Speaker #0Hey, this is Marc-Andre Risk. 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. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Beyond Defense, A New Way to Live. My name is Marc-Andre Risk, and what a week it's been. I've gone from loving the third episode and what I talked about with you guys to, I wouldn't say hating it, because that's a big word, first of all, and second, it's not what I felt. But following some comments I received about the first three episodes, comments that were really kindly... said to me uh and you know very uh on point i found i decided that i'd uh suppress all the episodes and the show itself um and i guess for some people that hadn't uh listened to the shows yet yet they uh were able to uh listen to them because i guess the platforms take a while to suppress everything once you make that decision and the reason why i did was i uh Figured following the comments and my reflection on them that maybe I was putting myself too thin and that this whole idea about podcasts is a whole new world and the people that do them either have a staff helping them to make sure that the production of it is very very high quality or Have spent a lot of time on it to understand the way that it works and how to make it very fancy, I guess. And the reason why I started this podcast, and I thought about it for a long time before I launched the first episode, was really to help out. It's a way for me to create. And if you've listened to the first episode, you know the importance of that in your healing process. So it's definitely part of my healing process. So it's something that I enjoy doing because I create it. But it's also to help part. because I see a real need. But not only that, again, if you've listened to the first few episodes, it's a want that we all have. And that sometimes we don't know how to decipher or identify, first of all, in us. But that desire, that innate desire to live without a defense system. The body has its own natural defenses, and that's okay. We're not talking about that. We're talking about that fabricated defense system. that most of us live with today that is unnatural and that is sapping all of our energy or a lot of our energy and i'm talking of course about ego about that system that says some things are good some things are bad and that doesn't grow on trees it grows in the heart of the hurt child or children that we were once were and never healed And so if you're listening to this episode now, it's that after suppressing the show completely, I took a few days and I received a message. I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine who had some very kind words and then some friends. Life has a way to work itself out, right? And some friends also that hadn't listened to the episodes yet and that started listening to them. And because the platforms take a while to suppress them, to delete them, they were able to listen to them. And they were able to send me their comments and they all loved it. And I'm very appreciative and grateful for them. And again, following their comments, I took a step back and I reflected on it. And it got me back to the core of why I'm recording these episodes and why I'm doing it. First, love to create. Part of my healing process. Second, I want to help you out. I want to help. Even if it's just one person, that's what I realized when I got this message and got into a conversation with this friend of mine. Very good friend of mine. And I saw... when he was explaining to me what he was getting from the podcast and the episodes and when i saw how he loved them but because it helped him so much it really touched me and it got me to thinking again that man If there's one person that listens to this and it makes a difference in their life, then I'll keep going. And so after thinking about it again, I'm recording this episode and I want to continue the work that we've been doing. And what I want to do today is dive even deeper into... how we built that system that defense system um so when i say that it doesn't grow on trees it's not divine that ego system that defense system we live with is not part of our divine heritage call it whatever you want but it's not godly and we can't live fulfilled lives So long as we live from a standpoint of good and bad, this is good, this is bad. So long as we keep identifying in our lives what's happening, and so long as we keep saying, oh yeah, this is good, oh yeah, this is bad. It's not to say that you don't have the right to identify this is good, this is bad. It's just you want to get to a point where you realize that's at the core of your suffering. And that will be... pleasant and unpleasant things that'll happen throughout our lives here on earth that will continue to happen but what's not necessary is to identify them as good or bad and so i want to see with you today the five steps to constructing an ego constructing a defense system It's almost like Michael Jackson said in his song, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, baby, you and me, yeah. You don't know what I'm talking about. And if you don't, listen to it. So it's not quite 1, 2, 3, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. In order to deconstruct our inner army, our defense system, to transform the defense system, we'll have to go from 5 to 1. and it doesn't have to take a while right it can take it some time but sometimes it happens quickly sometimes