Ego is a closed loop

WHAT YOU HAVE TO understand is that the ego experience--which most people don't really understand--is a closed loop...so, we can get it and we can think we get it and maybe once in a while we can really get it, but you have to understand it's a closed loop and there's no way out of that closed loop from the ego's way of seeing...and there never will be...

...but the ego, when the ego becomes interested in spiritual development and in ethical development, it can use spiritual practices and ideas as a way to entertain itself and to also create a sense of virtue, but it's all still within the ego's loop, so nothing of really big significance is really happening...

...the personality may improve, it may see relative improvement, but ultimately it's still an ego trip...so to get an individual to the point where they're willing to really set outside of that loop is not a small thing...the ego can take and use anything to remain in control, even the idea of its own destruction...and this is what's happening most of the time...

...it's a whole different thing when an individual breaks out of that loop and then begins to engage with the human experience--every single aspect of it, including the worst things about their own ego--from a perspective that is outside the loop--and that's a real big step to take...it's a big leap, it's a leap from which there isn't any return and it's not safe.

Those kind of statements [that you've been sick of yourself forever] could never be true because if we are really sick of ourselves in the way you were just saying we would have done something to change it...it's very rare, I think, if someone is really sick of themselves--the way things have been--they make, they do something big...and the problem is, we're not sick enough...we're just willing to tolerate so much of it...the point is, we love it, we all think we're pretty great, we just, yeah, we're not perfect and we're trying...

...and we have to jump out of that whole way of thinking and seeing ourselves, and it's a big deal to jump out of it...it's potentially easy but actually we're much more identified with our own self with a small "s" than we can even imagine...so to take a big leap out of all that but not to escape but to want to embrace this whole process from a much bigger perspective is a really, really, really big deal to have to do that...

--from a talk by Andrew Cohen