foreign ERS those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist so um Daniel and I are back we're talking about this idea of people having egos existential Guardian operating systems yeah sort of a coinage of Daniels and uh we started a couple of weeks ago and this is sort of our follow-up episode to it so maybe the thing to start this off we decided off Mike before this thing before we started talking was maybe giving Daniel a chance just to kind of give a brief summary of the idea again and then uh I think the focus will be how you start challenging this thing anyways I'll throw it over to you right yeah yeah so the idea sort of you know as as we alluded to as I alluded to in the previous episode came out of some books that I was reading one of which was the myth of normal uh by gabrante that I've mentioned a few times down several different episodes that I read in December he's like everywhere Now isn't he well he's had a really big media push with his new book I mean I feel like you know given his age and he said that he needed covet to write this previous one that this may end up being his last real significant work you know I mean are you uh are you a follower of his in any major way I mean I know who he is I have a general sense I haven't I quite like him to eat I quite like him you know he is somebody who is a you know Western trained doctor psychology kind of you know motivated individual but then has really leaned uh away from it but not in in not in a disparaging way and actually in a more holistic way to say oh I know when you need something then you need that you need chemotherapy then you you got to go get that thing but at the same time like do the work that's required for you to understand who you are as that process is occurring you know and unwind all of the things that are occurring while you're unwind all the various aspects of yourself while you're going through that treatment and so he'll talk to people who are in chemotherapy or prisoners or whomever and he'll talk to them about their trauma come to find out they've never been asked about that before and he's like this is the failure how can you spend time with somebody and not ask about this and say oh this prisoner is totally sane and has no childhood issues of course the guy's gonna say I you know I didn't have any issues I was fine you know what I'm saying so he's like this is looking at the obvious holes in the system and saying okay well then that's a place where we could fill with something else and here are some other Alternatives like traditional medicine you know practices or ceremonies and and how can we take Traditions from the ancient world and use them today just because they're not prevalent doesn't mean that like we have to throw out all of their medicine you know because we discovered penicillin 70 years ago you know what I mean well that's been kind of a mission statement of our lives right professionally you know because you like TCM doesn't mean that you don't think a surgical intervention could be good when it's warranted it's a wrap like and I guess the other part you're talking about is just the idea like there might you might have a huge population who no one ever asked them about their trauma because they never had access to the kind of mental health that would care about the person enough to even ask them the question right correct yeah that there wasn't a part of the system to do that and the fair points yeah and like you're you know you're a general practitioner and you're seeing patients how long do you have with people seven minutes you can't get into anything in seven minutes yeah I actually I haven't seen a western GP in a while but they're not you know it's been a long time since I had a meaningful conversation with one right and and that's the system that's how the insurance company that pays them is designed the productivity oh yeah yeah for sure so you know it's it's missing the the care in you know Alternative Care holistic care allopathic care is missing completely so this is his that's his face that's his basic stance okay yeah and he's a you know and he's a practice I mean he's one of his book when one of his books is called like uh the realm of the Hungry Ghost so he's certainly highly you know Buddhist influenced yeah maybe I I it's really funny because I put the dots together that he's Aaron mate's father who's sort of like yeah you know more of like uh alternative journalist you might say I hadn't actually even connected that together in my mind yeah it happened because my daughter needed some materials for a uh a project she was doing up in you know undergrad her in one of her classes and she just stumbled across across this interview with Gabriel mate being interviewed by Aaron Mata he went holy [...] let's do our connected I had no idea anyways okay I'll give him more of a tumble again it's more like just like I know who he is but I haven't really spent that deep of a Time figuring out who he is yeah yeah yeah so for our audience he's you know if you haven't checked him out definitely worth uh worth diving well I mean if we want to do it I mean we've been talking about doing things that are timely if it's like this this is a thing we could I could listen to the book we could do an episode out and maybe yeah I'll give some reactions I'm thinking a lot about psychology so we'll see how this comes up actually okay you know in this episode I have like some I've had some interesting conversations with multiple people in the last 24 hours about what psychology actually is but okay let's do it okay what's this ego thing so you know as we talked about last time egos egos yeah as an acronym uh because I couldn't make it work with ego so I had to put the S and I was like all right fine we'll speak in plural even if it's singular it's fine our egos uh the existential Guardian operating system and and this is really what it's pretty I think self-explanatory like this is the the aspects or aspect or aspects of ourselves that is always on that is sort of guarding ourselves in one way shape or form right it can be physical it can be emotional it can be mental it could be energetic but it's sort of like the Adaptive programming that is innate to the human I think and it's it's learned as in you learn it from your parents from your teachers from your aunts and uncles from your environment So when you say innateness I mean like there's innate propensity to develop this and then if it gets kind of conditioned by the environment or something absolutely so you can learn from the environment but then it's innate as in like it's part of our success as a species right so it's like people oh I want to you know transcend my ego I want to blast off and kill the ego or whatever it's like that's why we're here is because that ability to maintain life stay connected to the community of you know hunter-gatherers people in society now is why we're here because you're good at what you're good at but you're not a hunter you don't know how to make clothes you can't build a car you don't know how to build a house you know we so we we need each other in this way and the way in which that we work together I think is important to be successful in our interpersonal Communications and interpersonal relationships I guess this is part of what you've been trying to get to in a number of these conversations we have more lately where you don't want to take a thing and just completely blast it because it has some functionality or something or you don't want to get into a situation where you're just having people be completely negative on themselves in some way that really isn't fair something like that is that is that what I'm hearing from you yeah and and it goes and it's functionality to this thing too it's not just it's a high functionality that serves a completely negative thing it's served for a very long period of time actually you know because it wasn't that long ago that people were in small societies smaller societies you know smaller kind of tribes or 100 people to 300 people whatever it was you know I mean we have this idea that the the way history is is how the movies portray it right and some fiefdom somewhere right with the king and the blacksmith and whatever but like there weren't kingdoms everywhere that that just there's a few of them but not that many so there's far more tribes that there were you know and if you were ostracized or you didn't get along with somebody or you're you know