The Hidden Cause of Suffering and How to End It with Eli Recht ​

Eli Recht 

And you could say ego and suffering are generally synonymous. They both have the same components to them. If ego is present, if we are identifying with ego, we will inevitably suffer. Even if we’re not suffering currently, if there is ego in the room, it will lead to suffering unless we have that awareness or that space around the ego to release it.

Lorne Brown 

By listening to the Coherence Code Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition, either in yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast. To Coherence Code Podcast. Where we explore how the mind and body work together so you can move from stress and inner conflict to clarity, calm and alignment. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. And through my work, I’ve seen that healing happens when we remove what gets in the way and allow the body and the nervous system to do what they’re designed to do to heal. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.

This is a special episode on the Coherence Code Podcast because it’s from a webinar series called Anatomy of the Ego with Eli Recht and where we focus directly on psychological defense mechanisms and the role in maintaining suffering. So this was a webinar, it’s about 90 minutes long that we offered through Healthy Seminars. The other hat I wear where I moderate lectures on Healthy Seminars. And I believe it’s really aligned with what we talk about on the Coherence Code podcast. So I wanted to share it with you guys as well. And again, he did a series, Eli, in 2025, six lectures which were excellent, so well received. So in 2026, he agreed to do four, one and a quarter. So this is from early 2026. And just to give you a brief description, what you’re about to listen to, this webinar, now a podcast, explores how the ego creates suffering through fear, false beliefs, and emotional resistance, and how awareness can dissolve that cycle.

And Eli Recht explains that the ego is not inherently bad and acts like a survival mechanism, but it creates a sense of separation that leads people to resist reality, therefore suppressing emotions, which become more trapped in repetitive, habitual, mental, emotional patterns. And there’s the suffering. So the discussion that I’m about to share with you, which was a webinar, Connect Psychology and Spirituality, describes suffering as an internal process caused by resisting emotions and identifying with thoughts and stories. And according to this webinar, emotions are meant to move through us naturally. So they’re supposed to have a complete resolution, but when they are denied or suppressed so they don’t have their complete resolution, they become stuck in our tissues. Chinese medicine calls this qi stagnation. In my conscious work, I call this resistance. This reinforces fear and limiting beliefs and it amplifies these negative feelings that you’re experiencing.

And so the anecdote proposed in this webinar is awareness, observing thoughts, emotions and reactions without identifying with them. I think if you watch this on YouTube on the Coherence Code Podcast YouTube channel, you’ll get even more out of it because he has slides, but you can benefit from just listening as well. And again, this is one of a series of four with Eli Recht that we’ve done through Healthy Seminars that we are releasing on the Coherence Code Podcast. I hope you enjoy it.

Eli, welcome back. This is our first of a series of four for 2026 and you’re going to talk about ego and the cycle of suffering. So I’ll pass the mic over to you. Thanks for coming back and to continue to offer your time and share with us.

Eli Recht 

Okay. Thank you so much, Lorne. I really appreciate it. It’s great to be back here. Yeah, we did webinars last year. I thought they were all great. I’ve really come to appreciate these, so I’m glad to be here. And it’s just great to see everyone again. So hi to everyone all over the world. It’s amazing. Our world is becoming smaller and smaller with the internet, so it’s great to see everybody here. I just really appreciate the opportunity to be able to share with everybody in this way and I wouldn’t be able to do it without you, so much gratitude. So as Lorne already said, this series is about bridging psychology and spiritual awakening. And for this year, I wanted to do a series of four, one per quarter and we’re going to really talk about the concept of ego for all four of these webinars throughout the year because the concept of ego is really the bridge between both fields.

Psychology is really all about understanding the ego and trying to shape it and change it in a way that makes us feel happier, more at peace with our lives and spiritual awakening is all about transcending the ego. And we need to understand the ego in order to be able to transcend it most of the time. Sometimes there’s grace, sometimes there’s other things that are happening, but for the most part we do need to understand the ego in order to transcend it. So I felt like I wanted to really dive into the ego because that’s what bridges both fields. And so the plan is we want to put the ego on the dissection table and we want to dice it and slice it and really, really get a good grasp on what it is we’re working with here, what the ego is and what it’s all about.

So please feel free to comment, reflect, ask questions along the way. I really enjoy and encourage conversation and I’ll be sharing a couple slides in a bit. So I wanted to start with just the basic question of what is ego and we’re going to start with the big picture. So fundamentally, ego is nothing more than a mode of perception. It’s a perspective, it’s a lens through which we see the world. And the mode of perception that the ego is is one of duality. So it divides everything into pairs of opposites and then from those pairs of opposites, we get the 10,000 things as Lao Tzu said. So it’s nothing more than a mode of perception and that perception is duality, which means that when we transcend the ego, when we awaken, that’s also nothing more awakening is nothing more than a shift in perception. And that’s really important to remember because we’re going to get bogged down into some of the details here.

