Ego

By William B. Royalter

Perhaps the most important and amazing book of the century?

The ultimate book of self-development. With the necessary maps and tools, exercises and techniques that will make you able to break down seemingly complex behaviour into digestible chunks. Not only will your level of awareness never be the same again, but you will be able to create change, knowing where you come from, where you are, where you want to go, and why.

Serious, but also both witty and provocative, this book is what you need to develop a mature and balanced Ego, and also to choose what a include in your world - and what to keep out. There is also a part analysing the world we are living in, dealing especially with how we are manipulated by and accepting the mental designs of others: Beliefs, ideologies and world views that not always have been created with your best interests in mind, and cultural influences that should have been removed to the garbage dump a long time ago.

As a bonus, you will probably be vaccinated against political correctness forever!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9789198759303

Book preview

1. The Need for Maps, Tools, Introspection and Insight

Welcome.

This book is mostly about understanding, repairing, improving and optimizing the software that is installed between your ears, so that you better may use your inner resources to find out who you are and where you come from, who you want to become, what kind of life you want to live, what your world should comprise, and how to get there. It is simply a practical guide that will help you understand the functioning of the mind, with some additional ideas of how the world is screwed together, or perhaps screwed up, if you like, and how to put that information to use.

It is not meant to be a therapeutic work, as those characteristically are limited to being problem-oriented, related to specific pathologies, diagnosis and treatment, and not concerned with the broader and more general processes of self-improvement as such, or with cultivation and refinement, one could also say. It is not an academic or scientific textbook at all, in the sense that it then would be only for certain professionals, with only those select few having the background and qualifications to understand the principles described.

It is practical to look at it as a kind of course manual, with a number of exercises included. It is intentionally oral, as it is meant to be personal and communicating directly with you, the reader. Therefore, once again, welcome, dear student. Because that’s what you will be, if you use this book the way it is meant: A student of the most important part of your life – or should be, if it is not: Yourself.

Here, you will be introduced to a relatively complete system that is easy to understand, without any previous knowledge, education or practice being necessary. You may have to look up a few words now and then, but that’s about it. The methods are based on the use of a few simple maps, with certain guidelines and overviews describing our inner functional systems. As with geographical maps, they can tell you where you are, where you come from and have been, and show you the possibilities; where to go from where you are. In other words, you will be given analytical and functional tools for manoeuvring - inside your mind, but also in the world. You will be able to understand and do something about those three ways your mind works: How you experience, interpret and make sense of the world, how you act, and how you react. And more. Much more.

The next chapters will tell you how. Here, we shall explain why.

The Tip of the Iceberg, the Physical Limitations and the Bottlenecks

Before we move on, we should spend just a little time contemplating the relative importance and influence of the conscious mind.

It is amazing, isn’t it, how we live our lives through a very limited surface level of consciousness, through an inner room or space of self-awareness. In that room, we experience life, through thoughts, ideas and abstractions, feelings and emotional states of mind, sensory input and sensations. It is not only passive, of course, but also a control and communications center: From there, we can take active part in life, through actions and communication with the outside world, thus manifesting life in a continuing process of creating ourselves – and our world.

Not a small task in itself. But this conscious part of ours has its limitations.

The fact is that we can never fully experience, understand or be a part of reality. Our brains obviously have limited capabilities, related to such areas as perception and storage, for example. Our senses give us selected and filtered information from the outer world, narrowed down to certain frequencies or impulses. Leaving mysticism and ESP out of this discussion, we must accept that, in everyday life, our consciousness is limited to what is physically possible. Our lives are journeys through space and time, which, as least to some degree, are limited, pre-determined and pre-set by the hardware. Within these physical barriers, the mind is not completely, totally free, and it never will be.

And that is not all. Then we have the other-than-conscious: The -un and -sub, you know. (And, by the way, you shouldn’t be too worried about the specifics here, we may in fact use them interchangeably, although we mostly prefer the -sub. We are not that niggling about such details, and they often overlap.)

To make a long story short: We are not only living within limited physical realities, but within our individually produced interpretations, our own mind–constructions of what life is and who we are. Much of the information and definitions of what makes up you are stored down below, in those the sub- and unconscious levels. Not only that; they are also active in filtering your experiences and responses, and even creating and/or modifying your activation impulses. So, the conscious part of you is not the complete you; it is dependent upon these other parts, which are not only passive memory banks used for storage: They are more in charge than most people are aware of; that is simply how we are made. This is important to understand before we move on – we shall soon discuss this in more details. But this is the fundament, the necessary bottom line that we have to know, first of all.

Accepting this will itself be a significant step in the right direction. Luckily, we have access to more than the tip of the iceberg - at least potentially. There is an ongoing interaction between the conscious and what is present underneath the surface, and it should be going both ways. Neither can function without the other. We just need to create a working connection. And that has a lot to do with what this book is all about.

The Subconscious and Patterns

A lot of what is found in the subconscious domain is represented by and through shortcuts and helpers for the conscious mind. Here, we describe and define them under the general umbrella of patterns. These are pre-programmed behavioural components, and some of those strongly influence how we function in our daily lives. They may be sub- or unconscious, or even partially conscious. But being mostly automatic or at least semi-automatic in nature, they are working underneath the surface, below our conscious level of awareness. Even if we are aware of them, they are being used without us thinking (much) about it.

