Scientists are discovering that the development of our ego (what they are calling the intrinsic neural network) in our brains as we gain the ability to talk, could very well be the main cause of unhappiness in our lives.
Without the filters of language before we have labels for things, we feel unlimited and complete more easily and more often. As we learn a language and begin assigning labels to things, especially to our idea of “me”, our experience of feeling complete and unlimited becomes ‘limited’ by the labels themselves.
Here’s my own personal story of how this has played out in my life so far. Are there similarities to what’s happened with you?
As a kid I began feeling less than complete as my ego began to develop around age 2 1/2 – 7.
I began expecting my Mom to complete me by giving me more attention.
No amount of attention ever felt like it was enough and I remained feeling incomplete and blaming her lack of attention and possibly myself for not being enough to get the attention I wanted, believing that if I got the attention I would feel permanently complete.
As I grew older, I decided to avoid people and circumstances that I liked a lot (what I thought of as liking “too much”) so that I would never expect the people and circumstances in my life to complete me and I would never have to feel constantly disappointed or reminded that deep down I still didn’t feel complete.
I never realized (until now) that no person or circumstance, no matter how much I like them or not, can ever complete me because I am, in reality, already complete and the only thing in the way of me experiencing myself as complete is my own idea that I am not (my ego), and the only solution to me not experiencing myself as complete is to refuse to expect any person or circumstance (even the ones I like a lot) to ever complete me and to notice more often that I am complete now no matter what is happening and no matter what happens.