you didn't fit and for whatever reason and you were kicked out of that culture or that tribe you're dead you're dead it's just a matter of time and not only do you die your genes die right so your ability to to move forward and stuff that's that's eliminated so it really was important for people to kind of like fit but as I think as Society has grown and we have a much more of a larger Network there really is no like ostracizing people to the point where they're going to leave Society that's kind of like jail or something like that at this point um that our need to have these sort of mechanisms within us is now becoming a detriment to our our Communications to our relationships with ourselves with inside of us and with each other um on a functional way you know yeah yeah kind of like um you're talking about in a different way than we did a couple of weeks ago so I'm gonna process right yeah yeah so what's the down so what's the what's the downside now with that like why in what ways would that become a negative so in in a negative way that like the ways in which you would maybe look at like defending yourself so we'll look at two we'll take two sides one would be defense and one would be like minimum minimalization okay minimalization meaning you want to make you want to keep peace right and I think for the most part this tends to fall more on women than men um and so they'll minimize themselves they won't speak their mind they will just sort of like swallow things and keep it on the inside so that things are Kosher on the outside and that everybody's kind of happy but really they're not they're unhappy and so even though we would say oh that's not your ego because people always view the ego as like this aggressive kind of ID version like we talked about last time with uh yeah with Freudian points right that's this attacking thing it's it's also it's all of the things about the ego is an attacking thing but that doesn't even matter from what you're saying right I'm just saying like a very animalistic kind of ID perspective uh uh uh that the ego is managing the it or something yeah yeah and then so that's that's the minimalization part and then the other part would be like the sort of attacking part right the the quick equips and the insults and the you know aggressiveness and things like this you know as like these are the kind of two sides that I feel okay so Daniel when you're again we're talking you talk about this in a little bit of a different way than what we were talking about a couple weeks ago and you've had an interesting couple of weeks so you're probably just yeah processing [...] in different ways so um Daniel was uh uh off uh experiencing some medicine yeah yeah yeah yeah we were in we were in Mexico yeah so um so what's the difference between this and sort of like maybe like what you might call like a persona so I think that they're wrapped up inside that one's Persona has these aspects to it but these were you know these aspects to it are as we did talk about last time adaptive right and they they're they're learned they're innate to who you are they're inherited like they have all of these things are sort of wrapped up on on the inside and so I think my point in in bringing all of this up is that not only and you know and sort of I have learned a lot in the last few weeks just from my own you know from my eyes seeing people go through their own process which maybe is why um my stance has changed a little bit on it um but that like it is it is a process that is you know maybe multi-faceted multi-faceted in a way that maybe I was unaware of before and then just sort of like diving even deeper into it as I sort of allow myself evolving Concept in your mind or something like that yeah without a doubt throwing and expanding yeah yeah so um so I is the problem because this comes up in our Chinese medical world too um I studied this sort of uh there's a Chinese medical pulse diagnostic system doesn't matter for our podcast but the guy who's associated with this is this guy named Dr Leon hammer and he was a child psychiatrist before he was a traditional Chinese medical person and one of his ideas that comes through is you can develop ways of like integrating into the world of relating to the world that the time are functional a certain time they work yeah so maybe that becomes your existential Guardian operating system at some point right yeah but at a later date that's no longer functional that's what I'm yeah and maybe you're even talking about that kind of like you're almost talking about that historically or something yes there'd be certain aspects of this for functional when you were living in a certain kind of community setting or something like that when the situation changes then this way of even being in the world isn't uh isn't going to work anymore it's such a problem something like that yep that's exactly what I'm saying that's exactly what I'm saying and so this this idea then is I think part of who part of all of the part of growth for everybody I you know sort of and we're going to talk about it right identifying it or you know ident investigation and identification these two eyes that we talked about at the end of last episode is inherent to the growth of of sentient beings basically right it's looking at these conscious and unconscious processes or programs if you will because we like to use this Hardware software kind of thing right these these sort of programs that are that are latent in US within us that we have developed first of all and that maybe even more importantly the harder ones to get to are the ones that we didn't develop the ones that were handed to us and that happened last week in some ways I think in psychology you say this is kind of like unconscious almost yes yeah a lot of things are happening especially when you're young you're not really fully conscious that you're inheriting these things that's what you're talking about and so yes and maybe even maybe even more than that maybe it's genetic maybe there are some things that are just that that have been so ingrained for the last 10 15 20 25 Generations that's just how it is you know they're just like that's what you believe and I have to say like from my point of view you know is more of a buddhistini daoisty Zanny minded person that that's not as much in my wheelhouse it's probably a little bit more in your wheelhouse which is fine you know for me I don't tend to think about like the genetic programming being so overwhelmingly dominating or something like that right but I think that's just and I wouldn't I'm not gonna like uh have a big argument about it right right right but I'm just like okay by reaction that in part would be like well I don't know if I think about it entirely in that way but that's cool you know I hear what you're saying there's a part of me that like um it doesn't doesn't Vibe as me as easy as it does with you but that's cool it's a point that like you're never going to be able to prove nor disprove right it's I think the the uh the larger point is to say it's deep in the subconscious whether that subconscious is floating in the cloud and gets put into the mind you know that went upon you know birth or conception or however however you look at life you know whatever um or it's already in the coding of the structure and you just get it you know and therefore you have to interact with it it doesn't really matter six and one half doesn't of the other it's there you know regardless it's there and I don't know that unless you're looking for it consciously looking for it I don't know that you're going to find it but what you're basically talking about in the end is you're talking about the process of like self-reflection where you use these two eyes right to kind of go back and look and say okay let me at least become self-aware enough to look at things in an identification way and I'll dig deeper into what this is yes so I need to have the self-awareness to identify and then I need to have a little bit more of the perseverance and and uh continuation of the idea to like really investigate the whole thing so I could start to understand how this part of me works that's what you're truly trying to say that's it but that's like the theme of like our whole uh podcast too it is right you want to go back and you want to like look closely at who you are it is those things that are good keep and those things that are non-functional uh do correct right but the difference is that when you