it takes a while but what's for sure is you'll have to catch your defense system in the act right first episode when we talked about consciousness becoming conscious in a situation when when that ego arises in order to step out of it so you have to see it you have to catch it in action in order to decide something else but in order to do that and deconstruct the ego transform it into useful energy to create what we want um we have we'll look at it's not like we have to but we'll look at how it's been built because it's gonna i believe help you to deconstruct it afterwards um and one example that i've given over the years when i'm explaining this is picasso um, And Picasso, if you know of his art, and I'm really not a Picasso expert, but just when you look at one of his paintings, he's transformed the human face. At first, it doesn't look like your face or mine, so he deconstructed the human face. But what I learned from his story is that when he first started painting, he learned how to paint the human face the way it was. So a bit like that, we want to look at how we constructed our defense system. And that way, it's going to be easier for us after that to deconstruct it, and easier for us to use our energy to do whatever we want with it. Because one thing we need to understand when we're talking about we've constructed a system that says this is good, this is bad. The main or one of the main issues with that is that without us knowing it, most of the time, right? It's unconscious, but it has us directing our energy towards what we don't want. And then we find ourselves in our daily lives in situations we don't like or we don't want. And it's hard for us to take responsibility for that because we don't see how it's our own doing. So it's normal a reaction when we say, well, how are you saying that I created this? I didn't create this. And not on a conscious level, but when we've been acting from an ego place for so long, we've created things with our energy. happen to be in the physical world now so when i said we've created things with our energy is mentally emotionally that's ego right i mean where ego is formed so with our mental and emotional energy stuck in ego we ended up thinking and feeling some things that weren't aligned with what we wanted and then we ended up seeing that out there afterwards physically in our lives and we physically find ourselves in situations where we we can't explain why we're there we we don't understand we're unconscious of the process itself. But when you slow things down, just like when you would in a professional sports match, whatever pro athletes do after games, when they watch videos of some of the mistakes they made, when they watch it in slow motion, they can catch the little mistakes that they weren't able to, weren't conscious of in the game itself because during the game it goes too fast. So what I hope to do in the same way is to slow things down with you. And my hope is that eventually you'll learn, even if sometimes you find yourself still in unpleasant situations where you don't quite get at first why you're in that situation. When you step back and you slow things down and you think back on those five steps we'll cover now together. My hope is that you'll be able to catch where not so much where you make the mistake. where you made the mistake but where you used your energy in what you didn't want and that brought you exactly to what you didn't want and the good thing with that is is if you brought yourself in a situation where you don't want to be in right now well you also have the power to get yourself in a situation that you want all right so let's get into it Let's get to the five steps to constructing what I call the inner army, constructing a defense system, constructing our ego. And what I'll do is I'll give you a personal example of mine to do that. When I do this, it's not so much. I don't want you to just remember that one specific event in my life. We didn't build ego just from one bad situation or not. See, bad, not one bad situation, not one situation where we were hurt. It's over time, right? Over the first few years of our lives. We've been in different situations where we felt different things and we slowly built that ego up. And so for ease of understanding of these five steps, I'll use just one situation. But please just when you do your work, allow different situations to come up where you'll see how that ego has been built over time. All right. So first thing first is the baby we once were, the child we once were, gets born into this life and if you believe in reincarnation, if you're connected to this, then you know the soul is not... I mean there are new souls that come onto this plane. I am sure every day. But if you're an old soul or if you've heard this before or if we've told you this before, if you've had that feeling before, that means you've had past lives. I don't necessarily want to get into this right now. So if you're not open to this, that's totally fine. If you're not, then just think of it as when we're born, we're fresh and we're, you know, a brand new story is going to be written. and while it take place is in the first few years of our lives uh we'll have uh innate needs and desires that we'll want to meet we'll want to be ourselves in different situations right we're going to start growing up and exploring this life and the first thing we want to be right is just to be accepted for