Dr. James Hollis

Now, just to back off for a moment here, I think we're only conscious in the ego dealing with reality a few times during the course of a day.

My favorite analogy is when you get up in the morning and you step in the shower, it's too hot or too cold, so you change the water temperature.

Well, that's the ego in its proper function.

It's being...

adaptive to its reality.

It's being protective at that moment.

It's achieving the optimum situation for you.

But from the rest of time on, that same ego is flooded by other materials, some of which is conscious.

Who gets the kids today after school?

How do I get to the work on time, etc.?

But underneath that are other drivers that have to do with fear-based responses or adaptive responses that were perhaps once protective,

But later, you know, we weren't born with them, but we acquired them along life's highway.

So what was once protective often becomes constrictive later and creates those patterns.

So the number one, you start with your patterns.

Secondly, and everyone sort of laughs at this, but there's a certain truth is you might talk to those around you, such as your spouse or your closest partner or your children, and ask them about what they see in us, if you can bear to hear what they have to say.

And to say, where is it you see me being hurtful to myself or others?

Or where is it that I get in your face in an inappropriate way?

And that we usually have something to inform us with.

Thirdly, we pay attention to our dreams because we don't choose to dream.

But sleep research tells us that we average about six dreams per night.