when you're taking something from a particular standpoint of when you're from a particular point of view and then you could put tools on it right because a lot of the the difficult part you're trying to put language and tools on something that will become mental um form helpers right to be able to do this yeah trying to create form on the things that don't necessarily have form but are totally there and that are form-ish yeah yeah right so that's why so we so we talked about the egos right or our egos and that you know the ways to to kind of like work through them or work with it and then you know as you've mentioned as we kind of been mentioning the first step into that is uh investigation and this and the form of Investigation is what your is what we is what you're mentioning now and what we've mentioned numerous times but in this context it fits I think quite well and the investigation part is is this self disc is this self-reflection whether that self-reflection comes through uh forms of meditation whether that self-reflection comes through journaling whether that you know you talked about how how deep it was for you to get your head shrunk when you were in college you know using psychology something like this whether it comes through artwork or some other form of self-expression or being in nature and just able to connect to the environment in a different kind of a way you know however that comes all of those things come with space you need space for all of them you know mental or physical and I think you know as we as we move into the the Contemporary sort of like tangible parts for people one thing that people don't have now much of is space actually and for various reasons there's a lot more of us now than there were before there's a lot more demands on our time but that when we have open moments of you know quote-unquote open moments of time what do we do with that time we grab our precious you know and then and I'm holding the phone for those who are listening to on on audio you know we grab our precious and we're like smeagle you know my precious you know and so like that that time for daydreaming that time for like in between thoughts and you know being productive or Whatever Gets completely eliminated unless you actively go out of your way to do that and if you can't find the time for that you'll never be able to find and I don't like to say the word never but I don't know how someone will find the time to to discover unconscious processes I don't know how that's going to happen if you don't make the time to do that um yeah so that's the that's the investigative part let me give you a chance yeah yeah so you need to have like uh um anyways I'm rolling with it you're kind of going with the idea of like uh it's gonna take an act of like proactivity to do this or something like that right yeah yeah yeah proactive reflection through whatever medium is natural for for the person and allowing this space to do that and if you need to make take steps away from things that are your kind of crutches of your distractions and things you just be able to like confront those things so that's like that's been like one of your uh issues and points of bitching about since the very first episode we ever did you've been talking about I'll hold it up to the phone these little devices yeah no like the whole time what a problem they are and you of course you're right yeah so that's that's the that's the investigative part and the investigative part is just simply doing the doing the looking doing the looking right until you talk about you know breaking you know Breaking Habits or we can even call them like you know addictions to some things right that we have in our life that they create this energetic Loop between us and that thing and the behavior that goes around it that just keeps us in a loop but not able to kind of break away so to be able to to look at all these things critically and say okay you know where what do I have going on inside of me right now and then the other part of the identification part right and that's the labeling of the thing right and labels aren't always like good because you know okay you're labeled an addict and you're all once an addict always an addict I'm a recovering alcoholic like well I guess but you're okay like you're not drinking right now so you're good you know we don't have to call you a recovering alcoholic actually like uh friend of the show and personal friend of mine and Justin key and we had an interesting conversation yesterday because he's really on into the same thing that you were talking about earlier he's really interested in how technology and social media affect people yeah more that [...] train wreck it's been you know it's been so bad and it was funny because I've known him for a long time and like if we went back to our younger years when he and I knew each other in undergrad he had this I'm slightly going tangible I'll make sure we pull it back sure but you know um he had a little bit of that like sort of techno-utopianism about him and we were talking about that yesterday um and I was saying well what do you what would older you say back to younger you about this because it was part of that whole thing we'll have this Internet space and cyberspace will be this free world and you know um that's going to be this uh you know kind of alternate reality Utopia of equality and it's like taught that not to be that way at all and not only did it turn out not to do it but it turned out to be really bad for people like crazy bad so he's like was sending me some of these stats which I'm familiar with from this Jonathan hate of just how destructive this social media has been especially on kids it's just like yeah horrible for them you know and uh We've alluded it to it different times during some of the episodes like self-harm and suicide rates especially amongst girls are like crazy and you could like clearly trace it back to like 2012 or something you know as the social media availability through the devices got to be more ubiquitous you know kids to slid more and more and I'm getting to this point where a lot of the self-identification thing and how you can labor yourself wrong he was just telling me about this which I had never heard of but these little sub communities within the social media sphere where people kind of label their illnesses and like cling to them in this yeah like they're I guess they're like support groups but really not but you kind of labor yourself as like a major depression person that's your diagnosis and you grasp this diagnosis and you hold on to it so strong and uh I mean it was just like basically bemoaning how hard it's going to be then to treat people for depression because you're identifying as a depressed person what are you gonna do it's like it's your self-identity now right yeah claiming identity is this diagnosis or something so anyways I don't know I think that the two of the things you were talking about I guess the identifying it's kind of persona I don't know how it fits into the ego's idea and then also the competency the damaging effects of these [...] games yeah I think you know part of the the discriminating ones uh diagnosis can be a source of support with other people who have similar things they don't feel like they're alone but I can totally I could totally see the point of like if you're identifying as that thing as opposed to you then then that is you yeah you know and that and then you have to break away from that and then when you do that then where are you who are you at that point you know I guess a desperation to find identity there too or something for sure way of using your word and so that's the whole point of this is this is the identification part right and the identification portion is like okay I have constructs that are currently residing with inside of me right and maybe they come out at certain points and I could say oh I get reactive when someone doesn't say hello and I say hello to them and this is a thing for me if this is a real thing you know like oh yeah hello to somebody I don't get reactive like what the hell what you know but like I'm like if I greet somebody at a store or something like that I'm like and they don't say anything I'm like that's weird you know what I'm saying like you know what I'm saying so that's the thing like that but that's recognizable I don't have to spend you know hours a day in meditation to know that you know what I'm saying like traffic though