who we are and we kind of just come with that and we'll just act and say things or think things and just naturally these processes will happen and What we want is just live naturally the way that we are. All right, so the first thing is what's going to happen in a situation to build our defense system is we'll first be ourselves. So my example is, I remember one time when I was just starting school out and starting to read. I came home from school once and we were all sitting for dinner and I come from a big family and at that point we were eight kids in the family. So plus two parents, that's 10 people around the table. And, you know, we were just talking about our days. And I'm just a little kid back then and just starting to read. And in the book, there was a joke that day that we learned in school to read. And so I shared that with my family. And so naturally, right, spontaneously, I was just like, hey, this is what happened in my day. And somehow that joke that I told or the way that I told it offended some people around the table. And at some point they got up and left and the meal wasn't over. And I didn't get why they got offended. It was just a joke. It wasn't aimed at anyone in particular. I was just, again, just learning to read. and just happy to have been able to read in my book that joke and then tell it to the family. And so what I came to understand in that situation was that, I think it was my older brother, my older sister, that made me understand that, that what I had said had been offensive, which I didn't get right back then. And so the first step is what? Is I'm just naturally myself. Let's just say in this situation, spontaneous. right i just shared spontaneously what took place in my day uh and it offended people around the table so that's the first step to constructing ego is you just you're just yourself right in different situation different situations today like when you were a kid and um so in that situation i just wanted to say something about my day uh and being spontaneous and you'll see at the end how that plays out in my life today it's it's amazing really And so to move on to the second step, the second step to constructing ego is the hurt that we feel from being ourselves, from meeting a desire or a need of ours. That's the first step. I wanted to just tell something about my day. I just wanted to be spontaneous. And second step, it hurt because I saw how it offended some people and I didn't understand why. And then big brother, big sister comes to me. It says that you can't say these things. You can't say, and it hurts, right? Because I don't understand what's happening. In my mind, I didn't do anything good or bad, but I certainly didn't do anything bad. I just, I was just saying a joke. So it hurts, right? I'm left with my pain because what I was made to understand in that situation is that I can't say things like that and look at what the other people are feeling. And so, I felt different things, but one of the things that I felt was I felt hurt. I wasn't getting what was happening. So that's the second step. Our inner wounds, our hurt, inner hurt is activated if you believe in past lives. If you don't, you can say that's a fresh wound that's being created. You're hurt. Second step, you're hurt. Okay, we're young, right? We don't know what to do with that hurt. We need to be taught many things in life, that's including how to deal with our hurt, when we're hurt. I won't be taught that in that moment. What I'll be taught is, well, many different things, but it could be like, don't say things like that, or, you know. And so, just for you to get it, the second step is just wound activated, or just, I'm feeling hurt. And because it's the first few years of our lives, to go into step three, It's, I don't know what's happening right now. And clearly that was my situation at the table. I don't understand what's happening. I'm just being spontaneous, sharing a joke, and people get offended. I don't understand. And then they turn to me and say I did something bad. Wow. And it hurts because it feels like I can't be myself. Who comes to have a conversation with me to see how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, what I'm, you know, no one. because it's creating a small drama right now, the joke that I told. And so everybody is kind of occupied to bring peace back to the table and to dinner. So step two, her to move into step three, which will be what? The fear of that happening again and again. So notice when we constructed our defense system is in the first few years of our lives. When we have the least experience in life and the least information, that's how you can notice that usually fear arises or is created when these two things are met. We often are afraid of certain things in life because we don't have the experience in those situations. and we don't have the knowledge or we're lacking some critical information to be able to face whatever's coming at us. So just pay attention to some of the fears you have today and see if that's these two notions that ring true for you with the fears that you have. Usually it does. All right. So but what's for sure is in that situation when I was a kid, even if I wasn't aware of that back then or completely conscious of it, it's step three is I'm going to be afraid that this hurt that I'm feeling because I was spontaneous. Step one, spontaneous. Step two, the hurt. Step three, the fear. I'm