Becoming part of the solution

29 minute listen :

In this incredible short lecture Tom Campbell covers the subject of changing ourselves at the being level, He emphasises the importance of addressing fear and ego to foster a state of love and openness. He suggests that rather than actively seeking love, individuals should focus on eliminating fear, which obstructs their ability to embody love.

Campbell explains that fear is deeply ingrained in the ego and perpetuated by beliefs, which limit one’s ability to process information and perceive reality objectively. He argues that ego, driven by fear, hinders genuine connection and compassion for others. Campbell challenges the notion that ego is essential for self-preservation, asserting that awareness in service of love is not egoic. He urges individuals to take responsibility for their feelings and recognise the underlying fears that manifest as negative emotions. By relinquishing the desire to control external outcomes and prioritising love and understanding in their interactions, individuals can cultivate greater peace, joy, and fulfilment in their lives.

Campbell emphasises the significance of relationships as avenues for personal growth and advocates for choices rooted in love and empathy rather than ego-driven manipulation. Ultimately, he encourages listeners to shift their focus from controlling external circumstances to optimising their internal choices, thereby fostering a more harmonious and fulfilling existence.

I attach below Campbells description in English for those that prefer to read :

How do we change ourselves at the being level? Well, the thing that we have to do, the thing that makes a being level, a being of love or a being of fear, is not fear. It’s not that you have to learn how to love. You have to get rid of the fear. When you get rid of the fear in the ego, you’ve succeeded.

You would become love, you see. So it’s not something you have to go out and grab and take into you; it’s something you have to get rid of that’s already in you. So in a way that should make it easier. You’ve got all the tools you need inside. It’s not that you have to go out and find better tools or find a better way of behaving. It’s not about behaving. It’s about being. That’s where the rubber meets the road. Alright, so how are we going to go about changing ourselves at the being level? How are we going to deal with that fear? How are we going to get rid of that ego and those beliefs? Because the beliefs lock us in.

The beliefs keep us from being open-minded. When we have beliefs, then we get information that’s contrary to our belief, we discard it. We make up a story why it’s really not like that, and we don’t think about it anymore. So beliefs are just a barrier. It’s a trap that limits you as far as the information you can process. The things you can think about. That’s the box. You’re living in a box and you can’t get out of the box. That box is made up out of your beliefs. So we have to get rid of those beliefs so that we can see bigger pictures. We’re not trapped. And we have to get rid of that ego because as long as it’s about us, then it can’t be about others. Love is about others. It’s not about you. Love is unconditional. If it’s got conditions, it’s not love. It’s something else.

Now, the word love has so many meanings and connotations in our language that, uh, you know, it’s almost a minefield thinking about it. Well, what is love? Well, love is the nature of a low-entropy consciousness. That’s love. That’s caring. That’s not about yourself. So people will immediately think, well, it has to be about me. I mean, after all, I’m the one, you know, I’m the actor here. And it’s me and it’s others out there, all the other people. And if I don’t take care of me, nobody else is going to take care of me. So I get to take care of me because that’s what I have to do. I have to see things from my vision and my viewpoint. Isn’t that important? Is it important to have an ego? That’s the sense of self, isn’t it? And that is a confusion.

Now, ego is the awareness. You are awareness. We all are, as we mean we say, we’re conscious, we’re aware. Ego is awareness in the service of fear. Thats ego. And if you think that that is a kind of a special definition that MBT made up, and it’s not really the ego that Freud talked about, that’s not true. It’s the same ego Freud talked about. It’s no different. It’s when Freud talked about it, though, he talked about it and been a normal, healthy part of every individual. We all have ego, that’s our sense of self. But what he didn’t understand, well he did understand this, he got his data from talking to people, he was a scientist in the sense that he didn’t just make up theory, he talked a lot to people, he interviewed, he analysed, he would gather information. He found that this level of self-concern, self-interest, and all about yourself, was almost everybody was like that. And people who were seen to be healthy, they seem to be getting along. They were working valuable members of society. And so on, so then the ego became normal. That’s what everybody that’s doing things and doing well, as the ego, therefore, ego is a normal good part. Well, what he didn’t realise is that almost everybody is right up to here with fear. You know, and that the ego he was looking at really was the result of the fear. Yes, it is normal in the sense that normal means average. No doubt about that, it’s perfectly normal. But it’s not perfectly healthy. It’s what we need to let go of.

