Speaker #0Hey, this is Marc-André Rysk. Welcome to Beyond Defense, A New Way to Live, a podcast where we look at strategies to create the life we want. Enjoy the episode. Hey, welcome to this episode of Beyond Defense, A New Way to Live. My name is Marc-André Rysk and I've created this podcast to help you create the life you want, help us create the life we want constantly. on an ongoing basis in our everyday lives with little tricks here and there, tools, strategies, but mostly try and have a conversation around things that I think will help expand your consciousness. And as we covered in the first few episodes of this podcast, you know now that consciousness is the first key element. to changing anything to having a sustainable change in our lives something that we call transformation all right so welcome to this uh second episode of three or three three part series on exiting ego so what we're going to be looking at today is the second means uh or another means right but the second in this three-part series on how to exit ego Um, and before we do, I wanted to share something that I thought was, uh, um, interesting for this podcast. Uh, when I had a, um, a session last week with one of my clients and, um, I thought it interesting to share because we, uh, we're working obviously on, uh, something that was going on in her life and how she was stuck in ego. and at some point she said you know living a life without ego means death right a life without feelings without emotions like a perfect life and that's boring and i thought it was so interesting that we would associate um living without a defense system so without ego to death when in fact um ego is death or death is ego what i mean by that is If you remember a few episodes ago when we looked at the five steps to building our ego, you've probably realized when I was telling you the steps that ego is a, and maybe you've heard this before, but ego is a survival mechanism. So we actually die slowly but surely living in ego. That's the craziest thing when she was sharing to me what she believed about ego. or a life without ego was that we may associate it with oh man it's going to be boring if i don't have an ego uh it's going to be death right when in fact it's it's a we're not living when we have our energy stuck in our defense system we call the ego um and how big must have our ego become that we feel that way today because i'm pretty sure she's not the only one um it resonated with me when she said it i've i've heard it before said differently from other clients before um and so it's interesting that we have this way of thinking that if i don't have any ego i die and that's Really significant because it shows us how much ego has taken over our lives. Because a reasoning like that means ego is talking at that point. And it's ego that's afraid of dying. A bit like a good friend of yours or think of your best friend giving you advice on something in your life. And you not taking the advice, for example, or saying, no, thank you. I'm not going to do this or that. and just kind of following your own gut or your own instinct or your own whatever but not following your friend's advice and And your friend let's say just taking it like as in you don't need his or her help anymore And so it's almost like that that the ego takes it almost right Hey, if ego is a person in that It's afraid of dying. it's been controlling our lives for so long our defense system has been at the helms of our lives for so long and it's kind of developed a wanting to survive of its own and so when we're thinking oh my god if i don't have a defense system if i don't have an ego anymore i'm gonna die my life's gonna be boring i'm not gonna feel anything i'm gonna have i'm not gonna have any emotions who wants that it's gonna be like the perfect life and we have to take it as Oh, a sign of our inner friend, the ego, that's just concerned about its role. So just as a reminder, mind, which is what ego is made of, was never created to run us. Mind was created to assist us in our day-to-day lives, which, you know, brings me to what I call the biology class 101. If I am not my mind, who am I? What am I? If I'm not my physical body, who am I? What am I? So we human beings have something we call the mind to assist us on this plane, on this earthly plane, but we are not our minds. And when we create an ego using some of our energy that we... part of our mind if you will some are part of our mental energy so when we created ego that way we basically used our mind for something that it was never meant to do in the first place think about it like your car for example your car was never meant to go on water we have boats for that but if you take your car to go on the water it'll sink eventually Just like us. And I go back to what my client said last week. Oh my God, if I don't have an ego, I think I'm going to die. It's the contrary. With ego is sure death. Just like the car going on the water, sure to sink to the bottom of the river, the lake or whatever. We will sink and die with ego. A slow death. Sure, but we will feel less and less alive. And then eventually we become adults and we get tired, more tired than we should as we get older. And we wonder why. Why? Because we live inside of us with a defense mechanism that was never supposed to be there in the first place. Our minds work too hard. We are using it. to do something it was never meant to do so once again ego is a survival mechanism and we may believe