traffic doesn't bother me at all though I I don't have zero we're joking with the traffic because that's the example they always use in these spiritual circles you're suffering stuck in traffic that's that's kind of light example and yeah you know but like you know it's an example and it's right because people probably have this kind of frustration so much right in adult Street deliver like we've said numerous times now you know yeah yeah um people get angry at adult life you know so so you don't have to spend a lot of time in meditation to know that there are things that bother you right that's not the identification part that's the investigation part right the identification is for me is the deeper aspects when someone will say um oh hey you looked at me funny one day when I said this thing and then you didn't even know you did it then it gets brought to your attention and now you realize oh I didn't you know there's all this kind of unconscious stuff that happens without us being aware of it and so now you can start to say oh I'm just I'm reacting and not in like a triggered State like oh my God you know not like this just it's more subtle right but you're trying to figure out these deeper processes that are that are occurring in addition to the gross ones but I I feel like it's these the deeper ones that are underneath the current you know that are just underneath the level of our normal Consciousness that caused the ripples that create the waves that that affect our Persona or that end up being the sort of like egoic uh manifestation of our defensive mechanisms you know for whatever those might be for people so what do you think like if you do the investigation identification then is it the awareness itself that just is going to kind of undo these things I think Freud has this saying about like making the unconscious conscious yeah that's kind of like his motto you could put it on a t-shirt or something if you want yeah summarize his thing was that what you're kind of talking about here too that you once you become more and more aware you can start to break these things apart I think so and and the reason and there's a couple there's a couple reasons behind I don't think it's automatic like oh there it is I put a flashlight on and now it's gone they're not cockroaches you know like they're gonna go somewhere else right but the thing is you're only going to find these things out if you have a desire to do that so it's the desire to to do that penetration that once it gets in there then it starts to like change the color of the water or change the you know spin at the Top If you want to use a different example that allows that to happen and your awareness and not not just plain awareness but the awareness with desire to improve or to change for the better you know in kind of like a compassionate way right because you're wanting to be a better being for not just other people but also for yourself because why would you want to react in a way that you didn't have some influence over right it doesn't it doesn't seem like a a good thing to do in life um and so this kind of thing changes it and if and if you do hold as we've talked about numerous times because we are you know highly in Buddhist influence podcast you know the the idea of like compassion being I guess like the wind in your sales that when you're doing that drilling essentially that's the that's the win that's pushing that drill you know is the betterment for yourself and to be better in in your group of human beings that you share with whether it be your family your friends or otherwise that does have to be Buddhist obviously that's Christian and Superior and everybody yeah yeah yeah all right let me throw out the more you want to add on to that before I like okay let me throw this does that make sense I mean is that does that seem yeah would I get in the end of it really is I get the idea like it's kind of like putting um uh words and Concepts and things that are kind of accessible onto these processes I think that's the underlying goal yeah right that's exactly to make it like okay here's a little phrase egos existential Guardian operating system what would that mean actually let's put that idea out there now let's think of what that would mean some of that might be things where you're like uh responding negatively to things right and it's habitual so let's look at that why am I defending myself in this way why is this operating system like misbehaving you know other times you could even say well I don't have to be that hard on myself maybe there's ways in which this thing has done me benefit so let me treat that with some compassion too I can give you compassion to this thing and then you get to the investigation and identify parts and you're saying like Okay this is a useful just little like uh toolkit a little heuristic you know to kind of capture this process right what am I trying to really do I'm trying to do a two-step thing I'm first trying to like look at myself and recognize that things are there and then I want to investigate I want to dig deeper into this right uh yeah so anyways yeah yeah you know you're like you're describing it in a way that can be accessible so that uh uh yeah people can internalize it and uh and do it more easily right yeah does that make sense to what you're trying to say Daniel yeah and I think it's a good it's a good good summary okay so let me throw out this just happens to be going on so especially one person I really love and care about but people I love and care about you know are having these experiences in the psych world you know and so some of this is related back to psychology obviously we started this and a lot of psychological concepts of what you're putting out here too so I've been thinking about this a lot I've been having conversations with people about it and I've been self-reflecting too on this and trying to figure out what I think how I think this works okay let me throw it out and then you let me know how you think it identify like how it feeds back with what you've been talking about yeah so I um I had interesting conversations in the past week there's one guy I know who's going back and he's doing his psychology like he's seeing a psychologist for the first time in his life right already kind of in his 40s so I was like this is interesting right because I did this kind of in my 20s I was just in a different stage in my life or something and he's reflecting back on sort of his childhood and kind of thinking about how these things maybe got formed which I think is part of what you're talking about right yeah this is sort of what you might call fancily etiology where do things come from right so he's kind of trying to reflect back and then I'm like that's cool and so he's talking about his relationship with his dad and these things and obviously he's seeing a psychologist and running through this and this is good right and when I was going through this myself I guess I would look at this ego's part is kind of like a little peeling an onion sometimes the way it feels or something yeah you start peeling back and you start looking okay what's actually there you know I'm going to take a more focused eye not critical in the in the negative sense but critical and like an investigatory sentence per your language to see what's actually there let me really look at myself more deeply and it has this like onion peeling thing and I think there's there was good in that for me when I was doing this like my beloved psych Mentor Michael and we were doing this together um but then what really hit me and I've been trying to talk about this and again I don't know how it fits exactly into your idea but you can tell me what you think where at a certain point I realized like it wasn't like pulling an onion apart anymore it was much more like there was some truer version of myself that wanted to come out and that was the problem you know and it like built up all of this you know internal I guess we'd probably say Yang if we can do yin yang stuff but internal pressure and this internal thing you're going to like Express who I was right that's how I was really feeling and it like things had shifted and it wasn't so much like I wanted to go back into my past and figure out like where'd this one come from or where did that one come from something different was happening yeah it was more like no there's a version of like a more authentic version of me that wanted to come out right and to me that