The Power of Thought: 18-1 Understanding Ego/Identity

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\f0\fs32 \cf0 Welcome to The Power of Thought. This is part 1 of the episode called Understanding
Ego/Identity. In the last episode, called ego/Identity and Infinite consciousness, I
explained a little about the ego/identity and how it covers up who you truly are, that
is to say, infinite consciousness. Since infinite consciousness can't really be explained in
words, only experienced, it is much more beneficial to talk about and understand the thing that
is covering it up. Namely, your ego/identity. Psychotherapist do a great job helping people
cope with their ego/identities and in my younger years I too got some help with my own ego/identity
induced mental discomforts. Unfortunately, most psychotherapist are so caught up in their
own ego/identities that, in my opinion, they usually fail to recognize the source of people's
emotional problems. There are certainly brain structure and body chemistry dysfunctions
that can contribute quite a bit to people's mental problems, but I think that most people's
mental problems are simply ego/identity gone wild, so to speak. Many spiritual systems
of belief focus on the idea that the ego is the thing that is in the way of true peace
of mind and serenity. Some would even say that the teachings of Jesus in the christian
bible \'a0are about dissolving the ego. Only the church, being run by people with ego's,
distorted this truth in order to gratify their own ego's by gaining power. As I have mentioned
in previous episodes, a good source of information about the ego/identity is Eckhart Tolle's
books. Also, There is some good information on the internet. One site I found is a wikipedia
site called Ego, and then the word spirituality in parenthesis, it's web address is on the
screen. This article mentions something Eckhart Tolle says that really rings true. He says
that to the extent that ego is present in an individual that individual is somewhat
insane, being that the ego is compulsively hyper-active and pathologically self centered.
It goes on to say that since this is the norm in our society it goes unrecognized, even
by many mental health care professionals who are certainly imprisoned by their own ego/identity,
feeling important and superior because of their status and education etc. The greatest
advice on how to be free of the ego is presented on this ego wikipedia web page and it is a
quote from, who else but Eckhart Tolle. I'll paraphrase it here: It says, To become free
of the ego...all you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions as they happen.
This is not really a 'doing' but an alert 'seeing'...there is nothing you can DO to
be free of the ego. Emotions and thoughts become depersonalized through awareness...
Essentially, I think what Eckhart is saying is that when you can watch your thoughts and
emotions in a detached way and not believe that they are who you are, then the power
those thoughts have over you diminishes considerably. There are many ways to experience awareness
of your ego/identity besides just watching it function: psychedelic drugs, fasting, meditation,
isolation tanks, etc. all these practices are designed to help you detach from identifying
with your physical body and thoughts and be able to access the infinite consciousness
that you really are. I certainly don't recommend doing anything illegal or dangerous to your
health, but there are some benefits from having a psychedelic experience. A recent study on
hallucinogenic mushrooms from Johns Hopkins school of medicine showed that subjects received
a long term psychological benefit from experiencing the effects of psychedelic mushrooms. 94%
of the subjects in the test said it was one of the top five most meaningful experiences
of their lives. Perhaps this is because they were able to lift the veil of the ego temporarily
and discover that all their mentally constructed fears and worries were just that, mentally
constructed and simply an illusion. One of my own personal experiences with a psychedelic
drug was with something called Ibogain or iboga. This drug is illegal in the United
States, so I went to Mexico where it is legal. I went to a place called Ibogaquest to experience
this very nonaddictive psychoactive substance. The web address is on the screen if you want
to visit their web site. If you decide to contact them tell them Dr. Bruce King sent
you. Ibogaine has been used very effectively to help treat addictions to opiates like heroin
or prescription pain killers. It is pretty safe but not without risk. Fortunately, I
am not addicted to any drugs, my own personal reasons for wanting to experience this substance
was for psycho spiritual reasons. I will go into more detail in later episodes about my
experience with this substance since I believe it had some beneficial effects on me very
similar to the subjects in the Johns Hopkins psychedelic mushroom experiment. Let me reiterate
that Ibogaine is perfectly legal in Mexico so I wasn't breaking any laws by experiencing
it there. I certainly do not recommend using any illegal drugs in countries or states where
they are illegal. That being said, I do recommend that psychedelic drugs like Ibogaine can be
beneficial to people for psycho-spiritual or addiction recovery reasons. Also, Military
veterans have been treated with psychedelic mushroom and other hallucinogens for PTSD,
so even our own government is using these substances to benefit people's mental health.
For more information you can follow this link for an article by Scientific American magazine.\'a0{\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK
"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mdma-drug-ptsd-trauma-psychedelic"}}{\fldrslt \cf2 \ul \ulc2 }}\'a0\'a0I'll go into more
detail in future episodes on this, but I wanted to mention psychoactive substances because
of the recent findings by Johns Hopkins and it's long history helping people transcend
their ego/identity with very little risk of adverse side affects.\'a0\'a0I also\'a0want
to mention that this is just information and not healthcare advice for any specific problem
you might have.\'a0\'a0In the next episode I'l look at more ways you can recognize and
explore your ego/identity, thus taking some of it's power away to make you miserable Thank
you for subscribing to my channel, sharing and commenting on my videos and going to my
FaceBook page by clicking on the hyperlink below this video. I'm Dr. Bruce King and you
have been watching the power of thought.\'a0 \f1\fs24 }