that we will die without ego but by transforming ego recuperating the energy that was once stuck in our beliefs in our belief system that thing we call ego that belief system that says some things are right some things are wrong As we free up energy that was stuck in that system before, we will feel more alive than ever before. Because remember, again, if you go back a few episodes to when we looked at how we constructed ego, we built it between the ages of zero and seven, zero and 10 years old, if you will, if you prefer. So that's a long time ago for most of us. Tens of years. How do you say that? Dozens of years ago for some people 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. So it's no surprise that we associate maybe living without it with death because we don't remember what it feels like to be fully alive. But the more you deconstruct your ego, your defense system, the more you'll feel what I'm talking about, that you feel more and more alive. And so that's why we've got a three-part series right now where we look at means to get out of our ego. And what I want to look at with you today, remember last episode it was about just learning to say that you are hurt. Simply, right? Saying that you are hurt when you're in reaction to something or someone in your environment. Because we saw that when we're in ego, ego is there to help us survive because we are first. our second step to developing ego we are hurt so to get out of ego we need to learn to just say it as it is if i'm reacting to something or someone if i'm triggered emotionally it's because i'm hurt all right so that was in the last episode and today what i'm going to look at with you is simply asking for help to get out of your ego to get out of your defense system and we're told to talk about mental health these days. You've probably heard this before, but yes, we can look at asking or seeking the help of professionals in different fields, certainly mental health, in the mental health field, if you need that. But it could be, you know, asking for help literally, you know, hey, I need your help for anything. So it could be that. but don't forget that asking for help is also you know you're not necessarily going to say hey i need your help with this or that which by the way it's an excellent means but what i'm saying is uh you can ask for someone's help um without saying the word help right if you're i don't know if you're approaching someone that has what you want and if you go and ask them about how they um got around to having in their lives what you are looking for that's asking for help from someone. I remember a while back, I have brothers that are in business as well, and I was seeking financial help from them or financial advice from them. But when I did, I didn't say, I need your help with this, which, you know, I could have done. But just in the course of one conversation, I was just like, hey, how do you go about this in your business? And how much of your... budget do you allow for this particular side of your business and questions like that anyway to my particular issue that I was going through at the time and so I was asking for help without using the word help and so what I want to do today is look at the different ways that we might resist asking for help because we are in our defense system And so I was trained at the Listen to Your Body School, right? The school that was founded over 40 years ago by Lise Bourbeau, who is a Quebecer, a Canadian, French-Canadian. And it's an international school training counselors, therapists, in what we call in French, relation d'aide, which is the middle ground probably between therapy, work, and coaching. So I call it counseling. It's not really that either, but anyway, I was trained there and at least the founder of the school had developed a way of looking at ego. So ego is our defense system. And she had put ego into five main personalities or masks, if you will. And so I'm going to use that to explain to you how our defense system can stop us. uh from uh putting in practice the means that i'm uh teaching on today uh to help you exit your very own defense system your ego okay so um the five main categories the five five main personalities that exist in ego are the same for you and i right it's you can look at them a bit like a halloween costume if you think of dracula uh you and i can uh wear the the same Dracula costume or I mean we can have a Dracula costume and if you might yours might be a bit different than mine if we go to the same party and people know about that Dracula they'll be able to recognize that we are both Draculas right so it's a bit of the same for those five main branches when I'm going to talk about them just keep in mind that we are not first of all our ego our defense system so we are not these five personalities that's the first thing i want to say is now often people get just that in itself is a revelation because we often talk about our ego our masks or our personalities as if we were them we are not them and the reason why i i wanted to compare them to halloween costumes is because your mask for example of the rigid that i'll talk about in a few minutes is the same as mine. We might not use the same behavior or the same attitude in different situations, and we might not have that personality or mask to the same intensity, but whenever you are wearing your rigid mask or having the personality that we call the rigid in the ego, you can be sure that if I one day