So I want us to remember that it’s really just a mode of perception and the whole game is about shifting our perception. And when we awaken, that perception is one of unity. It’s not one of duality and division and pairs of opposites. It’s one of unity and oneness and interconnectedness. Some other ways to understand the ego, you could say that it’s a contraction of consciousness. So big picture, consciousness is all there is. Another word for consciousness could be awareness, could be spirit, could be being. There’s many, many words, the self, capital S self. There’s many words that people use. They’re all basically synonymous. In some context, they might change the meaning slightly, but for the most part they’re synonymous and for our purposes, they’re synonymous. So it’s a contraction of consciousness. Consciousness is all there is and then consciousness contracts into this ego, this dualistic mode of perceiving.

In other words, this contraction is a mental contraction. The contraction that’s happening is on the level of mind and then it can contract even further to the level of energy and contract even further to the level of matter. And that’s how we kind of get all of the creation that we see and engage with every day. So it’s also another way to look at it as a mental construct. The ego is in the mind, it’s of the mind. It’s like a psychological program and we could also see it as a machine. It’s not our true self, but it’s part of ourself. It’s the shadow that is facing outward. It’s an outward facing self. It’s focused outwardly, whereas the soul you could say is more inward facing or inwardly focused. And I do want to make a distinction here briefly to prevent any confusion that there are sort of two kinds of ego that I like to talk about and I got these terms from one of my students.

You could say that there are two kinds of ego. There’s the separative ego, which is more like the personal mind. That’s the part of the ego that we believe is us. That’s our identity. That’s the one that feels separate from everything else in the world. It’s the personal mind and it filters everything through that sense of I or that sense of a limited self identity. And then there’s the psychological ego function, which is sort of this impersonal mind. You could say it’s used to navigate the world, you could use it for analysis, you could use it for planning, things like that. And that actually remains after awakening and continues to evolve and unfold and shape itself. So the separative ego, the one I started talking about, the personal mind that feels separate, that is the ego that falls away that leads to awakening, the psychological ego function that helps us navigate the world without which we would not be able to function.

That remains after awakening. So today and for the rest of the year, we’re going to be talking about the separative ego, not the psychological ego function, although there may be some overlap here and there, but primarily we’re going to be talking about the ego that falls away during awakening. Other ways to describe the ego is that it’s an illusion or an illusory separate self identity, but I also want to clarify what I mean by illusion because a lot of people get confused about that. When I say the ego is an illusion, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s very real in our experience and it leads to suffering and it leads to all sorts of outcomes and things like that. But the core of the ego, the actual sense of identity, the ego is really nothing more than a mode of perception, right? It’s a story that we tell ourselves.

It’s an identity that can constantly be changing and it is constantly changing. And so that’s what I mean by illusory. It’s an illusion in the sense that it’s real in our experience, it’s manifestly there, but the story that it tells us is not real. And if it’s ultimately coming from the mind and the mind is constantly changing and comes and goes and can evolve, then how real can it be? So that’s what it means when people say it’s an illusion. The ego only exists in and as unawareness. When awareness is present, the ego does not exist. When awareness, real full awareness, which is our true nature, when awareness is present, the ego cannot exist in that environment of awareness because it’s unawareness. Its nature is unawareness and that’s what leads to this illusory separate self. So it’s important to keep that in mind that awareness is what allows ego.

It is the nature of unawareness that allows ego and is the nature of ego. Awareness is our true nature that dissolves ego and we’re going to talk more about that. Other terms that people have used, it’s a shadow, shadow of the soul or a shadow of our true self. That’s a term by Carl Jung. So when people are talking about doing shadow work, they’re talking about dissolving the ego in order to awaken. You could also say it’s a veil, it’s darkness, whereas awareness is light, it’s a filter that obscures our true nature and in Sanskrit, they call that Maya, the illusion or the filter that obscures our true nature. And what does the ego do? It divides, it judges, it labels, it resists reality. It overlays onto reality. So reality just is and then the ego overlays onto it and that’s why we perceive things the way that we do.

The ego lives in the past and it lives in the future in order to avoid the present moment and the present moment is the only thing that’s real. It’s the only time that we have. And so the ego cannot exist in the present moment. It lives in the past and the future and it seeks external validation. It’s the outward facing self. It only exists in relation to the outside and it’s always seeking external validation to reify itself to strengthen itself and it’s always seeking things like power, control, fame, knowledge, stability, safety, possessions, things like that in order to feel like it’s a solid real thing in order to avoid dissolution or integration actually is what it really is. Any questions on that, on what is ego?

Lorne Brown

There is a question regarding this. So they want to know, Eli, how would you distinguish awareness and mindfulness? Interested to hear your perspective on that. They seem the same to me in essence.

Eli Recht 

Yeah. Some people use them interchangeably. Mindfulness, it depends on the definition of mindfulness, but mindfulness can sometimes imply the mind. And so if mind is being used in order to create mindfulness, which can happen, it’s like using a thorn to remove a thorn, then that’s not pure awareness. But you could also say that mindfulness is an approximation of pure awareness or a bridge just like the witnessing consciousness is. If you witness, you stand back and you try to witness life or be an observer, you could say that’s similar to mindfulness. Still not full pure awareness, not our true nature in essence, but a helpful bridge.

