Ego vs Self-esteem | RSD Nation

I know he goes into this from the blueprint as alot of you natural game veterans will know but for anyone who hasnt seen the blueprint please read this article, its a great read and written by Tyler Durden from the game explaining what real self esteem is and how people mistake ego for self esteem and probably the core of what pickup is really about on a deeper level.

' living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living' - Eckhart Tolle

Posted by Tyler on RSD Nation at 10-23-2007, 05:56 PM

OK a few posts basically saying "Ecky is a bunch of new age hippie shit!!"
And you know what?? It's true.
In fact if I wasn't the type of guy to skim through and get the useful stuff and screan out the negative, I'd probably throw that book in the garbage after the first few pages.
So alright, rather than having to do the sifting and using common-sense to suck out the marrow and discard the fat, I'm going to just give it to you STRAIGHT.
After this you won't even have to read the book anymore if you don't want to.
Here is the meat of it, very rough and written in about 5 minutes:

1- You are not your mind, you are the "observer behind your mind": Why? Many thoughts are rooted in old conditionining, or even emotional/chemical addictions AND are running on AUTOPILOT.
EG: You're out at a club and you feel approach anxiety, even though you LOGICALLY know that it doesn't make any sense (it's an old conditioned autopilot emotional response).
YOU are not actually generating these thoughts, therefore learn to stay "present" and you will experience total clarity and feel super happy and good....
The key is that if you IDENTIFY with these thoughts (ie: believe you are "in control" and actively/deliberately thinking them, as opposed to the reality that it's just an autopilot that has nothing to do with "you") you give them FUEL and make them stronger. If you don't identify with them then they become diffused and go away.

2- Non-resistance: Oftentimes it's the RESISTANCE to a situation that's causing the bad emotions, NOT the situation itself.
The vast majority of all bad emotions you experience is RESISTANCE to situations, NOT the situations themselves.
Most situations are not that bad at all. It's just that your ego has this concept that "It's *supposed* to be this specific way" and when it doesn't get what it wants, it resists it and creates a massive amount of negative emotion built up in your system.
For example you might hear a car-alarm going off outside. Is it REALLY that bad?? Uhhh, no. However if you have this "conditioned" idea that it's bad then you'll start going "Uhhhh that's sooooo annoying... I can't concentrate.... I'm so pissed off at whoever left this thing on!!"
That's because your conditioning tells you this is how you're supposed to react. As an EXPERIMENT try just "being in the moment" and ACCEPTING it, rather than throwing up all sorts of "resistance". You may even find that the car alarm is pretty funny.
Well, the same principle can be applied to all the "lows" when it comes to your journey towards personal transformation and success with women. Accepting them (ie: not "resisting") will make you RESOURCEFUL. Feeling all sorts of negative energy due to resistance will DESTROY resourcefulness and leave you STUCK and STAGNANT.
You often see guys who come on the forum who you can tell are "resisting" the lulls in their progress. Many of them whine and quit and never improve. Then you have the guys who practise the art of "non-resistance" and allow their natural resourcefulness to find solutions, and they come back a year later totally PUA'ed up. They "accept" it as a "part of the process" and blast through their sticking points and go on to ultimate victory....

3- Seeing the world as a unified whole, instead of seeking shelter in "judgements, interpretations, labels, and comparisons": This one is sneaky, in that most people who hear about it will instantly say "That's bullshit!! I judge because I'm an objective person and I'm qualified to do so!!"
However believe it or not, you are MORE than capable of "acting in the moment" without having to judge and label everything that you see.
In fact, by simply observing and not having to continually label/interpret everything in a self-dialogue, you will be utterly blown away at how much better it allows you to see what's going on around you.
Even moreso, it actually IMPROVES your memory of the events. This will freak you out, because at first you'll think that because you aren't running the "taperecorder" of self dialogue that you'll forget everything but it is JUST THE OPPOSITE. You will see the world with more vividly and remember your experience with much more sharpness.
As far as "success with women" goes: it makes you insanely effective, because you aren't getting all these crazy emotional ups-and-downs with things like congruence tests or a "pull" that's "on the fence" and you're not sure if you'll get it or not (and the girl is unconsciously waiting to see if you can "keep your cool" to decide if she'll sleep with you or not). It also gives you this crazy fucking SIIIICK vibe where you can talk to a girl and LISTEN to her without judgement, which makes the "qualification" phase of the pickup really really smooth and natural, and also positions you as someone she's qualifying herself to when she talks to you (this is hard to explain -- try it and you will see girls will just keep talking and talking while they try to impress you).
It's also allows you to let the girl talk without having to think of something to say "in your head' right after she's done, and you wind up taking these really smooth pauses that she WAITS for EAGERLY to hear your answer. Man, this type of thing just really smoothens out your game as a whole. Try it.
Key realization: Having to *continually* label and interpret IS a sign of a "weak reality". It's hard to understand, but eventually it will become clear. Move past it this incessant need.