was the much more like important psychological moment in my life if I were to think about it in the psychological part right my psychological experiences that was when it got really meaningful now maybe you can't get to that until you start taking this stuff apart to get to the point where this other thing will start to express itself maybe that's possible but I've wondered about it a lot and I could I was remembering back what it was like to go through and do these psychological experiences where you're kind of like reliving some of the most nasty [...] of your entire life yeah so anyone's who ever done this has ever done this you kind of can relate to this you'd go and you're sitting there and you're thinking about like the worst [...] that's ever happened to you and you're talking about it and I can remember sometimes just leaving like in the [...] days just completely like disoriented and almost I was talking about something earlier about it and you know almost like dissociate like you were like in some dissociative State you were in some kind of weird-ass fugue's sake and you'd like stumble into the subway and I'd go down and like be sitting in like some bench waiting for my train to come just like because it was like the worst things that ever happened and there's probably a value in that but it's am I reflecting back I've been thinking about a lot I think where it really happened where it got interesting was more like when this expressive part of myself started to come out and I realized no what really is happening here is a truer version of myself wants to emerge and wants to come out and I think I Associated ultimately with Zen I think that was part of the reason why I got interested in Zen because I started to realize well no this is going to be some part of me that wants to come out and it's much more a truer reflection and it's uh much less kind of like inhibited or maybe less much less kind of repressed or something and it wants to come out in this Natural Way sure so maybe that naturally fits into this ego's thing that there's some tension within this but I thought I would throw it out to you just because yeah that's what's been going on in my mind you know talking with people who are seriously sincerely going through this one person I love very much going through this and really thinking okay what's happening with them now what you know how is this what's this experience like now for them going through the psychology probably challenging there's an existential Guardian operating system and like reflecting back on my experience and going no the most meaningful things was when some the thing that was Curative I would say that actually like produced The Cure was the expressive part when it actually was like no there's some other version of me that wants to pop out right that was the thing that was The Cure not the digging around ripping stuff apart though maybe that's a necessary process but that wasn't the Cure anyways I thought I'd throw it out to you and just see how it fits into how you think about this and you can take this wherever you want to go well I think that like both have to be so in order to have the defense you know so we look at this thing right we're saying it's it's a defense system right it's a guardian it's guarding something well what's it guarding is it guarding itself like we talked about last episode a little bit it's guarding itself for its own self-preservation yeah that'd be probably a very spiritual idea right and is it guarding the the structure the function the being right for for its own reproduction reproductive purposes yeah that makes sense that's why we're here as a species okay is it guarding anything else and possibly and then I think what that other thing would be is the deepest aspect of what you're talking about right who it is that you are and so we we have these kind of what do you want to call it nervous systems right and so we have this kind of like I I aspects of ourselves that are geared towards fighting if there's an issue and there's an idea of running if there's an issue you know and that's how we sort of manage things a little bit right and there's there's more subtleties to it than that but from you know fight or flight is generally understood or freeze or something like that yeah this is kind of like understood in the normal lexicon language of people generally speaking but that like that's what it is that that it's defending so its job is to preserve the being I.E preserve the localized phenomenon that is Eric that is Daniel that is all of our listeners right that's that because without this then the other thing isn't here also I mean it's around somewhere but it's not here in the way that it is now so there's a fun like we've said before there's an aspect to it and I think then that like as somebody has this whether whether that spark comes from the inside or the outside I can't say I don't know maybe it depends on the person's story but there is a desire to like have greater internal Harmony right so that the being that you're talking about this natural state of being can act in a more authentic way right we talk about authenticity all the time and I think that's where it comes for me this is how I feel like that's where it comes from so it has to do that and that's the thing that's doing the work that's the thing that's like hey click click click click you know I don't feel that way but if someone said that they saw me they saw my body do this well then this my body and me are doing something that I'm unaware of okay well now I have to figure that [...] out because that's not who I want to be right same thing someone says something to me that I don't like and I just snap back at him hey shut your face you know or whatever right oh well that's not me either I don't want to react like that why did I just do that now I have to go in and do the investigative part so that I can be my most authentic natural self and for me like the identification of this thing the of the ego system and then this investigation and identification is a means of like the self unbearing or or unburdening itself with things that are inherent in Incarnation actually mm-hmm so um yeah I mean there's a kind of like a survival part of what you kind of like allude back to that yeah yeah I can remember like uh the Zen master I studied with hosakara roshi was like you need some part of this otherwise you just walk in the traffic getting hit by a truck exactly you need something that functions in this way that allows you to like continue to like be viable as an organism in the in the environment around you right yes yeah um sometimes I guess in Chinese medicine for people who are Trump some of our Chinese masses and people you might associate this with like the PO or something like that yeah so um it's like a part of the Consciousness the part of the nature of the person right that does this work right yeah yeah so what do you think of the idea of like the thing underneath like I'm I'm I again I don't know I'm thinking about this kind of deep you know and I'm watching people going back into their roots and like searching around their histories looking at like how what happened in their families of Origins impacted them yeah and tracing back these stories and I'm thinking okay obviously that has value you know that's a useful thing to do right and it's part of what you're talking about in your uh investigate and identify right you're talking about this thing um that you can see the origins of things but again it's just been like in my mind a lot because I'm thinking when I really look back on it in my own experience of this and it's like was was it Curative to go back and you know trace the roots of why I have certain personality things and all that back to my family of origin there probably was some value in that but the thing that was really important was this I guess kind of like unrepressing you know yeah so maybe this egos thing can become an apparatus a repression or something yeah but the the psychologist I guess ultimately kind of appealed to me were the ones that kept pointing out like if you repress Who You Are if you repress who you really are this is going to [...] your [...] up yeah those are the ones that really spoke to me whether that was like I suppose in Freud it's like repressing things that have to do with sexuality okay for what that's worth right but then young it's kind of like repressing who you are as a spiritual being if you're oppress