Society, Institutions, Ego and the Authentic Self

The speaker discusses the role of institutions in our lives, focusing on the media, business, politics, and religion. They acknowledge that these institutions have both positive and negative aspects. They argue that these institutions often do not have the same purpose as individuals, which is to be their authentic selves. They suggest that individuals should be conscious of how these institutions impact their lives and make choices that align with their desire for authenticity and positivity. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being aware and conscious in order to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. I wanted to talk about the role of institutions in our lives, particularly in what you might call the Western world, that's the world I understand. And I wanted to talk about this in the context of the theme of all these talks, which is about the authentic self, the ego, and how we live our lives, how the purpose of life is to be our authentic self, and from that place we can give and receive the most love and have the most highest conscious living and the best possible life we can lead. And what's the role of institutions in this, in our society? How do they impact on us in this context? And when I say institutions, let's look at what those big, powerful institutions are in our society. And I think probably number one, media. The media is just a huge part in our lives. If you think about it, we give, most of us in some form, radio, television, the internet, we give at least a couple of hours of our day and our thoughts and our emotions to this entity called the media. Business has a massive role. Any entity that's deriving a profit, whether we buy its products or its services, and in terms of when we're employed for businesses, that has a massive role. Politics has a very big role at all levels, and religion, and look, you can apply it to any institution. In a funny way, most of these institutions actually reflect human beings in the sense that they have a good and bad side. They have sort of a, they do wonderful and authentic and beautiful things for our world, but they can also do destructive things. In fact, all of them are like that. So if we look at the media, they do do some wonderful things. They raise awareness about issues that have created beautiful, some television programs and documentaries are just beautiful, and many programs and many presenters have a very good heart, but there's also a very dark side to the media, and I think this will ring a bell with everybody. We know when we're being manipulated. We sense in our hearts when our fears are being fed. We can say exactly the same thing about business. The efficiency of business and its innovation has been one of the big reasons behind our material standard of living, how that's increased, but we all know that business has a very dark side. And so look, I don't want to, and we can say the same thing about politics, I actually think of all of them, politics probably gets the hardest rap, because it certainly has its bad moments and its selfishness, but it's really just a reflection of the ego in other institutions, in business and media, and of course religion, and that gets a bad rap too, with the terrible things that happen with child abuse and all sorts of things, but on the other hand, a lot of the religious institutions across all the faiths feel an enormous amount of good as well. But the point is, all of these institutions have their good and bad side, but what I'm interested in is how that impacts us. So here we are, living in a society, and every day we're trying to be authentic people, we're trying to control our ego and be a beautiful, heart-centered, loving, authentic bias, and then you turn on to the news.com.au on the internet and there's a story about sex, stories about violence, there's stories about how much money everyone makes, there's stories about how you have to look absolutely beautiful if you're a woman, and you can't be this and can't be that, there's just so many negative and just ego-driven messages. And perhaps for the sake of it, let's stick with the media, and you really can't listen to many television programs, radio programs, or go on many internet sites without negative messages. So I think, what's the impact of this as individuals? I think we're just always tempted, we're always tempted to feed our fears, to feed the ego, to read things that titillate us or satisfy the ego at some level, but really, emotionally bring us to a bad place. The media in particular, whether it's the news, they just feed our fears, they want to satisfy our ego, that's how they make money, because that's the easiest sell, it's actually quite hard to inspire people when you're in the media, because the inspirational thing would often be switching off and talking with your friends and doing other things rather than watching TV, so to keep you there, they have to feed you something, they have to get you addicted to something. And look, it's not a conspiracy theory, as I say, all of these institutions have their good and bad sides, but you have to remember, your agenda in life, for want of a better term, we shouldn't call it agenda, but your purpose in life is to become your authentic self. That is not the agenda of any of these institutions. The media just want you to tune in, that's what they want, so they can sell advertising. That's their agenda, they want you to watch, they will feed you whatever they think will get you listening or watching or reading their program. That's their agenda, they admit it. Business, their agenda is to make profit, they want you to buy their products and services. That is their agenda. If they have to scare you, as in say a big pharmaceutical company, if they have to scare you to get you to buy their products and services, they will, and that's again, that's not hidden, that's what their constitution is, that they have to maximize their returns to shareholders. Again, this isn't a conspiracy theory, because it's not, you haven't got these evil people running these organizations, it's just an observation of the reality that all of these institutions have an agenda, which is not for you to be your authentic self. They want you to do things, even your employer, your boss, where you work, they might have some very good things about them, and they're particular individuals, enlightened individuals who care for you, but the business itself doesn't really want you to be your authentic self. They just want you to be a good little worker, they want you to rock up, do your job, not cause too much of a fuss and raise too many issues and go home. Again, it's not, this is just the world we live in, we live in a very, very imperfect world, a world full of ego, and if we just blindly accept it all, we go to work, we do what everybody tells us to do, we come home, we tune into the TV, we watch it uncritically, we become that level of consciousness, that level of energy, that level of awareness, that level of authenticity, that's kind of what we become. If you're not aware, you just kind of adopt whatever your society's morals and level of energy and level of authenticity is. So, I suppose what's the issue here, and what do we do about it? Firstly, I think, maybe there's people who don't agree with me, but I think that an awareness that other institutions that have an impact on our lives don't have the same purpose we do. But then it's acting, saying, well look, how do I, I know that TV's shit, that it feeds for years, and it's quite manipulative, so what do I do? And that's about being very conscious in how you live your life, how you plan your day. For example, what's going to give you more, put you in a better place emotionally, is it watching a current affair where there's some conspiracy or some fear-driven news story, or is it going to listening to a beautiful piece of music that you love? You're getting good energy out of both things, so it's taking you out of your day, but one of them leads you to a much better, authentic place, and one of them doesn't. So it's about planning out day, just being conscious, and look, you might enjoy a particular radio show or news story that does feed some fears, but do it consciously, like anything. Have some alcohol, buy potato chips, do some little unhealthy things, but at least do it consciously. I'm doing this, I'm doing this for this one time, because I'm choosing to right now, but don't, you know, we just build this lifestyle with all this negative energy fed into us from all these institutions, we just take it in, and I think it's time for us to be more conscious. And look, if everybody did that, they would change the way they do news stories, to make them more positive. Because ultimately, ultimately these institutions reflect us. If people didn't buy products that had a mean spirit about them, you know, those businesses would go out of business, so I guess it's probably sounded like a very negative spiel on institutions, and it shouldn't be, because as I mentioned, these institutions reflect us, it's about how do we build into our daily habits, our daily lives, a healthiness, instead of just mindlessly chucking on the TV for a couple of hours, or listening to a radio station, you know, to and from work, that just whinges about things, or feeds into our fears and negativity. It's about saying, how do I want to live my life, how do I want to feel, do I want to get inspired, what do I want, to buy into things, and give my time to things that feed into my ego and promote negativity. So I think that anybody, whether they're Christian, or Muslim, or Jew, or they're atheist, but they've got a real spiritual sense of their lives, I think we need to be very aware of the role of institutions in our lives, and then be very conscious about all those little choices we make, and how that impacts our journey to authenticity and to love and to positive energy.