Lorne Brown 

There’s another question. This is wonderful. You had said something was continuously changing, so how could it be real? Does something have to be done in quotes? Does something have to be done constantly to be real?

Eli Recht 

Yeah. Again, depends on how you define real. After a while, language starts to break down and becomes really clunky and inefficient, but it depends how you define real. And I really like Swami Muktananda’s definition of what is real. He says, “That which is real is that which never changes and what never changes, right? Only our true nature, only awareness being…” Again, when I made that distinction between the separate of ego and the psychological ego function, it’s the separative ego, the one that feels like it’s separate and limited identity, that falls away, but the psychological ego function remains and that’s what helps us navigate the world. So you could also talk about the psychological ego function that remains. It’s like sometimes I talk about it like a sliver of what it used to be. Ramana Maharshi talks about it like it’s a sliver of the moon in daylight rather than the full ego, which is the full moon in darkness.

There’s that kind of distinction. So you could say it’s like an interface, you could say it’s like a sliver of what it once was. Some teachers talk about it like it gets recalibrated or it gets reconfigured rather than dissolved. And so sometimes I talk about it like when we’re in the ego consciousness, the ego is in the driver’s seat and awareness is in the passenger seat or in the backseat. When we awaken, they flip. So awareness comes into the driver’s seat and then ego goes into the passenger seat or the backseat. We still have it there. We still need it and we can still work through it and live through it and see through it, but our primary mode, what’s true, what’s ultimately real is this oneness and then we can see through the filter of ego, but we know that it’s an illusion as we’re working through it, as we’re living with it.

We see that it’s an illusion. We see that it’s ultimately not real and we can play within the realm of duality without getting caught in it. So why does the ego exist? This is another very common question that I get. And I just want to start out by saying the ego isn’t good or bad. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just what is. It’s just here and it’s doing the best it can. It actually has good intent, but it’s just misinformed or it’s misguided because it doesn’t have all the information because it lives in unawareness. So you could say the ego acts as a protection for the organism. It actually has value. It plays a role. It serves a function. If it didn’t have value, it wouldn’t exist. And so you could also say that it’s a necessary part of our soul’s evolutionary journey. You could say it’s like a stage on the path of our soul’s evolution and growth.

Just to expand on that, it serves as a mental organizing principle that filters through life to aid in the apparent stability of consciousness in the human form. So another way to say that is it’s like a survival mechanism. Life happens to us. It activates our stuff or life happens and if there’s just too much energy, too much information, we won’t be able to function. So the ego comes in and it filters life so that we can find some apparent stability so that we can actually live our lives and function properly. So the analogy that I like is that it’s like riding a bike. When we’re first learning to ride a bike, we need training wheels because we don’t fully understand how to ride the bike. We need a little bit of help. We don’t fully trust our abilities. So we use the training wheels. Once we get comfortable, then we can ride the bike without training wheels.

So the ego is like the training wheels of the bike. The ego is there as a necessary step to help us get through life. And then once we can do it and we learn about life and we understand how it works, then we can let go of the ego and we can ride normally, be in awareness. So originally, this is kind of a theory. It’s hard to really explain why the ego, how it originates in the very beginning, but you could say that the ego forms as like an automatic compensation. So we come into the human form. There’s a lot of energy and voltage and information that’s coming at us or coming through us. Our awareness may not be available enough at that time and so the ego shows up as a way to compensate for that until such time that we don’t need it anymore and then we can release it.

But ultimately the ego rises from an inability to trust reality or an inability to tolerate reality. It’s just we don’t have the awareness to be able to tolerate what we’re going through so the ego helps us to filter through and it stems from a belief in separateness. And you could also say that why does the ego exist? From a big picture perspective, it serves as the mechanism through which we forget our true nature so that we can realize it again. If we didn’t forget, we wouldn’t be able to realize. So we forget in order to realize. So you could say that the ego serves multiple functions, multiple purposes, but at the end of the day, I do want to say that the question of why, like why ego, my explanations here may not satisfy people, it may not satisfy the mind and ultimately we can’t really know why something exists.

It just does and we can either choose to accept that and have peace or choose to resist that and suffer. So that’s my spiel on why ego. Any comments, reflections, questions on that?

Lorne Brown

There are a few here, so yes. Could you say living as an ego is like being in kindergarten and you finally graduated in awakening?

Eli Recht 

Yeah, you could say that. Yeah. And I also just want to say again, that’s not good or bad. If you’re in college, you’re not going to look at a middle schooler and say, “Oh, you shouldn’t be in middle school.”That’s where they need to be. It’s all part of the journey, it’s part of the process. And so everybody’s in a different place on the journey and everybody needs something different. So it’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. There’s no need for judgment. It’s just what everybody is capable of and functions according to a person’s awareness capacity really.