that if you repress your maybe true um uh feelings desires you know a truer version of yourself and more like a Carl Rogers these are the people I kind of love you know even then Wilhelm Reich who I think we're going to talk about these people a little bit when we do our relationship episode so this is a bit unfortunately but you know he talks about the idea like you have natural feelings you want to like do creative activity you want to love you want to connect if those things aren't allowed to express themselves in a normal way they go toxic right but yeah yeah I mean that's what I'm saying like a lot of the ways in which we limit ourselves often is unconscious yeah yeah for sure you know and so the way the way through the way out is through the only way out is through really and so I think it's like to you know the question you're asking like that is the self the deeper aspect of the self right the the authentic one that wants to express itself in the most natural way that's the one that's do that's the one that's pushing hey these things are limiting the inside yeah yeah it's these things are limiting me you don't even realize it you know look at how look it's I'm not able to be me because when when we Act what comes out is not what the response that you're wanting you're always being misunderstood I like definitely can remember that feeling there's some disconnect between Who I Really Am and what's coming out there's something not matching no uh an existential offerings existential Guardian operating system yeah something like that was happening yeah but I suppose the bigger thing I'm throwing it out because it's just been in my mind exactly you know and it does relate back to this subject yeah I started to think was is it really the thing of like because I'm thinking about how psychology works too I'm not you know I'm watching people get through it and I'm like well all I can say is from my own experience what happened was I made this little flip and I started I can remember trying to describe it to people at the time going yeah there's some part of me that wants to come out you know and uh there's like a Zen quote about what it feels like to um swallow like a a hot iron filing so you have this feeling of something burning inside of you that wants to come out yeah that sounds the weird metaphor but you know like there's something that wants to burn its way out that was the switch and I think that would happen and that whether this adds to the conversation and the way that we're having about this ego's concept was I began to go like well let me identify those parts of this ego thing the way I thought about it that are not allowing this to come out that became kind of the switch you know that that became important you know some parts of this maybe they're okay but some parts aren't allowing this to express out and they got more focused that was my I guess identify identify and investigate experiences yeah there's some parts of this that are going to hold my [...] back and let me go back and look at these specifically and try to take those parts of this system so then the things that want to flow out can flow out yeah and it was interesting it sort of had to do with a lot with a certain kind of expressiveness and spontaneity then it became like I knew what I felt it was very clear you know I wasn't confused about what I felt and uh about the people around me or the circumstances I was in or whether I want to do it they could get much more clear it clarified out miraculously so there'll still be problems and you might have to make decisions that were you know not always the easiest you know it's just the exact right way to pursue my career or you know it's just the exact right relationship whatever but as far as understanding who I was it got very clear yeah and then internally I was super clear and it was just a question of like what can I do in my environment you know to express this so what do you think of all that does that fit into the way you're thinking about it too yeah no without a doubt I mean I think starting from where you where you were kind of picking up you were asking like is it necessary to go back and look at all the various inputs on your life and do this sort of history historical digging you know personal narrative kind of uh recapitulation as they call it in the Castaneda books right I think some of that is necessary actually you know to be able to look at your life and you know maybe not necessarily go through every grueling detail so because that would take as long as we're alive you know so that's probably not going to be a thing cost benefit analysis isn't going to pay off yeah not going to pay off by the time you get it it's gonna be too late you know but to also look at like the larger influences that everybody the archetypal influences that we have right from our Guardians whoever those are right and I use that word on purpose you know to look at who the look at who that is who they are and their influences on us and our relationships with them and then our relationships with our close-knit community brothers sisters maybe cousins close friends so on and so forth growing up are relationships romantically friendship or otherwise growing up our relationships with authority subordinates uh colleagues you know growing up and look at all these you know influences on trauma physical emotional or otherwise you know you could kind of do this and see how you reacted based on your earliest memories of things and then look at some other pieces and then say Okay are are there aspects that were carried forth you know and and do I want and then that is my adapt that is the adaptation portion of our egos right do I want that further do I want that now is that what I want moving forward and if the answer is yes change nothing it'll continue but the answer is no if the answer is no then you're almost it's almost required I think to try and find the Nexus point in which you made some agreement with yourself on that this is the right way to be for me for right now and then that was never changed later and only because it was successful once and it said okay I'll try it again oh worked again try it again oh it keeps working it might as well get better and that just gets very deeper deeper and deeper and so then once you're able to kind of pull not everything but at least some of these things then I think the sort of you become a little bit more Freer the self becomes a little bit more Freer and then the higher psychological that we talked about low and higher christologies before and if you've been listening to our show for a while you'll you'll kind of know you know what we've talked about but the sort of higher aspects of yourself of the actual you know the capital S self will be drawn towards different philosophies of thought and of being that what that will sort of mirror what it believes itself to ourselves to be and can kind of come out more naturally and authentically in those States but I think the untangling of our stories is very important because that's essentially who we are and being able to see it as detached from feeling as in like in the body feeling and seeing it on a piece of paper or using another human being as a mirror to kind of say okay like like you do like we do now okay Daniel here's what I'm hearing is this correct right this sort of actives open listening right reporter quota safe space but it's not just safe in that like I feel like I can speak it's it's important that I'm actually hurt and it's regurgitated back to me so that I know that what I'm saying is being heard and if not then I have the opportunity to change it because my narrative in my head is not the way that I'm feeling it to be and now I have the opportunity to correct it but I have that because I've gone back and done that before and I know what that process is like you know what I'm saying so untangling and then with that space that you've created from untangling the inside being whatever it is can start up can come out and be attracted to whatever in life karmically perhaps it wants to wants to you know Express itself through does that sort of vibe yeah yeah yeah yeah I guess I think you know we like to be personal in this yeah experiential so maybe I'm in a funny situation and that I had this psych Mentor experience and I really duck like it wasn't like it was years of doing this you know yeah because I had someone who was really kind and like extended that help to me and and