react to someone or something and wear that mask or put on that personality it'll look very similar to yours okay so just remember we are not our masks we are not our ego we are not our these uh personalities uh but we do have them for most of us anyway living inside of us uh and they're just waiting for the right situation uh to come out uh depending on what's happening in our environment. Okay, so what I want to look at with these five branches, personalities or masks is specifically in regards to asking for help. And I want to look at how these personalities will prevent us from asking for help. So the reason why that branch, that particular branch or side of our ego, of our defense system will resist asking for help, because once again, asking for help. in a particular area of your life helps you to get out of your defense system get out of your survival mechanism and to help you thrive and live in your life right okay so the first personality i want to look at with you is the what we call the withdrawer and the withdrawal drawer is obviously the personality that we have sometimes that will make us withdraw from a certain situation We can withdraw physically, right? We can leave a situation, physically speaking, but we can also leave a situation or like escape a situation by, for example, staying in a conversation, but we are shutting down. We are not saying anything anymore. And so we've withdrawn, but we're not physically withdrawn from the situation. So don't think of this personality or mask. just in situations where and when you've you've left uh the scene uh you can leave the scene psychologically speaking by you know uh not being involved anymore mentally and emotionally in a certain situation and the drawer the um so i'm not going to go into details about uh each and every personality or masks because there's so much to be said about that uh if you are interested uh to go deeper into any one of these. Uh, in the first episode, I had recommended three books that I think can change anybody's life, uh, at any time in our lives. And the second book that I had recommended was, uh, the five wounds of the soul by Lisbo Bo. And in that book, she not only talks about our wounds, but she also talks about the masks or personalities that we've developed, our ego, um, to, um, uh, in reaction to these wounds. in order to not suffer from them anymore and obviously ego is a is a not a efficient system and if We've tried to not suffer anymore from these five wounds ego keeps us suffering from these wounds Okay, so the withdrawal the way that it works to prevent us from asking for the help that we need or that we want sometimes And even from seeing that we need help or seeing that way out of a problem for us would be just to simply ask for help. So the way that this part of our ego blocks us from doing that is because when we're in the withdrawer personality, we take no. Like if someone, you know, if you were to ask for help and someone told you no, and if you were wearing your withdrawers mask. in that personality you take it uh personally and it would hurt as if we were saying no to who you were like you would take it as a a pure rejection of the person that you are what does that mean that you are not loved we would you would take the no as um i am not lovable basically and so for that reason that is not to be underestimated We might resist asking for help in certain situations because we don't want to feel that way. And so if you find yourself resisting asking for help, escaping a certain situation, withdrawing from a certain situation sometimes when it would be beneficial for you to ask for help, and you're wondering why, you might be looking at that motivation or intention within your ego, right? That motivation that is... that is there that doesn't want you to hear a no from the other person if you are asking for their help so that's for the withdrawal that's that's what's blocking us from asking for help um when wearing this mask um the second mask i want to look at the second personal personality that we have in our ego that will prevent us from asking for help is called the dependent and the dependent is an interesting personality in in that it doesn't it doesn't want to ask for help or yeah it doesn't want to ask i'll say it that way it doesn't want to ask for help because if it did ask for help and if your advice let's say to someone who's wearing their their dependent mask was to work for uh for them um it would be detrimental not to the person because remember we are not a mask but to the person in that situation that's wearing the mask of the dependent and why you have your answer in how we call that personality the dependent when you are in your dependent mask you it's like it might sound crazy to uh to hear but is we want to depend on the other person and once again i just want to remind you we are not our masks we are not these personalities we are not our ego we are not a defense system but when i say when we're in that mask like we become this identity this personality it's like in a at a halloween party if you really play the part you might be dracula for the entire night and and really played their dracula which is rare usually but you never know you might play the character full-on until the end of the party so it's a bit like that with our ego when we're in our masks is we we become that mask and we play uh the part right but often it happens obviously unconsciously so when we are in that dependent