Lorne Brown 

And then somebody just made a comment because you’re talking about the moon and the sliver and the moon. They’re saying, “Yeah, it’s like the yin yang image. There’s always a little present in both extremes as we navigate life.”

Eli Recht 

Yes, exactly. Thanks for adding that.

Lorne Brown 

Comment/question is, I’m very familiar with these teachings from a Buddhist lens and I’m very curious how you self-realize. I guess I had a lot of the hindrance of doubt that if it may be reachable for me, I do get a feeling of drawing closer sometimes and also thanking you for doing this.

Eli Recht 

Oh, that’s very kind. Thanks. Yeah. Interesting you asked that because this whole presentation and the next three webinars are really going to explain how the awakening happened for me, what stages I went through in order to get there. So hopefully again, as we go on, that will answer that question. Okay, that brings us to the conversation of suffering and you could say ego and suffering are generally synonymous. They both have the same components to them. And if ego is present, if we are identifying with ego, we will inevitably suffer. Even if we’re not suffering currently, if there is ego in the room, it will lead to suffering unless we have that awareness or that space around the ego to release it. So you mentioned Buddhism. Buddha defined enlightenment, which is ego transcendence. He defined it when someone asked him, “What is enlightenment?” He said, “It’s the end of suffering.” And I love that definition because he doesn’t say what it is because you can’t really describe what it is.

You can only experience what it is. So I thought that’s a really wise answer. He only says what it’s not and it’s not suffering. It’s the end of suffering. You could also say that suffering is resistance to what is or resistance to reality or resistance to this moment. When we resist, we suffer. I want to also add a few important truths that I think will help our conversation here. There’s an old, I think it’s a Buddhist quote that says, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” So pain in this circumstance in this context is like physical pain maybe or emotional pain. We can have physical pain. We can feel our intense emotions, but that doesn’t mean we are suffering. So suffering is a different thing. They’re linked, they’re connected, but they’re actually different. And I want to tell a little personal story about this.

When I was in therapy back in 2017, my therapist, Matt, a great therapist, used to sit down and used to tell me, “You know, Eli, your suffering is a choice. Your suffering is optional.” And boy, did I get mad at him. I used to chew him out. I used to get really angry like, “You have no idea. I’m not choosing this. I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I would do anything to not suffer because my suffering was really acute and he just would continue very compassionately, very gently. He would continuously remind me, your suffering is a choice. You’re doing this to yourself.” And one day I was driving home and it struck me this realization I had that he was right, that my suffering was a choice. And in that moment it was revealed to me the whole cycle of suffering. And I saw exactly how I was doing this to myself, how I was choosing this, but it was subconscious.

I wasn’t aware of it until he was able to point that out to me. So basically suffering is an entirely internal and subjective experience. It’s psychological. Again, like ego, it’s a perception, which is good news because it also means that peace is internal. We don’t need the external to find peace. So for example, to illustrate that suffering is internal and subjective, two people can experience the same event, which happens all the time, but one person suffers based on the event and the other person doesn’t. Why is that? It can’t be the event that’s causing it. It must be what’s going on inside that individual that’s causing it. Similarly, you could say that two people are having opposite experiences. One person has terrible external circumstances and they don’t suffer. Whereas another person has really great external circumstances and they do suffer. Why is that? So another thing I want to share when I was in college, I took a trip down to Nicaragua to do some volunteer work and I worked very closely with some locals there and they lived in extreme poverty and yet they would show me and talk to me and demonstrate that they were actually really happy and at peace.

And then you have people on the flip side like millionaires who have everything they could ever want externally and yet you find them committing suicide and doing all sorts of things from a place of suffering. So that can only mean that suffering is happening on the inside. It’s not caused by the outside. I would say that I was also more on the latter side where I had externally everything I could ever want and I was suffering inside and that’s what pushed me onto the spiritual path. And in Grace Happens, Phil Weber also talks about that too, that he had a great job, he had a great life. He was doing all the things, getting BMWs, whatever, but it wasn’t leading to happiness or peace. He was still suffering. So that just implies that suffering is internal.

Lorne Brown 

Sure. So the quote is, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” And then I think I’ve heard Eckhart tolle add to it, “So you can be at peace in an unhappy situation, so you’re not adding resistance.” And the suffering is basically amplifying the bad situation. So

My personal experience is, I fell off a dock and broke four ribs and finally got on top well back on the dock. I fell on rocks. And as I lied there, I had my epiphany of what they meant by pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, you can be at peace in an unhappy situation because I didn’t, but at the time I thought I punctured my lung. I can’t explain how much pain I was in and difficulty breathing, but while I lied there, I was in gratitude because I was able to move my hands and feet. So I was aware that I hadn’t broken my back or my neck and I knew who I was. I knew my friends were going to make fun of me, so I knew my mental capacity was okay. And in that moment, I was in terrible pain and I was laughing at myself because a couple days ago I really put out the intention that I wanted to take a week off of work guilt-free and as I lied there, I realized I was going to get a week off guilt-free because I’m not going to be able to go to work.