Patterns come in all kinds of different shapes and forms, so to speak. Some are general, others are more specific. Some are strong, others are weak. There are patterns related to how we think, how we feel, how we act and react. Some are innate and common for many or all of us. But quite a few are learned, and have become natural parts of us without us even noticing it, perhaps especially the parental and familial ones, influencing us from very early on. We may here include everything from basic personality traits to cultural influences and beliefs. Any of those behavioural units did not have to be strong or intense in order to be installed. Even small details and minor traits, features, characteristics, habits, manners and quirks (to name a few, you may add as many as you wish) can be effectively duplicated inside us, as they are being reinforced, over, over and over again, through regularity and repetition.

When it comes to taking in information from the outer world, they act as powerful filtering and priority channels, building upon previous experience. Being participants in a complex world, our minds are set up in a way that they are required to make sense of it all, working all the time to place those units of information in context: Deciphering, defining and storing according to importance, priority and associations. These processes are going on continuously, based on a sophisticated and intricate system of organization, following principles and rules that have already been clearly established and defined: Based on, and made to fit to, what is already programmed.

Communicating the other way, they not only filter and modify what goes from the subconscious to the conscious when the conscious part is active, but they also produce impulses. Has it ever occurred to you that those inducing factors that just pop up have to come from somewhere, whatever form they may take, whether they are thoughts, feelings or motivations and activation impulses to do something? They do not come out of the blue; they must necessarily have to be initiated, assembled, and produced somewhere before they are sent to the conscious surface - and that is being done in those factories deep down. And that is being done regularly, and for a reason. And the conscious part is only at the receiving end. Now, that’s worth a thought or two.

Our minds are heavily influenced by a multitude of such patterns, all the time. Then, the question necessarily arises: Who is in charge inside? Is our conscious mind-theatre nothing more than an observer of automatic mechanisms, having few other functions than to communicate the prefabricated (also by those factories down below, of course) explanations for whatever robotic behaviour we are exhibiting – or even who we choose to be?

Far from it. But we are, to some degree, running on automatic, all of us. And make no mistake about it: That is not all negative or dysfunctional - quite the contrary. Especially those everyday patterns and functions are not only helpful, but indispensable. They are there for a reason, and that is to make life easier for us. They save us a lot of time; we do not have to reinvent the wheel every so often, and they can protect us in so many ways, as some are functioning as effective survival mechanisms, too. So, besides being products of evolution, we are to some extent standing on the shoulders of, if not necessarily giants, at least somebody - that is, our mentors as well as our predecessors - that did some hard work and handed over what they considered being the best possible alternatives to us. Thus, in some areas of life, there is a free lunch, after all: It has already been paid for by those that came before us, near or far, close or distant.

The Need For Taking Charge

So, patterns are helpful, at least more often than not. But you have probably, more than once, observed something that made you think "how in the whole wide world could he or she do/act/say/accept something so totally meaningless/ naïve/ stupid/ absurd/ destructive/ pointless/ ugly/ disastrous/ repulsive/ inane/ silly/ harmful/ meaningless (or whatever - add your own choice)? And why are some people banging their heads in the same wall, over and over again? Or, on a larger scale, why has the world gone (or always been, for that matter) mad, nuts, bonkers?

Having developed those inner automatic systems to such a level has come at a price. Certain patterns may become completely outdated and need to be changed, in fact, sometimes they may be outright destructive. Too often, we are lost in antiquated settings, or perhaps loops and spirals, of which we have little or no use. We may find ourselves locked in a psychological prison, or a labyrinth, not being able to find a way out, because our mental resources of looking for and evaluating other possibilities are not there: They do not pass through our filtering systems so that they reach our conscious levels, and may not be activated at all. We may be blind to other possibilities, and the ability to investigate, analyze and interpret anything may become seriously limited. Our experience of life can even be reduced; circling around whatever themes our subconscious may allow us to play with. We may be locked in, confined to a limited zone where some deeper parts of ourselves have defined and set up the barriers, and we may not even be aware of it: Our inner resources are not only stuck in some static mode, but have become seriously distorted or damaged.

Although being educated individuals in what at least on the surface may appear to be advanced and enlightened cultures, all too many of us are still following the old trails, having neglected or, for whatever reasons, missed the opportunity to move on to the next stage: To understand and take charge of our inner resources, to where we are administering, controlling and designing our own lives. Therefore, too many of us just struggle through our individual lives as best we can, making it up as we go along, making use of the patterns and experiences that we have brought with us. And, in the hustle and bustle of our busy daily lives, we are stuck with ourselves, within ourselves, and there is little time left for analysis, reflection, change, growth and improvement.

It is amazing, isn’t it, how so many go through life without even the most basic understanding of how their minds work. Think about it: You would not even consider becoming successful in any profession, or in athletics and sports, for example, or whatever - in anything! - without spending the time and efforts and without getting the necessary education, training and experience.