personality what's going to happen is as crazy as it sounds is we want to depend on the other person because there's a key objective here is i'm when i depend on you or when I'm dependent on you, it helps me to get your attention. and for the dependent if i have your attention that's the way that i can feel loved so that's why it's difficult for the dependent for the person wearing the mask of the dependent to ask for help or if it does it'll never follow your advice because it doesn't want to what it wants to the dependent is it wants your attention because it's a mechanism that's there to help me get love from someone they get me their attention and if i get their attention i'm loved by them and so i don't care what they say when i ask them for help i just want to ask them for help but really it's just because when they're they're giving me uh their advice is i'm i'm gonna have their attention is gonna be on me for a second but notice that with the dependent and you might have people like that around you or you may have noticed it in yourself before. If a... someone with a dependent mask comes to you for help and asks you for advice or help, it'll be quick to get talking again. It doesn't want you to talk for so long because it wants the attention on them. So that's how the mask of the dependent works. And that's how it plays against us asking for help. And I would maybe push it further here by saying for that help to be beneficial to us. So that's the second branch of our ego, second personality that we've developed that will play against us in exiting our ego, exiting our defense system. The third personality that I want to talk about is the personality that may resonate with less people because not everybody has that wound, not everybody has that mask. It's the mask, the personality that we call the masochist. And the masochist is an interesting character. interesting mask, interesting personality, in that it doesn't want to ask for help because it believes deep down in their roots, the masochist mask, it believes that it is to be of service to others and others are not there to be of service to them. So if I'm wearing my masochist mask, I should always be of service to other people. And obviously, if I'm asking for help for something in my life, I'm not being of service to you, right? And not... personality's reasoning. So I'm not going to ask you for help because it doesn't make sense to me to ask for help. It's almost as if I don't need any help. What I need is to be of service to you to be a good person. And the masochist believes that it needs to be of service to other people all the time to to become a good person, to finally feel deep down that they are a good person. So if that's you, if you recognize you, or if you're listening to this right now, and maybe you don't recognize yourself in this, it's no big deal. Because as I said, it's not everybody has that personality. But if it is you, again, first step to transforming anything is just becoming conscious. And so what you can do, and obviously you can do that with all the personalities that I'm talking about. today all the masks that i'm talking about today is first thing we need to do is just become conscious when we are wearing that mask in that personality and resisting asking for help to help us go beyond our defense system just recognize when we are resisting asking for help when we are in that kind of energy where we want to be of service to to everyone and everybody and not wanting to ask for help Because that would be almost unspiritual, if that's a thing, to ask for the help of someone else. I should always be of service to others. That brings me to the fourth personality, fourth mask. And I'll talk about this one right away because often we get it mixed up with the previous one, the masochist one. And it's the mask or the... personality of the rigid and the rigid gets to feel loved how by just uh trying to be perfect trying to do things perfectly um and it believes in it at its core the rigid again not the person but when we are wearing that mask or when we are in that personality side of our ego the rigid It believes that it will be fully deserving of love, be a lovable person if it is perfect in what they have. For example, a perfect body, a perfect partner, perfect job, perfect way of saying things. So when they are perfect in what they have or in what they do or in what they say or in what they think. and for the rigid asking for help is threatening because it would uh not only show weakness but it would show that i'm not perfect and i don't want that because as a rigid just like as a dracula right so in my personality in my costume of the rigid uh asking for help is seen as the enemy because uh once again it would show i'm not perfect And I associate that in the rigid personality. I associate that not being perfect with not getting the love that I am after. So when I'm in the rigid personality, in the rigid mask, I will resist asking for help because I don't want to be seen as imperfect. And I said I wanted to talk about this mask after the masochist. Because I said at the masochist, what is preventing us from asking for help is that the masochist always wants to be of service to other people. The rigid can also be that. But in order to be like a perfect person, in order to do the right thing, the rigid needs to be of service to other people and needs not to be the person asking for help. but it's not the same in the same energy or intention