And I thought to myself, I need to be more clear on my intentions. And then the epiphany happened that I was in the worst pain. I’ve never had physical pain like that, but it didn’t get amplified with … I didn’t say I’m an idiot or why it happened. I didn’t think, oh my God, I didn’t miss work. None of that came about. I was in pain, but at that moment I was very aware I was not suffering. I was at peace and in a happy situation. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. So there’s whatever you call that aspect of the ego. I definitely knew this wasn’t something I would choose or that I wanted, but I didn’t amplify it with my suffering. I still had the pain. So the pain was inevitable, but there was no suffering in that experience.

Eli Recht 

A beautiful example. Thank you for sharing. So I do want to just add here a couple other things that the external world and other people, while they can’t cause suffering, they can activate it. They can trigger it. They can mirror our own suffering back to us because our suffering sometimes can be dormant or subconscious. And so maybe we need the outside world to actually show us where our suffering is. So the external world still plays a role, but it’s not the cause. It’s only the activator. And we can be impacted by energies like Lorne was saying, but that doesn’t mean we’re suffering. And so I want to say these truths that I’m sharing here today, they may be challenging to hear, but they also are extremely liberating. Just like in the example that I had with my therapist, they’re extremely liberating if we really take them to heart.

And in order to awaken permanently, we do have to take accountability for our own suffering. That doesn’t mean we can’t still act. We still want to use intuition, common sense, and wisdom in order to act, but we should take accountability if we want to awaken. And even though suffering is self-created, it is still extremely important to have compassion for people who are suffering, especially if they don’t understand why they’re suffering, because it’s just not within their awareness. So just because suffering is self-created doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have compassion.

Lorne Brown 

Somebody, just to attribute the quote, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” Somebody shared that it’s most commonly attributed to Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist and marathon runner.

Eli Recht 

I did see that. I saw that a while back, but I also read that that actually maybe comes from a previous Buddhist sutra. So just FYI. Hard to attribute these things. Right. Thank you. And yeah, suffering was my main motivation for seeking truth, for seeking self-realization. I think it’s a very common reason. Perhaps the ultimate or the strongest reason, even maybe stronger than the desire for truth or for happiness. And it is a fail safe that guarantees awakening. It’s a fail safe that guarantees that we eventually return home. If we didn’t have suffering, there are many of us who would never even start the journey to come home to our true self. And so in that way, you could say it’s a form of grace, but it’s fierce grace.

Lorne Brown

I think you just kind of answered it, but the comment or question is, is there a particular experience which doesn’t involve pain and suffering and that helps break through towards full awareness? So you’re not saying you have to have suffering to have awakening,

Lorne Brown 

It’s just a good catalyst, it seems.

Eli Recht

Yeah. It’s a good catalyst, possibly the best, but doesn’t mean that it’s the only.

Lorne Brown 

I will answer that. The other way is what you’re doing here, coming to these lectures and learning how you can have agency and practically put some practice in to help the awakening process.

Eli Recht 

Yes. Yes. Beautiful. So I’m going to start sharing my slide because we’re going to talk about the cycle of suffering. Okay. So this slide, it’s not a perfect depiction of the cycle of suffering, but hopefully it’s good enough. And I do want to give credit to where it’s due. This was inspired by several things. There’s a great psychotherapist named David Malan. He passed away, but he made something called the triangle of conflict and that was monumental in my understanding in therapy, which helped me get through this. And it’s a similar cycle except that instead of false beliefs over here, he had anxiety, which is pretty similar. You could say anxiety is really just false beliefs. And it’s also combining the wheel of samsara that Buddha talked about plus my own experience. So it’s a nice mix of the spiritual and the psychological, this cycle of suffering.

The Buddha talked about the wheel of samsara that leads to death and rebirth and karma and things like that. And that’s really what we’re talking about here. It’s the same cycle, but hopefully updated with modern psychology. So the diagram, first of all, in the center, you see the crown chakra. That’s what’s up here. This is our energy center and it’s closed because it’s been veiled by false beliefs, defense mechanisms, and subconscious feelings. But we do have that star in the middle, which is our true nature, that’s awareness and it’s always untouched, but it’s hidden by unawareness. It’s hidden by ego. And again, unawareness is what ultimately causes and sustains this cycle of suffering. So I want to just talk a little bit about the origin of the cycle, how it starts. Again, it’s really pretty much impossible to really grasp how it starts, but I’m going to do the best I can.

So in previous webinars, I talked about how we’ve got four parts of our being. We’ve got the body, heart, mind, and spirit. So each of these components of our being contributes to the cycle of suffering in a significant way. So life happens, right? We get life, energy. If we start from a place of unawareness, that’s the spirit part. The part of us that is spirit, that’s our true nature. If that’s unaware, then that will lead to a belief of separateness in the mind. So the root of all false beliefs is separateness. That separateness then leads to psychological fear. So like I said in the beginning, life happens. If we don’t have the awareness capacity, then we will constrict or contract or we will filter through life in order to be able to function properly. And that filtering is what leads to this belief that we’re separate, this belief in duality.