4- Being "in the moment" instead of needing to be a "step ahead": It's this bullshit need to be a step ahead that fucks up your whole approach.
Trust me, whenever I'm trying to be a step ahead I can't think of what to say (other than with canned lines).
When I take on the belief that "the words will be there to flow out when I need them" I suddenly can talk and talk and talk for hours on end....... and everything I say is ON POINT.

5- Realizing the "painbody" is a buildup of old negative emotion and social conditioning that tries to "re-energize/replenish" itself via period "flare ups": When you realize this to be the case it will freak you out.
Basically the painbody is it's OWN ENTITY that wants to replenish itself. If you "stay present" it will not be able to do so, however.
What you'll find it this: If you can stay present long enough it even starts to STARVE and like a desperate lion or polar bear who will eventually attack ANYTHING, the painbody will even make you experience a "pain body flareup" over something utterly ridiculous if you starve it for long enough.
I starved out my painbody for an entire month before it used the BANK MACHINE not working to create a flareup and I start punching the bank machine until my knuckles were almost bleeding.
Then I started it another month (1 month totally happy/fun/in state) and it used my credit card not working and I reamed out the poor sales clerk for half an hour.
Basically you'll find that you can starve out the painbody by 1) realizing it exists and the painbody flareup is NOT REAL, and then 2) staying "present" and starving it so it can't replenish itself.
Over several months the painbody flareups will become further and further apart. It then becomes your job to "diffuse" OTHER people's painbodies by not allowing them to "bounce off of you" when they come at you with bullshit.
If you just keep up this practise you will be utterly blown away by how 1) you no longer get pissed at ANYTHING, and 2) a lot of old bad social conditioning goes away and you start acting a lot closer to your old "caveman" core...
What do I mean by "caveman"?? I'm talking that BADASS MOFO who walks straight up to girls and just TAKES them by the hand and drags them out of the club without the slightest hesistation.
So is this in your best interest?? Uhhhhh.... Maybe.

6- Access to the "universal intelligence/creativity": Last but not least, the idea that when you're "in the moment" you have access to some sort of higher universal intelligence.
Is this really true?? Who knows.
It may in fact just be that it's simply a better "creative state" to be in, and that mystics like to think of it as like a "link to god" or something to that effect.
Well either way I don't really care, but I'll tell you this: Most highly creative people are being "in the moment" when they create. That's when the true strokes of brilliance come out.
And you know what else??
As a "master pickup artist" it's when you're in the moment that you have those BRILLIANT nights when you just utterly dominate and takeover the entire venue.
This is why all artists have a "love/hate" relationship with themselves.
They KNOW what they're capable of if they can just get themselves "into the moment", however sometimes they block themselves (because it can be hard sometimes) and then they produce utter garbage.
So you wind up getting down on yourself cause you're like "I KNOW what I'm capable of!! But I just can't seem to do it right now!!"
The more often that you're accustomed to accessing (as Ecky would put it) "The Power Of Now", the more easily you can access it over and over.
And what happens when you do??
Those brilliant nights come FLOODING in, and suddenly your sex life is very very interesting.

To Sum Up...
Alright, convinced to read a bit of Ecky??
I DEFINITELY agree, a lot of "new agey" type stuff, what guys like Tim and Jeffy and Ozzie and I jokingly call "AURA MAN".
(Aura Man = New Agey dudes who wear power crystals and magnetic bracelets and believe in chakras and that the entire world will come to them if they just meditate and all that).
At the same time, even if it IS AURA MAN style, I can still respect that there's MUCH WISDOM contained in the "The Power Of Now" and even more importantly "A New Earth".
Enough that I have a massive amount of respect for Eckhart Tolle despite his funny appearances (I'll probably look even funnier than I do now at 60 -- so much love to Eckhart Tolle) and I recommend his book "A New Earth" wholeheartedly to anyone who's interested in bettering themselves.
Anyway, the main reason I even noticed this book was that "The Blueprint" has soooo many similar ideas that I came to independently.
When I found a book that had so much in common with my own ideas that's probably what allowed me to "see past" the new-agey stuff and get to the meat of it. Hopefully with this short post here you can see many of the same things.
OK that's it!! Hope it helped.