I'll talk about maybe in future episodes what we'll be talking about this all the time but even when we do the relationship ones that are coming up I'll share a little bit specific of how he helped me uh so specifically but uh you know just the idea that like I went through that and then I also went through this earliest parts of my zen training yeah and you were talking about like the body keeps the score yeah you were talking about that with trauma and stuff maybe in the previous episode a couple of weeks ago related the same thing and so like in the Zen place where I was they did really deep body work kind of related back kind of to ralphing if people are familiar with that it's just a really aggressive somewhat painful let's be honest pretty [...] painful but worth the pain I think no pain no gain kind of Bodywork you know definitely not like uh let's pambria it was it was aggressive so I knew what it felt like to get like my body kind of gone over with this very deep um very deep kind of Bodywork that was specifically oriented around probably digging up trauma in ways right yeah so I did that too I did the physical side so I was like okay I get it and um and then I was doing this Zen and I suppose what I got in the end but I guess I'm trying to throw into the conversation and I'm glad it took this turn right because we're exploring different parts of this concept was after going through all of that that was probably the tearing a part of the ego part yeah that was the challenging part that was the I and I part that you were talking about yeah and the only thing I guess I wanted to add to the conversation just because it's been coming up in my life I'm thinking about this deeply with people that I care about right people that I really love where I'm going okay yeah that's part of a process the other part was this discovery of this other thing and uh you know when my favorite psychologist Carl Rogers calls it the self-actualizing principle yeah but you could call it your Buddha nature if you wanted to and it would be just as legit you could call it um your inner Dao if you wanted to be daoist or something right you could call it your original Spirit you call it whatever like any of those words well it will work fine for this right and like it was the discovery of that that was the moment for me right it was partially I think the challenging of the existential Guardian operating system how it worked it was also discovering this other part so I just wanted to throw that into the conversation too because that I think was the thing that spoke most deeply and I've really been thinking about it a lot like in the past few weeks again looking at people that I deeply love and care about going through this process thinking what was this really like for me and trying to recollect back or me going through it of course everyone's gonna go through their own yeah story you know we all have our own Tales to tell in our own past to walk in our own uh we're all on our own trip Ram Das that's right so we're all on our own trip okay cool but I was trying to go back and say yeah this was the big thing as much as anything else and I don't even think that for my psych Mentor Michael he even necessarily even saw it that way but I did you know and that naturally became a tool that said okay I'm going to be a Zen Taoist Buddhist tantrica that's what I'm going to be right because I'm this I found this part and this is what wants to express and then it changed my way I thought as I was saying earlier about this because that became a question of let me identify the parts of this that are holding me back and that was a different story it wasn't just like tracing back to my roots looking where things came from um and I do have the concern that that could go on for a long time you know I do have that concern a little bit I mean maybe I haven't experienced some of that I was like if it was just that and this other part wasn't found I know maybe it wouldn't have been the success for a story that I felt that It ultimately was so anyways um I really got a couple minutes left let me throw one other thing out to you and then we'll wrap the episode I guess yeah you know the other part came like that struck me about this was kind of about freedom so what are the people I'm really interested in in my my interests at the now is the great existentialist philosopher jean-paul's art and he makes this point which is kind of slippery and we could probably do multiple podcasts on it but what he basically says is that you're more free than what you think so part of when you really investigate and you look what you'll realize is there's a kind of a level of freedom that's almost a little bit scary a little bit of anxiety inducing maybe even but when you really look at it like you're more free and I just wanted to throw that out to see what you think about this Daniel because part of this ego's idea is that there's unconscious factors that are dictating that we're not aware of which I think is true right well I think he's adding the conversation this idea that if you stop in a moment by moment way there's a kind of a freedom there right you really don't have to do certain things if you don't want to if you really take the step and think about it you can actually you have more freedom than even what you think you have you know and it's just a question of you recognizing that and um I was talking about this with some people too and I was like there's something it creates a weird psychological effect too and maybe that relates back to the existential Guardian operating system in a way too it's a moment of like stepping back and saying okay this thing wants to function maybe in some semi-automatic way right not like but like it's functioning in this automatic way without you really even being totally aware of it but if you take a step back and you distance yourself you realize oh I do have more freedom and just that realization creates a kind of you're using the word space earlier kind of the space that allows you to put a little distance you realize no I have a lot more freedom than what I think I do and I don't have to feel like I'm being dictated to by these sort of automatic things if I really ask myself honestly there's a freedom that I have that maybe I'm not even really fully aware of and maybe even would be scary or intimidating but if I like take it on you know it will it's uh it's enlightening I guess right Dalai Lama talks this way too it's interesting tell them it says yeah part of Buddhist thought is that you do have freedom even if you feel like you don't you do you know you're not being dictated just by genetic factors and things from your past and you know that like you really take a step Moment by moment there is a freedom there in each moment that you have I know what do you think about that I mean that that relates into that that's uh there's a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle that that's the entire uh gist entire pitch that's the entire pitch it's just formed over start then you got a whole career out of that millions of copies sold and a whole career and spiritual teaching based off that I you know that right there is a little bit of search okay but I mean that's no I mean but that's that's what it is you know that's what he's saying and and you know I I think it it's true I think it's I think it's true I think on one level there there's that reality and then in a functional level as we're sort of interacting that's there but then it's this disappears in communion the situation of things or something like that yes yes so if one can find this that's why I talked you know early on in the discussion about having space for oneself to do right so whether that be a meditative practice or being in nature or journaling or create you know artwork music whatever it is for someone's creative thing you know or being whatever it is your space for being right not being attached to something not being part of a habit that you give yourself the opportunity then to be in the moment actually the real moment the full moment because there's nothing to pull out your sort of knee-jerk reactions or there's nothing to to activate your your operating system your they're nothing to do all of that so your own discomfort in that moment is is you you know and the things that you have been through and whatnot and you know there's this idea that and Governor mate mentions it in his book and I've heard it in other books it's like