So you have me and then you have not me. You have me and the world or inner and outer. That belief in separateness leads to fear, leads to psychological fear and that’s on the level of the heart. So of course, if we believe that we’re separate and cut off from the rest of life, a natural result of that is we’re going to feel fear. And then in response to the fear, we’re going to constrict, right? That’s on the physical level. We’re going to tense up. We’re going to constrict and we’re going to try to control. We’re going to try to control the world. We’re going to try to control things so that we can feel more stable and more secure and try to … We’re acting from a place of fear. So you could say that the root of all subconscious feelings is fear and you could say that the root of all defense mechanisms, which are all the ways that we block, attach, and resist, and I’m going to get into a little more all of these components that leads to constriction or control on the action level on the body level.

So you get unawareness, which leads to separateness, which leads to fear, which leads to constriction and control and that you can see how that goes down all four components. It goes from the spirit to the mind, to the heart, to the body. And you could say that it’s almost like the chicken and the egg, which came first. It’s kind of hard to say like, did the false belief come first or did the unawareness come first? Did the feeling of fear come first? Ultimately, it’s impossible to answer that, but you could say, as the Buddhists say, they are interdependently co-arising. They actually arise and exist together and they dissolve together. So it’s either it all comes together or it all doesn’t come together. And this is a vicious cycle that reinforces itself and worsens over time. I want to talk a little bit about each of these components, these three components.

So the false beliefs, that’s the psychological term, false beliefs. The spiritual equivalent to that would be ego identity. It’s on the mental level and you could say that the false beliefs are the core of the ego. And just to give a little bit of flavor of what false beliefs are, some other words that people use are narratives, personal stories. Some people call them limiting core beliefs or negative core beliefs. They’re basically our identities and that’s the ultimate, that’s kind of the root of suffering other than unawareness, of course. Some other beliefs that are built upon the belief of separateness, you could say is like good versus bad or good versus evil. Some beliefs that some things are good and some things are bad. Some things are right, some things are wrong. Some things are superior or some people are superior and some things and people are inferior and it’s obviously dualistic and there’s really no end to the ingenuity that the ego has in creating these false beliefs.

There’s nearly an infinite variety. And I depicted the false beliefs as a cloud that if you look closely, it starts to look like a face. You can see the cloud forming into a face. So in that way, that kind of depicts that it’s illusory, but it’s still there. How real is a cloud? If the sun shines on a cloud, the cloud dissolves. Similarly, if awareness shines on the ego or on the false beliefs, the ego and false beliefs dissolve. So how real can it be? And these false beliefs, they’re not just thoughts. It can be thoughts, but they can also be precognitive or preverbal. They’re feeling vibrations in the spine and the brain. It’s like our core sense of self. These false beliefs, they’re not just passing thoughts. They tend to be sticky. They tend to be deep. We tend to really feel them and want to identify them.

And these false beliefs can be hidden behind feelings and behind defenses. So the question could be, what belief is causing me to think or feel or act this way? That’s how you can start to get closer to what a false belief is. I mentioned briefly that the false beliefs are really just vibrations. They’re nothing more than vibrations. That’s mind. And I want to quote the yoga sutras. I think it’s the second or third verse in the yoga sutras by Patanjali, which is one of the main texts in yoga philosophy where they talk about that yoga or oneness, oneness happens … I’m paraphrasing here. “Oneeness happens when we can still the fluctuations of mind. When we can no longer have this vibration or oscillation of mind, then oneness will appear. And so you could say that false beliefs are nothing more than vibrations. So if you’re interested in exploring this further, maybe one meditation you could try or question you could ask yourself is, can you sense your separateness?

If you look closely, where do you begin and end? Can you feel that? Can you perceive vibrations if you look inside and can you witness them? And maybe you’ll start to understand and get closer to what false beliefs really are.

Lorne Brown 

Eli, I want to unpack that a little bit with you because you said something about the light and awareness and unawareness, right? And so there’s this quote and we talked in the past episodes how I see a process of notice, accept, choose again and the accepting part is a form of surrender through intentional awareness. I heard this quote and I think it’s Buddhist, but I don’t know who to attribute it to, but I heard the expression that light transforms darkness is what we’re talking about. And in my experience, when I heard that through my practice, it’s like, oh, light is awareness and darkness are those uncomfortable feelings in beliefs. So light transforms darkness means awareness transforms or metabolizes those emotions and beliefs. And now I have a new word. Light is the awareness, and then the darkness is unawareness. So light, by bringing awareness, you undo the unawareness and then you

Eli Recht

That’s exactly right.

Thank you for adding that. Yeah. So I want to talk about the next part, subconscious feelings, you could say that’s a psychological term, subconscious feelings. The spiritual equivalent to that could be karmic energy and it’s happening on the level of the heart. And you could say that it’s the ego’s food or the ego’s fuel without these subconscious feelings, not feelings, subconscious feelings because of unawareness, right? Without these subconscious feelings, the ego has no fuel. It can’t survive. So if we can undo the subconscious feelings, if we can bring consciousness to the feelings, then we’re basically depriving the ego of its fuel or its food and then it’s just a matter of time before it collapses. So what do I mean by feelings? That could be emotions, that could be energies. I’m using feelings pretty loosely here. That could be sensations. And these feelings actually contain information and intelligence.

