank you so much for all of your wise and kind words. I agree with most of what you say. My disagreements are, of course, my highly subjective opinions and feelings, but I enjoy "disagreeing" with people such as yourself who can have an opinion without using it like a weapon and who can be disagreed with without first retreating then attacking. Whatever I am about to say that may be contrary to anything you have said is probably attributable to demography. I am a 57 year-old American woman who is a wife, has a 22 year-old daughter who is brilliant and wonderful in pretty much ever way : ), and lots and lots of friends. I am also a former student and teacher with advanced degrees, a huge basketball fan, a lover of all of the "high" fine arts as well as lots of "low brow" humor unless the laughs are at the expense of someone else, a decent swimmer and runner, a pretty good gardener, a lover of nature, an excellent cook, and I also enjoy wine and beer now and then and coffee and tea regularly. Many people have referred to me as a walking contradiction, and I think that is fair. I am "allergic" to regimens and empty rituals of any kind. Meaningful rituals, I love. Joseph Campbell is The Man. I loathe cruelty but accept that pain, sadness, and death are parts of life. I love movies, and my immediate family uses movie metaphors when words fail for being too precise and loaded. Often, there is no substitute for a good metaphor or some other figurative language. For example, we say, "No, it is like that one moment when the guy did that one thing...," that sort of thing. I once had a student with Asberger's (sp?) Syndrome who was extremely intelligent. He could not understand abstraction like figurative language, but he knew that he could not but very much wanted to get it if only conceptually. Our exchanges became a sort of high-point of the semester once I read the rest of the class The Riot Act for impatience and rudeness. After all of that introductory rambling, the points on which I disagree with you are generally and/or specifically about isolation, purity, soberness in the true sense of the word, earnestness, and, finally, seriousness. For example, I think judging others is sometimes warranted and even necessary. Without it, aren't we just spineless jellyfish? I wasted many years trying not to judge anyone or anything, and it made me crazy. Jesus is one of human culture's greatest example of this . He was kind, loving, wise, brave, patient, and many other admirable things, but he was not a lilting flower. He encouraged non-judgment but also knew when to stand his ground when there was something worth fighting for. Of course, the conclusion of his life here on planet Earth is not something most people want to figuratively or literally emulate for lots of obvious reasons. Flexibility is, I think, one of the key components to a happy human life, but I used to scold my students for being wishy washy and failing to state the case from the get-go. This is a common mistake among young writers who have been encouraged to keep their opinions to themselves. I am not alone in this pedagogical stance as a modern teacher. Thank God, it is no longer considered "fashionable" to use "one" in writing because it is contrived, stilted and false. As though using "one" somehow distances the writer from his/her opinion? As a teacher, are you, then, supposed to address the student you know personally or this mythological "one" person? How? Why? Finally, I aspire to being able to be in any environment under any condition with or without any other humans and be "okay" with whatever is going on. I am often extremely happy and continue to work on being okay regardless. We do not have control of all that is happening around us, but we did theoretically have control of how and whether to respond to events as they occur. This is my goal, and I am going to stubbornly stick to it. I honestly do not want to "control" events because that would be static, and I would get bored. I often say, "If you are bored then you are boring." Hah! Thanks again for all of your wise words. Have a groovy day. : )

@UNSTABLE Wow. You are crazy, crazy smart. Among other things, I used to teach writing at a major American university. Because you have said well many wise and wonderful things, I would like to take some time to reflect before I respond to you thoroughly. Here are a couple of things to chew on in the interim. I have come to believe that we are in fact here "to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." Having said that, I suggest that you try not to rail against the boundaries of the world or the people in it. Boundaries exist and are even necessary and "good." For example, I had to learn as an adult to draw what is often referred to as "healthy boundaries" because my mother was a hungry ghost. I attempted as an adult to negotiate a middle-ground with her and was even willing to meet her at 95/5. I just wanted 5% of the "control" in our relationship. Nope. You know who finally got my attention and got me to begin the process of permanently severing that tie? My daughter who was about 2 at the time. During our last visit with my mother, my daughter started putting her hand over my mouth when my mother spoke so that I would not talk to her. She wisely did not want to share her mother with her mother's mother. Out of the mouths of babes. Regarding boundaries, you might enjoy thinking about the idea that ego does not wall out. Ego walls in. We erect walls to protect "ourselves" from the world as though the world is "bad" and isolation is good. Solitude is not isolation. Solitude is good unless it is lonely. At this point in my life, I enjoy being around others, but I also enjoy being alone. I never feel lonely, though. I think that we only feel lonely when we are separated from ourselves, from who and what we really are. We often use "others" to blame or make excuses for why we have no relationship with ourselves, which is usually the result of childhood neglect and trauma. My therapist says neglect is the worst kind of trauma because at least with violence there is some kind of contact. Sad but true. Finally, my daughter was the number one writer in her AP 11th and 12th grade English classes. I ran into her teacher after she graduated, and he said that she was a brilliant writer because of her brain and her intellect but mostly because of her heart. Truer words have never been spoken. : ) She is currently a teacher of kids between the ages of 5 and 18. Lucky kids. She took some time off after graduating and is now in college studying education and art therapy. She understands that sometimes when you have something important to say that is hard to say, words fail. Artistic expression allows a person to express beautiful things, which can sometimes be hard. She plans to write a book about this at some point in which she provides 10 or so prompts for people to explore. She will do the prompt herself and share her process and result and then encourage readers to have their own experiences. Cool, huh? My therapist says such a book would make it to the New York Times Best Seller list. Word. Life can be really weird and wonderful if you let it be. Let it be. Thank you for sharing. I do not believe in accidents, but I do believe in miracles. More later. : )

You're basically saying the same thing he is saying. That the feeling of the ego is just another feeling amongs a whirlpool of feelings. He dint say anything about think happy thoughts. Matter fact I heard him say in another video that every thing is falling apart, decaying, dying and and so there isn't anything to hold on to.

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😁😁😁🏆You see it too eh??

@@dwightschrute7021 If you mean all the bullshit? I belive I do.. But I'm not sensible enough turn it into a paid job.