Dr. K and Joe converge on a key insight from different angles: ego arises to protect us from negative emotions. As long as there are emotions that feel unacceptable, ego will arise to defend against them. “That girl turned me down — I didn’t like her anyway” (ego inflating). Or “I’m horrible because she didn’t like me” (ego deflating). Both are ego protecting against the raw pain of rejection.
This means the path through ego isn’t fighting it or trying to destroy it directly. If you accept the emotion underneath, ego has nothing to defend against. Joe’s heart-centered approach: welcome and love the emotion. Dr. K’s third-eye approach: understand the mechanism, see clearly what’s happening. Both arrive at the same place.
Joe quotes an Irish mystic named Wu Wei Wu: “Fight your ego, try to destroy your ego, try to see through your ego — the only problem is that it doesn’t exist.” After 10 years of fighting his ego, this gave Joe massive relief. He doesn’t think it would have if he hadn’t fought it for 10 years first.
“As long as there are negative emotions that are unacceptable, ego will arise.”
Related Concepts
- Emotional avoidance creates blind spots
- We recreate painful circumstances to finally welcome the avoided emotion
- Judgment signals unfelt emotion