So if we’re blocking these feelings from consciousness, then we’re actually blocking information and intelligence from arising in our being from our awareness and that’s going to prevent us from being able to make the proper decisions in our lives. The root of all subconscious feelings is psychological fear, as I said before. And what are some other subconscious feelings? Any feeling or energy that is resisted and gets shoved into the subconscious is a subconscious feeling. That can be anything, shame, guilt, anger, sadness, love, joy, you name it. Feelings want to flow. It’s their nature to flow. Energy’s nature is to flow. So the ego then judges these feelings, it suppresses them based on the beliefs and they become subconscious. And I depicted it as a closed heart trapping the emotions, but you can see that the heart is made of glass, meaning it’s very fragile. So when we have subconscious feelings, our hearts are very fragile.

It resists bad feelings and attaches to good ones. So any energy that gets trapped reinforces a belief, therefore becoming karma. And I really love Nisargadatta’s quote, defining karma. He says, karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled desires and fears not understood. That’s all it is. It’s unfulfilled desires, fears not understood, unspent energies. Again, implying unawareness, unawareness of energy. Yeah.

Lorne Brown 

This expression that your issues get stuck in your tissues and as you said, these emotions, the keyword is resist them, right? So emotions, energy, emotions, not that you don’t experience them, their nature as being energy, emotion is to move up and out through you. So it may last 30 seconds to a minute and resistance looks like denying, suppressing, pushing away or projecting. So just to be practical, how do you resist your emotions? Because you have to be willing to feel the uncomfortable feelings, but bringing awareness to it, there’s the pain but not the suffering. Having unawareness is pain and now you’re amplifying it because you don’t want to feel it. So push away, suppress, depress, or project. And now it gets stuck in your issues because that vibration we call chi stagnation Chinese medicine. So it’s just stuck

Eli Recht

Initiative.

Lorne Brown 

It’s just stuck energy. It was meant to be experienced like a receiver, you’re a receiver and leave you and go somewhere else because it’s energy, can’t be destroyed, but you chose unconsciously, but it is a choice, as you said, to get stuck into your tissues. And then life will keep bouncing into it and every time life hits it, it hits that vibration and now there goes my shame again.

Eli Recht 

Exactly.

Lorne Brown

Another comment in the chat. So Eli, is this why trauma work is so important to shift the feelings so the ego can drop away?

Eli Recht 

Yes.

Lorne Brown 

There’s another comment maybe it will come back to. Eli, I consider emotions as energy. This is somebody asking, I consider E capital emotions, so energy emotions as energy that has a message for us. When we do not listen and understand the message, the emotions linger into feelings.

Eli Recht 

Yeah. So I want to go onto the next one, defense mechanisms. That’s the psychological term, right? Defense mechanisms. The spiritual equivalent to that would be attachment and resistance and that’s happening on the body level. You could say that or at least on the external physical level in terms of action, because defense mechanisms, just like how subconscious feelings are the food or the fuel of the ego, defense mechanisms are the tools of the ego or the actions of the ego that actually serve to suppress the feelings or suppress the energy. So you could say that the defense mechanisms are a structural or a reinforcing component to the ego. They reify the ego and when we act on them, they strengthen the ego. So that’s why I depicted it as a maze because you could say that it’s a maze that’s blocking the heart. There’s all these different barriers and defenses that we put in front of our heart so that we don’t actually feel our feelings so that we can’t let energy flow.

And that maze ends up creating this illusion of a sense of reality, of a sense of solidity that actually isn’t there. So defense mechanisms you could say, or attachment and resistance, the actions or the tools of the ego, they protect the rigid identity from reality, from feelings, from energy and from that information. Other words you could use for attachment and resistance could be like attraction and repulsion, indulgence and avoidance and all defense mechanisms are ultimately built upon the original one, which is constriction and control, which you could say are similar or the same thing. So we constrict the energy channels so that they can’t flow, that’s a form of control, or we could also just try to control our world in order to resist the energy that’s coming in. Some other versions of defense mechanisms, popular ones, just to get a flavor, projection, denial, dissociation, distraction, withdrawal.

Just like false beliefs, there’s an endless variety of defense mechanisms. Anything can technically be a defense mechanism if we’re using it to resist energy or feelings. And again, the ego or the beliefs, they label experiences or feelings as good and bad as right and wrong, which then lead to attachment. We get attached to the good to the one that we labeled as good and we resist the one we label as bad, but really attachment and resistance are two sides of the same coin. They’re really the same thing because if you’re attaching to something that means you’re resisting its opposite. And if you’re resisting something, that means you’re attaching to its opposite. So if you’re like, for example, if you’re resisting sadness, that means you’re attached to happiness. Or if you’re resisting happiness, that means you’re attached to sadness and that can happen too. We can attach to and resist positive feelings, negative feelings.