Now awareness in the service of love is not ego. So it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a self-concept. It’s not that a self-concept is a bad thing. It isn’t. You need a self-concept. But that self-concept needs to be developed in the service of love. And that’s a different thing. That’s not ego. Sure, we need a sense of self because we need to know how can I help? What can I do for you? There’s an I in there. We also have responsibility. I have to take care of my family. I have to pay the mortgage, I have to put gas in the car. There’s things that I have to do. You have to be aware of the I. You have to be aware of your responsibilities. you have to be aware of how you can be helpful, how you can be useful, what can you do for other people? So that sense of I, I am an individual unit of consciousness and I want to be of service. I want to do something that’s useful, I want to be helpful. That’s a sense of I and what you want, you see. But that’s in the service of love. That’s not the I. I need this. I need, you know, I need to be appreciated. I need to be cared for. I need whatever. That’s different. The fear is that you won’t get your needs met. The fear is that you’re not adequate or not good enough for people to like you or all the other kind of fears that we have, fear of abandonment, fear of failure, all these fears. That’s what’s driving your needs. I need this, I need that, I need more stuff. I need a new Mercedes-Benz. I need all kinds of things. I need status. I need importance. I need people that look up to me. I need my children to respect me. I need all these things that you need. And they all have to do with fears. I fear that I don’t deserve any status. I fear that my children won’t like me. I fear that you know, all the fears and only the side of that. So I’m trying to give you an idea that ego is that awareness in the service of fear. It’s not ego if its awareness in the service of love. That’s just you. You’re at the being level. you have to be that way.

Okay, so given that what we want to get rid of is our fear, and given that our fear, if we can get rid of that, then the ego is going to go with it, right? Because if we don’t have the fear, what’s do we have in the service of our fear? There’s nothing there. So that’s why when we get rid of that fear, that you go to go. And almost all the belief goes with it too. Because the reason we have those beliefs is that we, one, don’t like uncertainty. Uncertainty makes us afraid. We have a fear. The things might happen in ways that aren’t good, that we don’t want, that we don’t like. And we feel powerless sometimes. And most of our beliefs have to do with sugarcoating or whitewashing those fears. We think there’s something really important we need to understand or we need to know, but we don’t know it. Well, we come up with a belief. If somebody gives us information that conflicts with the way we think, we come up with another belief. So our beliefs kind of insulate our ignorance. We have ignorance. We don’t know. fill that hole with the belief. Now we feel better because now we know. Well, I call that in the book pseudo knowledge. We just believe we know. And it makes us feel better. So the beliefs in the ego, the ego being the most obvious of the two, are really the problem and what we need to do is get rid of that fear. The fear is hard to find because the reason we need that ego is to get between us and the fear. It’s that ego has the strategies for burying the fear where we can’t see it and where we can ignore it. That’s how we deal with it.

We deal with that fear by pretending that isn’t there or pretending that it’s not scary, pretending that it doesn’t bother us. And when we have strategies to deal with that, so strategies can be all sorts of different things. And they can be very varied. If we feel very insecure and inadequate, we may have a strategy to deal with that fear by being very bousterous and anrogant. Because we feel an inadequate, therefore, we’re going to be bigger than life. We’re going to make ourselves noticeable and important. So we tend to be a little pushing or we could be the wallflower. We could shrink and kind of hide because we feel inadequate. You see, that’s two extremes. But they’re both strategies for dealing with fear. So we have all kinds of strategies. A favorite strategy that people use in dealing with their fears is, if I don’t play, I can’t lose. So when something comes up, that’s stressing, Something comes up where they’re kind of afraid maybe it won’t work out very well. A lot of people use that strategy. Oh, I don’t care anyway. I don’t really, you know, I’m not interested in that and we decide that if we just don’t play, if we don’t get in that game, we don’t try, if we don’t stand up and say what we think that it will somehow, then we can’t lose. But the fact is, if you don’t play, you can’t win. You can’t grow, you can’t go anywhere. And if you can’t move forward, what you will do is move backwards. So that’s a losing strategy. It’s not even a hold your own strategy. That’s a losing strategy. But that strategy is used for all sorts of things.