going to be afraid that every time I'm going to be step one, spontaneous or naturally myself, step two is going to happen. Remember, I have not a lot of experience in life at that point, and I'm missing critical information in that situation. Why are people getting offended from just a joke I read in the reading book at school? So I'm going to be afraid that every time, or I'm going to be wondering, is every time that I'm going to be myself, is every time this takes place is it going to be like that is it going to hurt like that oh i don't want that and remember when we're creating ego it's the moments when we felt the loneliest in our lives that means what is no one is coming to um have a conversation with us and it's not so much the fault of the people around us sometimes we didn't know as kids what was going on within us but what we do know and just from me from personal experience but from working with clients for so many years so just try it out for you just to observe it so it's when we're hurt like that from a situation where we're just ourselves like i don't want to live that all the time is this really what's going to happen so i i'm afraid i'm worried i'm concerned especially if i'm a kid right uh no defense is yet up right and No one around me to come and console me or to have a calm conversation with me and to see what took place, to explain to me what took place, but also to take the time with me to say, hey, Mark, how you doing? What's going on? How did you react or how did you feel when people got offended? You know, was that your intention? Or, you know, so I didn't have that conversation. And so I'm left with what? Man, is this going to keep happening? And remember, it's not just one situation, right? It's going to happen over time, over the course of different situations in our first few years of life. So third step, fear. Is this what's going to happen every time I speak up? I open up. I share my day. Every time I'm spontaneous, I'm going to offend people. I'm going to feel hurt like that. I don't want that. I start becoming afraid. And that takes us to step four. Step four is what? We are the captains of our lives, right? The captains of our boats. We are commanders of our lives. We create our lives. We have the power that the creator has. The creative energy that created everything lives within us, right? So we are creators. That's why creating heals us because it reconnects us to our true nature, creators. So because I'm a creator and because I've just been... spontaneous myself and it hurt and i'm very afraid that it's going to happen again remember we're going through this alone in our own selves when we're kids when we have the least experience in life and the least knowledge or information about situations man not fun because i'm a creator whether i'm conscious of it or not in at that point in my life step four is what Decision. I will make a decision. And again, remember, it's not just one situation, it's situations over time, over a few years in my life. I'll make a lot of decisions that today are still, just like you, getting us in trouble in situations we don't want today. All right, so because I can create my life, I will decide what? I can decide many things. When we look back on that situation, I can decide many things at that point in time. I can decide that being spontaneous is dangerous. I can decide that being spontaneous, being myself, just sharing about my day is offensive. And when I told you earlier that it's funny, it's amazing, the connections, the things that I can become aware of today when I look at my life today, and when I take this example, sometimes in my... close circle with friends family and like sometimes i'll have a hard time sharing about my just what went on in my day Well, when I look back at situations like that, I have more love for myself, right? A better understanding, even if people in my life today don't get that. When I see that clearly, when I look back and I can see clearly, I'm like, I get it. Because it really hurt back then. And again, it's situations over and over that occur when we were younger, that create the situations that we find ourselves in today. So when I'm today having a hard time, Someone is asking me, hey, how was your day, Mark? Or how are you doing? And I, you know, I summarize my day in two sentences. I have nothing else to say. And then I ask them about what's going on in their day instead. Again, I can trace it back to moments like that when I was a kid. All right. So going back to step four now, back to when we were kids. So step four, let's say again. for ease of understanding of those five steps. Let's say I decided in that situation that being spontaneous and sharing about my day is dangerous and it can't happen again. It's offensive to people and I gotta be very careful about what I share when I share something. Okay, so that'll be the decision that I made. Very, very careful when you share. and limit what you say okay so let's say i decide that that's step four that's gonna bring us to step five and that's the step when we build the defense system the inner army the soldiers that will go to war war war war war w-a-r war that'll go to war for us right okay so how do we build the soldiers. easy to understand from the decision that i made i said i never want this to happen again because when i share i'm uh it's it's dangerous right i offend people so i'm the general of my army i