'Do People Really Not Understand Ego?'

Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former gaming addict Dr. Alok Kanojia—known as “Dr. K” to his millions of followers—offers a proven, tested plan to help parents define, set, and reinforce healthy boundaries around video games and help kids who have developed an addiction to gaming.

Join this channel to get access to perks:

▼ Timestamps ▼
────────────

00:00 - Preview
01:49 - Thoughts and ego are not the same
04:03 - “The ‘you-ness’ of you”
06:10 - Egoless states
07:01 - The act of witnessing
09:40 - A witnesser beyond the witnesser?

────────────

DISCLAIMER

Healthy Gamer is an online community and resource platform for gamers and their families. It does not provide medical services or professional counselling, and it is not a substitute for professional medical care. Our coaches are peer supporters, not professionally trained experts, and they cannot provide medical service. If you or a loved one are experiencing an emergency, please call your nation's emergency telephone number.

All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

[robert]

My therapist told me the vast majority of the population is not self aware. Really makes you understand some things.

[zMarceline]

dude is slowly taking all of us to enlightenment

[fatalkookie]

The realisation of witnessing is the most important step you can take in life. You feel like a child again and the world feels not like a threat but chaotic order.

[cookechris]

Much of the problem stems from our usage of the word "ego" in media. It has a negative connotation, associated with arrogance, overconfidence, corruption, and cruel behavior toward others.
But it doesn't even have to be those things!
It just "is". Ego is not good or bad, it's a feature of our minds and how they work.

[AutisticRebel]

Thousands of books, decades of my life... and he puts in a nutshell video not 12 minutes long and explains the WHOLE thing! That was impressive.

[pragmaticpoet]

I find that 'Ego' tends to be used when one is describing 'Arrogance'

[wolfy]

When I was 16, I realized that people lies to themselves all the time. At the beginning, they know they are lying, then in time, they believe their own lies, but deep down they still know the lie and will do everything to continue the lie.
Now, at the age of 30, I think the ego just shut them off, they don’t even know they are lying to themselves and they believe their own lies.

[Taronaxas]

In my experience, I‘m nothing but my experience

[demonschnauzer]

In response to the comments saying that the majority of people lack self-awareness:

Unless you have personally experienced the lives of every human on the planet, you cannot conclude this. This idea, especially attached to the statement that YOU somehow have self-awareness while others do not, comes straight from the ego.

[Kijasmata]

Observing the ego has been the most powerful tool I've begun to develop.

[Valkyrie]

I ABSOLUTELY adore that he ended the video the way he did.

"Actually, I'm an idiot, maybe I'm wrong"

I try to move through life knowing that I am ignorant, and every day I just become a TINY bit less ignorant, and that I'll die ignorant. I don't mean ignorant as less intelligent, but as a "I know for a fact that there's so much out there and I'm just a tiny little speck in a galaxy of sand."

I learn and talk with confidence on what I think I know, but understand I might be wrong. That opened up so many opportunities with so many people and in life over the last few years.

[SwiftestGamer]

I recently made a post about my Realization about my personal ego death on the Subreddit. It feels like I've returned to being like a child (not literally, I'm still a functional adult), but my sense of wonder has returned and I'm planted in the present all the time now. It really is like realizing the most basic thing in the world that you ARE life, ARE consciousness, and not the "ego".

Thing is, whenever I talk about it, people take it so personally. I don't want to invalidate anyone's struggles and stuff, but they always think I am when I say the Ego is not really a thing, but a persona, a mask. Some get it, but most just ridicule me for proposing such an idea, even though...it's lived experience at this point.

[wh]

Self-awareness is really weird. And I think "ego death" is a misnomer.
When you first observe yourself, you get really self-conscious and you notice how others are not at all self-conscious. You notice how much other people have the same motivations as you and you can predict them. You tend to think of them as not self-aware, as "sheep", just because they don't break out of the mold in a way you would expect someone self-aware like yourself to do - this is wrong. It is a phase some get stuck in.

The next phase is to notice that your ego doesn't really want what you thought it wanted. This phase is often called "ego death", but really, you just recognize that all these material things are not what your ego really craves, and you so you stop chasing material things. IMO, what the ego really craves is the warm glow of having done something "good", something that is in alignment with having empathy with everyone. Once you have empathy, once you stop thinking of others as NPCs, it is impossible to shut it off. The ego is still there as strong or stronger, just the goal is different. And maybe, just maybe, you recognize that you are still the same as everyone else - some people people you perhaps thought of as "sheep" really just instinctively knew from the outset what their ego really craves - you (I) took a little longer.

[AspieMemoires]

Most people really don’t have self-awareness. In my naivety in youth I thought, everyone did like me. Like my family taught me.
I realized it was a rarer thing than I knew.
Edit: People sure love making conjectures from the smallest stuff on the internet. Amazing.

[dameanvil]

00:00 🧠 Thoughts, emotions, and ego can all be observed as parts of the mind.
01:50 🤔 Thoughts and ego are not the same; ego involves identity and judgment.
04:04 🧘‍♂ Moments of egoless states can be experienced, where one exists without identity.
07:01 👁 The act of witnessing experiences is beyond the ego, residing in pure consciousness.
09:42 🐢 There is no infinite regression of witnesses; the witnesser is the end of the road.

[thisnameistaken]

I feel like this guy should re-name his channel to "Beneficial psychological advice for everyone"

[trinsic]

6:10 I really love that Cold Plunge example. It's 100% true and a fascinating experience. It feels like your running down a tunnel, getting faster and faster until you pop out the other side. In my experience I could move around in the cold plunge without feeling the cold after experiencing this. I would highly recommend this practice for people with ADHD. It's like a forced meditation.

[RubelliteFae]

Mindfulness is exactly what allowed me to, let's say, reduce my narcissism to the point it's no longer problematic for myself or others.

However, I've not yet been able to heal the traumas in which the narcissism was rooted. IOW, I no longer mask the self-loathing with false-competence, so now I experience the self-loathing so strongly that I don't know what to do beyond distract myself from it. In practical terms this has led to the inability to cope with the accumulation of real world small stressors (though the stressors of simulated environments, i.e. video games, are manageable).

My therapist wants me to work on accepting things as they are without judging them; which, based on my understanding of Taoism, Zen, & Advaita Vedānta I fully agree with.. The difficulty is converting the knowledge I accept into actionable behaviour. When I don't know what to _do, _ I end up "crashing" and doing nothing. I understand that it's about becoming comfortable with "being" rather than "doing, " but there's still some hang-up there.

[Ms]

Please make more content on that topic. It is so interesting and you explain complex and abstract concepts very well. Thsbk you for the amazing content as always!

[AloneInTheVoid]

All of spirituality explained in 11 minutes. Thank You!