Good article!

That article was on point,def an eye opener!

load of shit... all this getting into state malarki... ur either in the mood for talkin to girl or not... fuck them if im not. i don tneed to get into state to talk to them like they are a higher being

if i talk to a girl she is reaping the benefit of a convo with me, all this self esteem vs ego... everything they talk of in ego is me all over, yet im not a wounded soldier.. ye i feel good in a nice apartment, nice clothes and being generally impressive in how i live, coz its nice to live smart.

if living in a hole coz u dont care what people think is IN A HIGHER PLACE im fuckin stayin down here.

its just lazy, a cop out. basically sayin "i dont have to dress nice, work hard or go the gym coz i dont give a fuck what people think im on a higher plane" r ya, sound hope u enjoy it coz i live somewhere nice, i dress nice i feel good for it...

my self esteem is on top, (ive been down i know when its down) and my ego is up there aswell.

im tired of all this crap to sell books fooling people there is an easier way to life. image, confidence security is the modern day choice for women.

the world is changin guys

Pointless rant is pointless Phil, i dont even think you have read the article.

If you had you'd notice everything you have said makes no sense in regards to it. I dont agree with all of it, but it defnitley doesnt warrant the pointless tirade you've bestowed on it.

i wouldnt comment if i didnt read it! i just think all this PUA methodology and new thinkin is crap... and there are a million suckers who buy into it & buy shit.

u can spend all your life readin this bollocks & buyin their books, or just go out an be who u are... and be happy whether thats buyin a nice car or whatever.

who the fuck are rsd to tell me pulling women or having a nice home means im making up for self esteem issues.

maybe your perception of how it read is different to mine... but im hugely egotistical with high self esteem.. so it completely contradicts with the article.

1. In other words, a guy with "too much ego" is coming from a place of weakness, not strength


If somebody pulls the rug out from under you, ideally it shouldn't affect you emotionally because you have a foundation of self-esteem in place. (this, i had the rug pulled from under me and litteraly turned my fuckin world dupside down and has took me months to get back where i am)

alltho granted i do think i mis interpreted alot of it. just woke up an re read it

Seems awfully relevent doesnt it?

FIXED!!

read the article, love it, love tyler and his borrowings of tolle.

Got some issues with the article though, these are set out at the end after my understanding of how all this self esteem/ego/state/being shit is supposed to work;

from my understanding we should always be in a state of high self esteem because you know were all innately "great". our self esteem needs no further reasoning besides the fact that it knows we are innately great. apparently we all knew this from childhood but our self esteem took a beating once we started getting older and so it then dropped to low levels only to be replaced by an ego that feeds of positive external stimuli to allow us to feel good. relying on externals is not good so we should reconnect with our self esteem.

carrying on with my understanding..once we have our self esteem back we will essentially be being our best, confident selves. Which apparently no woman will be able to resist. once we have high self esteem we will then also magically enter into "state" when around women. when in "state" our unadulterated self will always be shining through and we will then possess polarity and be at the warm end of the pool and attract major punany

not only this but whilst all this is going on we will also be in a state of "being". essentially a state whereby u live in the now, dont give a fuck about negative shit and are at peace and happiness

my issues;

1) whilst the above sounds nice, where the pooh is the evidence for any of this? none of this can be substantiated in the slightest
2) did the ego really replace our self esteem, who says? how? why? when?
3) is self esteem and reprogramming our beliefs about ourselves really the key to being in "state"
4) how do we reconnect with our self esteem,
5) how do we reprogramme our beliefs about ourselves
6) how do we keep those new beliefs and keep reconnected to our self esteem, considering that sometimes life can be a bitch
7) who says our unadulterated self is all that anyway, surely the self shining through wont always be a good thing?
8) when does one concept start and another finish
9) is it not delusional to believe all this shit, seen as though none of this shit has ever gone to plan for the vast majority of us.

ur thoughts would be appreciated