mean before that i wasn't a general but i'm a general now because i'm realizing we're at war there you know when i'm being myself it's dangerous it's it's it hurts and i'm afraid that it's going to happen again so i decided i'm going to become a general i decided We're at war here. And if we're at war, and I'm the general, I need soldiers to go to war. So I'm going to create what we call, in our language, a belief. A belief will become a part of what we call the defense system, the inner army, one of the soldiers. We have hundreds, if not thousands, and even maybe more. beliefs beliefs i i remind you that are anchor in good and bad ego you could see it as the big good and bad belief right but that's uh built from thousands of beliefs that we have about what is good and what is bad and an army is consists of soldiers right so i'm gonna create a belief in that situation that's gonna honor the decision that I just made. Remember, we are creators of our lives. And how do we create our lives with the decisions that we make constantly. The good thing about this is if you made a decision in the past that you become aware of, you become conscious in a situation of a decision that's not beneficial for you today. Well, the great thing about being a creator is you can change that decision. But remember what I said before, in order to deconstruct your inner army and be able to use that energy to put it towards what you want, you'll have to first see how you constructed it. There's tremendous power in that. Why? Because once you realize, wow, I'm the one who made that decision, you can change that. But so long as you don't become aware that you made that decision, how are you going to change that decision? You're still going to stay stuck at, oh, well, they were mean towards me for reacting this way when I just told an innocent joke. Right? It's just not false either, but it's not helpful for you. to move towards something else in your life today. I don't want to just be the guy that says one thing about his day. Many things happen in my days today. I'd like to share that, but in order to open up more and be able to share more, I have to become aware of the decision that I made back then that is hindering my progression today, my growth, and especially the satisfaction of what are the desires that I have, which is to share openly about what I'm going through in my days. Okay. So in order to do that, we have to understand the full system here. So we're on step five. So we've just made a decision. I've just made a decision that sharing about my day being spontaneous is dangerous and it'll offend people. So I got to be on my guard. I got to put up a defense system against that. I just decided this is not good. This needs to change. So what am I going to do? I'm the general, the creator of my life. I'm the general of my army. I just decided this can't happen again. All right. Oh, I'm brand new in this world. I haven't created an army yet. Let's create a first soldier. First soldier belief. Belief that says what? I don't know. Let's say being spontaneous is being offensive to people. Okay. And being offensive is bad, right? Yeah. Mark, did you see the reaction around the table? yeah you offended people and did we say great mark no i'm not stupid okay this clearly this is wrong so in my own little five six year old mind seven year old mind i don't know how old i was yeah with the very little experience i have and information of that situation we could say i'll make a bad decision but back then it's a good decision to help me survive right remember ego is a survival mechanism yeah an immature immature survival mechanism but certainly a survival mechanism so i will decide what i will decide that it's not good this can happen again right i decide that when i'm spontaneous it offends people and so the soldier or the the belief so i'm going to start believing right so the belief that i put in place is that being spontaneous means I'm being offensive. Belief that I create. Soldier number one, let's say. All right. And what does the soldier do? He listens to orders, right? What do you want, my general? What do I want? It's pretty clear. The instructions are clear. Being spontaneous is being offensive, and that's bad, right? So what I want you to do is every time from now on that I am going to want to say something, be spontaneous, share about my day, you're going to step up to the plate and you're going to tell me never to do that. And I want you to insist that's your job. You don't have any other job but to prevent me from being hurt again like I was. I don't want that anymore. So what you're going to do is to make sure I never. I repeat, I never be offensive again. Are bells ringing? Great. Do you remember what I said at the beginning of the podcast? Ego has us in situations or creating situations or put our energy in something that we don't want instead of what we want. From the first episode, I said what the... Biggest thing we need to get is we don't want a defense system because what we want is create what we want. We want to live a life aligned with what's in our hearts. What did I just say with that belief there? What's the order that I gave my soldier? What's the belief? Being offensive is bad and I don't want that. Do you see where my energy is? And we're just talking about one belief and I just said a few minutes ago we have thousands. Imagine how many times a day we live and do what we