they say trauma is not something that happened to you but something that you that lives within you after that trauma and yeah maybe that's true on some level but someone if somebody has some deep [...] that happened to them you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say oh yeah you're carrying it around with you let it go and move on with your life like you know it's not for me to say what someone's process is with their own processing you know what I'm saying so I can agree in one level that like the moment by moment uh space for yourself is free of Affliction so long as that you're not actively grabbing onto it and holding it whether it's conscious or unconscious but I think that there is a magnetic sort of attract attractiveness of things that we have experienced in our life that tend to follow our mind streams around and are never quite that far away however in in the in the space of the mind even an infinite decimal small amount of room is an infinite fathom to be able to cross when letting something go on a positive or negative sense right if you do let it go A millimeter is a thousand light years and if you don't let it go that millimeter that a thousand light years is as close as a millimeter because you're holding on to it so tightly you know what I'm saying um so yeah that's that's kind of I think it's like I don't even know if it's like Power of Now or something but I think it's like there are you know you you've uh you were down in Mexico doing the medicine and stuff so but I think there's also like intoxicating thoughts oh yeah that affects your mind really deeply and I guess what I got out of this art thing is I've been really thinking about is like yeah that's an intoxicating thought that's a powerful thought it actually affects your Consciousness just to like think wait a minute I have more freedom in this moment than I think you know especially maybe in a situation where socio-culturally people are really obsessed with like trauma in the past a lot yeah not that it's all bad well a lot of it's good but it is the vibe of the time it is it is here now for sure you watch every Marvel movie or you know show and Daredevil is affected by trauma and he has to go back to his past and relive his trauma there's a truth to it you know it's not like it's not true and it's good to have a society that's waking up to the idea maybe in like Dr mate's book to say like oh yeah we gotta go back and we gotta dig these things out especially for people who have never had the opportunity to do it yeah beautiful you um but there's also this other side I guess that I'm trying to like throw into the conversation um which is just you know we can take apart this egos thing but then we also have to find something in ourselves yeah that's the more Transcendent part of ourselves and then we also have to like maybe have these moments of going there's more freedom here there's this intoxicating thought of this Freedom yeah you know and if I can recognize that there's this freedom I don't know it changes something in your Consciousness well one of the things as impowerful is a hallucinogen maybe it's as powerful I don't know well one of the things he mentioned is that like the our our experiences are are our greatest teachers you know and to not push to not push them away and to not you know always keep them at Bay but to say like okay you have knowledge for me in this life what good bad or indifferent you know if I went through something then that that means that that thing was for me and so I have to like take it in and really do my work with it and like but once you once you do your work with it then you could you should be able to not only see the negative side of this punch in the face from my you know third grade bully you know but just to see the other the larger scale aspect of what was going on at that particular time what role did I have in that what can I extend compassion it's a change in perspective you know that can allow you to sort of be free essentially and dance around that thing in a 360 degree circle as opposed to only being caught on you know degree number seven or degree number one only being there a Sufi image because you danced the whole circle right and so you're just so you're fixed you know and to to move that that point of fixation and not be fixed actually to me that's free like now I'm being free you know I don't have to you know sharing on the personal side of this I'm gonna say this from we you know did some relationship series it's gonna be upcoming that I'm kind of in the process of prepping my parts of but um yeah I mean like you can go back and I was you know we were talking about this with looking back at our roots in sort of a shamanic sense chasing chasing things back since we talked about that a couple weeks ago I'm actually doing that and I'll say that but there is something interesting about because you start to realize well I thought this person caused me a lot of problems and they did but actually they also brought me a lot of these benefits and you know the staff right it's not that simple yeah yeah the invaluable shifted perspectives I I actually like this I I wanna I'm gonna make a note Eric intoxicating thoughts I think that I think we should I I mean I don't we're done with our conversation for now but we're definitely not done yeah you know we're definitely I was like talking with someone about this you know I was just explaining the start thing and I was going this thought's [...] intoxicating yeah it does something to your mind yeah you know like it's um uh it's like a little drug or something yeah yeah with a with a beneficial effect yeah no it's it's for sure and I think our our happy now this goes to Habit and addiction which become part part of our egos is is habituated and so it's like oh I did it it worked I did it it worked I did it it worked I did it it worked and I'm going to continue to do it because it's working and I'm reinforcing myself I guess part of his point was that it like there's a kind of a takes you away from uh potentially what could happen is if you're always blaming things back on your traumas and your Egos and so on you kind of distance yourself from the responsibility of what you actually have of your own freedom I think that's his point somehow sure you know anyways fascinating fascinating fascinating right and that's and that's you know that was the part about uh your experiences as your teachers right that they're there for they're there for and sometimes your teacher is a pain in the ass and sometimes your teacher is uh really good at giving you a good lesson and sometimes it's the same person yeah you know what I'm saying yeah yeah so to not to not push you know to have them there and to work through them you and I are having fascinating parallel thoughts going on because I'm thinking the whole episode about like spontaneous expression action in the moment yeah yeah and you're kind of going through like okay so what built up this ego thing and it's kind of two sides of the same conversation yeah yeah brilliant okay thank you my friend all right thank you uh thank you everybody interesting couple of weeks for us yeah always is right um thanks everybody for listening for watching on YouTube or whatever else I think it's only on YouTube I'm not posting it anywhere else at this point so uh for video hello uh if you're on audio hi uh what's up if you're uh checking us out on Instagram or hit us up on Instagram I don't know I don't got the best words today email us at gin and Tantra gmail.com if you're on YouTube uh like subscribe share everybody says it I always said it once at the end so you know don't don't berate me for it uh if you're on Instagram hit us up at uh Jin and Tantra um yeah genital gmail.com I'm Eric that's Dan wait no I'm Daniel I'm tired that's how you know I'm Daniel that's Eric we appreciate for uh everybody for listening and um you know supporting us whether this is your first episode or your you know 400th I don't know how many be done but we are uh slowly approaching on three years of work together so yeah um you know it's crazy it's crazy so thank you everybody for listening really nice kind of like a freestyle stream of Consciousness freewheeling uh episode today interesting yeah it's fun it's fun so thanks everybody for tuning in uh catch up we'll catch you on the next one and uh I don't know have a good day we'll start we'll try ending something different say peace yeah also peace see ya