because that addiction reinforces the idea of who we are, only serving to
reaffirm our own personal identity. Simply put, most of us are addicted to
the problems and conditions of our lives that produce stress. No matter
whether we’re in a bad job or a bad relationship, we hold our troubles close
to us because they help reinforce who we are as a somebody; they feed our
addictions to low-frequency emotions.
Most harmful of all, we live in fear that if those problems were taken
away, we wouldn’t know what to think and how to feel, and we wouldn’t
get to experience the rush of energy that causes us to remember who we are.
For most of us, God forbid we not be a somebody. How awful would it be
to be a “nobody,” to not have an identity?
The Selfish Self
As you can see, what we identify as our self exists within the context of
our collective emotional association with our thoughts and feelings, our
problems, and all those elements of the Big Three. Is it any wonder that
people find it so hard to go within and leave this self-produced reality
behind? How would we know who we are if it weren’t for our environment,
our bodies, and time? That’s why we are so dependent upon the external
world. We limit ourselves to using our senses to define and cultivate
emotions, so that we can receive the physiological feedback that reaffirms
our own personal addictions. We do all this to feel human.
When our survival response is way out of proportion to what is
happening in our outer world, that excess of stress-response hormones
causes us to become fixated within the parameters of self. So we become
overly selfish. We obsess about our bodies or a particular aspect of our
environment, and we live enslaved to time. We’re trapped in this particular
reality, and we feel powerless to change, to break the habit of being
ourselves.
These excessive survival emotions tip the scales of a healthy ego (the self
we consciously refer to when we say “I”). When the ego is in check, its
natural job is to make sure we are protected and safe in the outer world. As
an example, the ego makes sure we stay far away from a bonfire or a few
steps away from the cliff’s edge. When the ego is balanced, its natural