don't want. I do not want to be offensive. Easy, Mark. Shut up and don't say a thing. Okay. Well, I could say that soldier did a great job ever since I was a kid. He really listened. He really insisted in situations where I could have opened up. He did a great job. And again, that's why you cannot treat your ego as an enemy. Because first of all, it's your creation. It's our creation. We created ego. And second, it respected the order to a T. the order that we gave it you could say arm the ego is the best army in the world it's the best soldiers in the world they they it listens to the commander-in-chief which is who is he who is he who is she is oh yeah me huh i'm the creator of my life and in a time when i felt the loneliest and hurt as i was just being myself i was afraid that being myself was always going to rhyme with being hurt. I didn't want that, so I decided to stop the hurt that being myself was bad, was wrong. I decided that when I share, I offend people. And in order to respect that decision that I made, I decided to construct an army. And to that soldier, specific soldier, I said, your mission is to make sure that i never be like that again what's great about this conversation right now is you'll see that whenever you're in the never or always talk in your daily life usually you're in ego oh i'm never good enough all right it's always like that with you or you know that that's ego talking it's not yourself it's not you it's your army that took over it sounds like us right but remember we are divine right we are who we are we are not our ego ego is our inner army our inner system that is stopping us preventing us from living the life we want today and so to finish up with the five steps so the fifth and final step of the construction of the ego right is the belief that we put in place to respect the decision that we made in step four the belief is what in my specific situation there is being myself being spun. Spontaneous means being offensive. I'm going to start believing that. And as I start believing that, who wants to be offensive? No one. So I'm going to what? Because I believe that being spontaneous is being offensive, I'm going to, and obviously that's wrong, I'm going to start to avoid or prevent situations from happening where this could happen again. Well, how about that? In just a few minutes, an understanding of that defense system that we've put in place. Man, I don't know about you, but I love it. And it's something that can truly, I believe, for having seen it in my life many times and in the lives of clients, whether one-on-one and in workshops, how when you... Get that. And when after that you take that into your own life and your daily life and you become more and more conscious when those five steps take place. Wow. Yeah, it's not going to be pleasant, right? When you're in ego and you find yourself in a situation that you don't want, it's not like you're going to smile at it in the sense of, oh, wow. But what's going to bring the smile at the very least to your heart, this opening and consciousness. is the beginning of change is when you're going to catch that and be like oh man and i'm not feeling good right now and this is happening right now because i can see how i've believed for so many years that if this then that and that can be the start of taking responsibility for your life again not your fault that's guilt right it's not your fault You're not conscious of this process. We're not conscious of this process when we find ourselves in situations we don't want. Who wants to create that on purpose? I don't want that. I want something else. So that's why it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility. We create our lives with the decisions that we make. But a lot of those decisions that are still running our lives today were made by a child that was hurt. Step two, remember? And I was very afraid. Step three. When you get that, when you get how hurt you were and how afraid you were to create your ego, to create your defense system, that's going to be the beginning of a very powerful transformation in your life because that allows for more love for who you are and for the hurt child that you were. And when you're in that space of love, that energy of love, transformation. occurs and in what we're talking about transformation of the defense system the dismantling of our inner army we're going to recuperate from that a lot of energy and what are we going to do with that energy well you'll you'll be able to do whatever you want with it you'll be able to create all the beautiful things that you want to be surrounded by in your life on this journey here on earth but for that there's work to do and the work is to deconstruct your ego But in order to do that, we first had to see how we built it. So I hope that this episode was helpful. I hope that these five steps to creating your inner army, to creating your ego, to creating your defense system is opening some things for you. And I'm hoping that it's going to help you to be in the coming days, weeks, months, years, help you to become, remember, the key consciousness, to become conscious. when they take place in your everyday life. Because from there, then everything becomes possible again. All right. Thank you for having been here. Thank you for listening. Been a lot of fun sharing these five steps with you. And I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks. Thank you.