as the masochist for the rigid it's more like there's something inside of me that says asking for help is wrong and spending my time helping other people is the right thing to do and so um it's more so in what i believe is right and wrong with the rigid whereas the in the masochist it's it's not the same energy it's like the the They wanna... get to a point where they'll be a good person because they've spent their entire lifetime at the service of other people and i said before uh it's almost as if they feel unspiritual inside and then eventually they'll feel like uh like they're worthy of uh the love of god right or if they if they are always of service to other people right so it's not the same energy or intention or um than the rigid the rigid and as it as we call it it's it's the rigid is like uh it's dry it's like it's uh um it's really the um it's like um i don't say unbreakable but it's the rigid it's i think one way and i have to respect the way that i'm thinking about a certain thing and if i go Against what I'm thinking, it's wrong. If I go against my belief, then I'm in the wrong. And the rigid is also one of the personalities that will make us feel guilty sometimes about certain things. And so it's really not the same as the masochist, not the same intention anyway. It's just I want to be the perfect human being in what I have, in what I do, when I'm in the rigid personality. and i associate therefore asking for help with um being imperfect and the wrong thing to do so that's for the rigid and last but not least the final countdown the final mass the final personality that prevents us from asking for help from using this means to go beyond defense to go beyond our our ego um is what we call the controller and the controller what it tries to do is to show that we are strong, to show that we are responsible adults, to show that we are people that can be counted on. So right away, you can see how it's going to be difficult when I'm in that mask and that personality to ask for help, because asking for help means, oh, I'm the one needing help right now. I'm the one that needs to be counting on you if you're available and if you're able to help me, right? In a way, I expose myself as vulnerable. I expose myself when I'm in the controller, if I dare ask for help, which I won't do if I'm in the controller. But the person himself or herself behind would be afraid of appearing like someone who's irresponsible like i said someone who's not strong someone who can't be counted on so when i'm wearing the mask of the controller the personality of the controller takes over me i won't ask for help because i want to show that i'm capable and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be capable and showing that we are capable of doing something um but when we're always like that Always wanting to show that we're capable, especially when we're not. But we still want to show that we are, right? That's a sign that the controller mask has taken over us, first of all. But then we can't resolve our issue, right? We all need help sometimes. And the controller can't recognize that. because in its own thinking it's like you cannot be seen this way in the world it's dangerous you cannot be seen as someone who needs help you need to be always the one that people count on and that's the way you'll feel loved that the controller says right so that's how it'll prevent us sometimes from asking for the help that we need in a certain situation. All right, so I thought it beneficial since we are looking at ways to get out of our ego. And in this particular episode, looking at asking for help to go beyond our ego, I thought it'd be important to cover how the different branches of our ego will prevent us from using the simple means to just, you know. be able to go past our ego in a certain situation and have the problem that we're facing be resolved. By asking for the help that we want, the help that we need to go beyond or find a solution to our problem. So I hope that once again, you found this episode and this means useful to see if it really works for you. Go ahead and keep using it if you've been asking for help. And don't hesitate to use it even more if you've done it before. or to start asking for help and notice the difference in your life and how good it feels and how alive you will feel by asking for help once in a while when you need it, when you want it, to help you resolve a certain issue. It's only ego, I remind you, only our defense system that thinks we will die by asking for help. It really is it that will die if we do. But remember, we are not our ego. We are not our defense system. We are not our masks or these personalities that I've discussed today. And remember that what we want truly, who we are, our soul wants to live free. And to live free, you have to go beyond defense. So I really encourage you this week. and moving forward to ask to ask for the help that you need when you need it and to become more and more conscious when one of these for five personalities can take over you one of these five branches uh of your defense system or one of these five soldiers or commanders or generals even that will take over you and prevent you from asking for the help that you need all right so Good luck with practicing asking for help. And I'll see you in the next episode where we will look at the third means to exit our ego. And it is the most important. So looking forward to that conversation together. See you soon.