But if you think about it, you’re probably using that strategy on a lot of things. We’re not aware of our fears. They hide because we hide them with our ego. But our ego, that’s really easy to see. That’s there. Right on the surface where we can grab hold of it and look at it. And our beliefs are also hard to see. We don’t know what we believe. We have no idea because these aren’t beliefs that we sat down and memorised and learned. They’re beliefs that just got into us by osmosis, by convenience, by making us feel better. So they’re not something we’re intellectually did. It just happens to us and we take them on. Beliefs are hard, but the ego is easy. How do you find ego? Just look at your feelings. Look at your emotions. If you feel unhappy, if you feel angry, if you feel sad, if you feel anxious, all of the things that we can see as negatives. If you feel irritated, that’s because of ego. You can take that feeling and you can trace that feeling back to a fear. Why am I angry? Well, I’m angry because she said this and that and that’s just not fair. So I’m angry. Well, what’s the fear behind that? No, you’re not angry because what she said. You choose to be angry because of what she said. Number one, take responsibility for how you feel. Nobody makes you angry. You choose to be angry. Nobody makes you upset. Nobody makes you anxious. Nobody irritates you. You choose those things. In a reaction to something else, but it’s your choice. You don’t have to be angry. You see, You could be different.

So step one, I guess, in this process of pinpointing your fear, is take responsibility for your feelings. And if your feelings are negative, if your feelings are impositive, if your life isn’t a life of joy and satisfaction, then you’ve got fear. Because when you get rid of the fear, your life will be joy and satisfaction. Primarily, that’ll be your life. It’ll be great. It’ll be fun. And every day, it’ll just be better than the next. And you’ll have a lot of joy in your life. And if that’s not your, if that’s not the way you feel now, then you have fear.

Well, look at those times that you feel negative. Look at the times you feel upset. Why are you upset? All right, I’m upset because I wasn’t appreciated. Somebody said something that was rude to me. All right, well, what’s the fear there? Fear there is– well, if I wasn’t appreciated, the fear is of not being appreciated, but the deeper fear is of not being loved, not being thought well of, of not being thought to be important or significant, or it’s lots of stuff. In other words, it goes back to a fear of failure, a fear of inadequacy. These are the fears that most of us have. So you find the negative feeling. And probably most of you aren’t going to stand up and say, my life is just joy and happiness and satisfaction. that’s my life. Very few people are like that. And most of you could probably say, Yeah, I’ve had a feeling and an emotion in the last week that probably was negative. And most of us actually could say, I’ve had a feeling in the last hour. That was probably negative. And when you’re at work, they’re in the work that you could probably say, I’ve had a feeling in the last two minutes. That’s been negative. Whenever there’s any angst, oh no, that’s awful. How can they do that? See, no, we’re trying to make it all about them. They make me feel angry. You know, how could they do that to me? Why don’t they see the truth that I see? That’s all you. And we act like that and feel like that all the time. Every day, almost every minute of every day, which means we are being pushed around and our daily choices in interactions and relationship via fear. And that’s why we struggle. That’s why we’re not full of peace and joy and happiness and satisfaction because we’re being pushed around by our fears all the time. We’re making these choices thinking these thoughts, choosing to be angry because we have fear. Choosing to be upset because of our fear, choosing frustration. So it’s us that needs to change. We need to start making better choices. We need to choose to be happy.

So this is what MBT has to do with you. So what does this have to do with me and why should I care? It’s because this affects all the rest of your life. It determines the quality of your life. It determines your relationships. So relationships are, from most of us, where the rubber meets the road, most effectively. It’s in those relationships, because those are the things that are up close and personal in our life. Relationships are probably where we learn and have the most opportunity to learn to grow up. It’s in our connections with other people. And all sorts of relationships. It’s not just romantic relationships, although that’s a big one. It’s also relationships with your children, with their parents, with their boss, with your coworkers. It’s all these relationships. That’s where all those feelings that are negative come from. It comes from all those relationships. That’s the point. We don’t go out and look at a tree and get angry. It’s other people that make us angry. It’s those relationships. Well, that’s because what we’re here to do is make choices towards love. Well, that doesn’t have to do with relationships. It has to do with people. Does’t have to do with rocks and trees. It has to do with people. So it’s in our relationships with people. It’s where the rubber meets the road.

And instead of approaching life in how can I manipulate the situation to be the way I want it? How can I make this come out the way? Well, how can I make those people like me? How can I get my boss to give me a promotion? How can I get what I want? How can I make my children grow up to become doctors, lawyers, and Indian cheefs instead of drug addicts and bums? How can I control the world to make it more the way I want it? So that’s all ego.