Which is more than we can say about how the School of Life prepares us for living our own lives.

This is how it has been, and this is how it is today. So many of us are rigidly pattern-driven, with rather inflexible internal systems. And without the tools and insights we are about to discuss here, it is difficult, if not impossible, to detect our own obstructions, blockages and malfunctions. The vast majority of us are blind, or at least somewhat near-sighted, to some degree, to some of them, in some areas. In other words, we all may have something to learn here.

Then again: Life isn’t always easy, and we do not come to this planet equipped with built–in user manuals or with a complete set of pre–installed mental software. Therefore, we should not begin our journey here being ashamed, guilty or regretful of who we are and what we have become, as individuals, as groups or as a species. Seriously, there is far too much of that going around already. From the very beginning, we, as all other animals, have had to make use of our resources as best we could, often relying on primitive, innate and tribal survival mechanisms and strategies that, although outdated today, may be perfectly understood and explained from the perspectives of evolutionary, biological and social psychology. And inheriting such patterns from previous generations has probably helped us survive.

Add generous amounts of common stupidity and ignorance, superstition, a huge bunch of tyrannical, corrupt and even insane leaders and a dash of regularly appearing mass hysteria to that soup, and you may find it impressive if not outright unbelievable that humanity is still present on this planet. Living in and through all this, we have had to make mistakes, by trying and failing, taking two steps forward and even going backwards - many, many times. So, this is the summa summarum: We are where we are - and who we are, for a number of quite explainable reasons.

True, we are so much more than the sum of our parts. We are definitely not limited to being nothing but semi–automatic robots, forever running on autopilot. More correctly, our potential is much greater than that. But our auto-circuits, functional or not, useful or not, are all too often activated and in charge, and, unfortunately, especially when we are facing problems or challenges. Too often, too many of us are being pushed and pulled, back and forth, by these self-activating and seemingly unreachable, uncontrollable installations. Even if we repeat the mantra of free will over and over, the deeper parts of us may not agree, and they continue to play their own games. We are not always the master of our own residence. And that, we are going to change.

Connecting the Conscious and the Subconscious to Make Changes - Effectively

No matter how much we try, we may not be able to get into every nook and cranny of our subconscious and our deepest automatic control systems. And, fortunately, neither do we have to. For example, much of the internal monitoring of physiological activities is running on autopilot, so, usually, the body is, for the most part, able to take care of itself. In fact, it could not be done any other way. Even if we could override some of these systems, we would not have the time to do so. It will never be necessary to constantly check a countless number of bodily functions, from blood pressure to digestion, the release of hormones and a variety of other substances, the status of internal organs (especially the kidneys and the liver on Saturday night?) or the filtering of pain signals, together with countless others. Compare that to what’s going on inside your computer while you’re playing Solitaire: Innumerable computations without you being aware of it – without having to know anything about it, even! And, as far as your body is concerned, the time you save can be used for more important tasks, such as experiencing life, for example by having enjoyable sensory experiences, being creative or doing something useful. Or playing Solitaire.

Monitoring the bodily functions is one thing, but that is also the case for our Ego maintenance and supervision. It deserves and needs repeating: Luckily, most of our automated functions and programming are useful. The subconscious is, after all, supposed to do what it is doing. We will never have to change, repair or replace all of the inventory down there, no matter how many individual problems we seem to have - superficially. We should perhaps be grateful and send it some thanks, every once in a while. After all, it is doing the best of what it is being presented with, and it seldom goes completely on strike, no matter how it is being treated (okay, it may freeze in protective mode and/or need some mind engineering once in a while, but it is amazingly self-reliant and self-repairing, after all). Most of its functions and programming we may want to keep as they are. For the most of us, there is not very much we actually need to change. That is important to understand and accept before we become overwhelmed, stuck in the delusional state of everything is wrong with me. It is not.

So, we may want to make some changes, then. If for nothing else, it would at least be interesting to explore the possibilities! The problem is that those deeper systems are designed for continuation and do not give priority to sudden changes – and especially not those based on our own will: That is, a sudden idea in our conscious, that something deep down there should have the courtesy and consideration to turn around and adjust according to our commands – or wishes - in an instant. Not so.

We will have to face the fact that many patterns are strongly and firmly established with a high level of priority, and/or have been around for so long that it is difficult to get rid of them just with a shrug. Resistance to change is usually an essential part of the pattern itself. After all, any good and strong pattern should resist change. If it is important, it should fight for its life! It is the inherent strength of the pattern, its place in the pattern hierarchy, so to speak, that determines the resistance. Although a powerful motivation, either caused by inspiration or desperation, may be effective at times, that isn’t always the case. By continually banging our heads on the same concrete wall, attempting to use will power, we may go on forever, with little or no results where it is really needed. We may even create strong inner conflicts, with quite negative reactions, and finally end up where we began, or worse.

The conscious part of us, which so many are so proud of, is just not strong enough and does not have the training to effectively influence the deeper levels. The problem: Our erasing and adjusting mechanisms are not enough developed. We are simply not equipped with a universal zeroing device or a general reset function. Quite the contrary,