Now you do have to exercise some control in the world or you wouldn’t be able to pay your mortgage. Of course, on the practical side, but we go way past that. We want to control everything. Matter of fact, 95% of all our energy is put into controlling others, controlling the outside world. That’s what we do. We tend to spend our time thinking. That’s why we don’t live in the present moment. We live in the future. How are we going to arrange this? So it comes out the way we want. How am I going to get my needs met? How am I going to make sure that people turn out the way I want them to be? My boss thinks what I want him to think. My children think the way I want them to think. How am I going to arrange all this? And when it comes to children, yes, you do have to sometimes overrun their free will. Because they’re children and their free wheels to go out and play in a street and that’s not good for them but they don’t know that. So with children it’s a little different. You do have to overrun their free will sometimes. It’s not true with adults. Even very young adults. That’s not true. You have to let them be.

So, here’s a very simple step to help you focus better on finding your ego and dealing with it. It’s to let go of control. Stop trying to control everything. That means mostly get out of your head. Don’t try to figure everything out and then make a smart move that makes things happen in the way you want. You say, that’s not really what you want to do. A better idea. No, that’s okay. I’m not saying, Never do that. I’m saying, That just shouldn’t dominate your life and dominate your relationships. Sometimes you do have to make a smart move. Sometimes you do need to manipulate a situation. That’s not saying that these things are never do. I say, Don’t just run your life that way. Unknowingly. A better way to be is, things happen. And they just happen because they happen. They happen because the way you are and the way other people are. Sometimes its just random, it just happens that way. And you get to deal with it. So you see life this way. Instead of, well, there’s this world out here and I need to control it the best I can to make get the way I know it should be, that would be best.

Instead, you say, stuff happens. And I have to deal with it. I’m going to make sure that the way I deal with it is with love, is with caring, is with respect. That’s the way I’m going to deal with it. So I’m going to control how I deal with it. I’m not going to try to control what happens. I’m just going to put my focus on how to deal with it. That’s a different, that’s just a shift in where you’re looking. Instead of looking there in the future trying to control what’s going to happen? You’re looking in the now of how am I going to deal with it. And make that choice.

Now, if somebody’s rude to you, you can tell yourself how am I going to deal with that. Should I get angry? Should I reach out and slap them for that? Scream, holler, get mad, get even. What’s the best way to deal with that? What’s the low-entropy choice here? What’s the choice that’s about them? You see, and suddenly, all those negative things drop out, because they’re obviously all bad choices. It just makes it worse. Makes everything works when you do those negative things. It makes it better when you do things done out of caring. Caring for that person that made you angry. Caring for whatever there is to care for out there. So that’s one thing. Stop looking at the future and how you can make it work for you. Because that’s all about you. And just let stuff happen.

So now when somebody comes up in their rude, you don’t take it personally and say, Oh, that’s about me. And it’s unfair because, see, it’s not about you. It’s about them. Their rude is about them. The way you reacted to that is about you. You see, we tend to get that backward. They’re rude, and we immediately take it personally, it’s about us and it makes us angry. We don’t deserve that. That isn’t fair to us. So their rudeness suddenly becomes our problem. Well, don’t take on somebody else’s problem. Their rudeness is their problem. And they will need to get rid of that fear that created that rudeness themselves. That’s not your job to fix them. That’s not your job to explain to them why they shouldn’t be rude to you. They just are the way they are, except that and deal with it. How are you going to deal with it? See, it’s a different perspective that we normally have in life.

So that’s one strategy. When you do that, what happens at the other end isn’t that it has to happen according to your plan. You don’t have a plan. You just deal with the stuff that comes, deal with it the best you can, And whatever happens happens. And other people just have to deal with that. And deal with it the best they can, and whatever happens happens. You see? And it just flows around, and we all just try to do our best to deal with things the best we can. And what happens happens? You get to deal with what happens with them. They get to deal with what happens with you, and we’re all trying to optimise our own choices. So, that puts the focus where it needs to be. Instead of optimising the outside world and optimising the result, we let that stuff just happen. We just want to optimise our choice. So, that’s one strategy for you to be aware of. And again, if you’re saying, Well, is that a problem of mine? Well, ask yourself, is my life full of joy, peace, and happiness? And if the answer is no, or not all the time, Then you have room to improve your choices. Because when you make those choices, out of love you are peace and tranquility. And life is just good that way.