It doesn’t really matter. It depends on how we were raised, what conditioning we had, things like that. And so defense mechanisms, they originate mentally, right? They’re an internal process, but they can be activated externally and they can bleed into the external like control. So you could say like the internal version of control is constriction. The external version of control is we all kind of know what that looks like. You try to rearrange things and avoid things and move things around in order to make your life a little bit easier in order to avoid these energies and feelings. So it’s important to still be able to act externally, but we want to be able to act from a place of awareness, not unawareness. So I want to give a general example of the cycle and then a specific example of the cycle and then I want to talk about the cycle of peace.

So here’s a general example of how the cycle of suffering works now that we’ve understood all of the components. So life happens, right? It delivers energy, authentic feelings and information are going to arise. If we have unawareness, meaning if the system can’t tolerate the energy that’s coming in, it’s going to activate a false belief or one or more in order to compensate for the unawareness or the unknown. So it draws false conclusions about life. That’s the false beliefs because we don’t have the awareness, because we don’t have all the accurate information, because we’re resisting the feelings that contain the information. So the ego will judge a situation, it will judge a feeling as good and bad, and then it will deploy one or more defense mechanisms to block or resist whatever’s bad and attach to whatever it labels as good. That causes the feelings to go into the subconscious and then because we’ve acted on it by using a defense mechanism, that false belief that caused the defenses is now strengthened and it feeds off of the subconscious energy that has been trapped.

So the feelings go into the subconscious and then that whole system strengthens the belief, sometimes adds more beliefs to it and the cycle continues. That’s a general example. I’m going to give a specific example so that we can get a really good grasp on it. And remember, all of this is happening subconsciously within a matter of seconds, which is why we need awareness, which is why we talk about mindfulness and meditation and witnessing and all these things. It’s all just to open up the awareness so that we can catch this cycle and not engage with it. So here’s a specific example. Let’s say you go through a breakup, right? You’re in a relationship, you love it, nothing wrong with that and you break up. The natural feeling is just one example. The natural feeling that arises is sadness because that’s authentic, that’s not a bad thing.

We’re feeling a sense of loss because we liked something. So it’s natural, it’s authentic, and it matches the event. There’s a loss, we feel sadness. If the sadness is too much to tolerate, then the ego is because we don’t have the awareness, then the ego’s going to label the breakup as bad and the sadness is bad. So that’s the belief, sadness is bad. That belief that sadness is bad plus the sadness, that’s the conflict. So the conflict between the feeling and the belief is what causes the anxiety or the suffering. That anxiety or that suffering then tells the ego, “Okay, this is bad. We got to do something about it. ” So the ego will deploy a defense mechanism to block the feeling from consciousness in order to attempt to reduce suffering. So an example of that could be acting out like overeating. So I had a breakup, I feel sad, I don’t want to feel this because I’m judging this experience as bad, I’m going to eat my feelings or I’m going to distract, I’m going to spend time on my phone, I’m going to go on social media, I’m going to just do anything other than facing what it is I’m feeling right now.

Or another example could be, I’m going to deny that it even happened. This hasn’t happened, this isn’t really happening, I’m still in a loving relationship, I’m in denial. That sadness, because we’ve used those defense mechanisms, obviously eating food is not a bad thing that’s necessary for life, but if we’re eating in order to prevent feeling our emotions, then it’s technically a defense mechanism and it’s going to cause the cycle to continue. So let’s say we do that, the feeling, the sadness becomes subconscious, therefore it gets trapped in the energy body, which is in the pain body that Eckhart Tolle talks about or the physical body, it’s in the tissues. I like that quote, Lorne, that you used. I never heard that before. And when it becomes subconscious, it’s technically karma. That subconscious sadness can now cause a new belief so that you see the cycle continues and reinforces itself.

So because we’re not getting the accurate information from the sadness, we’re not able to face the reality of this moment. We come to these false conclusions in order to compensate for the lack of information and awareness that we have. So one example of another belief stacked on top of the sadness is bad could be, I’m going to be alone forever, which we may be conscious of or unconscious of, but we know that the belief, I’m going to be alone forever. If we just take a step back and shine the light of awareness onto that belief, we can really quickly say that it’s obvious that that’s a false belief because it’s trying to predict the future. We can’t know what the future’s going to hold unless we’re psychic or unless it’s intuition, which is a different story, but even if we’re psychic, we can still get it wrong.

So it’s obviously a false belief because we can’t predict the future. How do you know that you’re going to be alone forever? That hasn’t happened. So then the ego acts on that belief and it avoids relationships, right? I’m going to be alone forever, therefore I should just not even try. It avoids relationships, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy or the opposite it attaches to, it clings too tightly. So in our next relationship, we’re clinging very tightly to the relationship, which is going to push our partner away, which then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that we’re going to be alone forever. And then the very belief ends up creating the thing that we are believing when in reality it wasn’t true. So these beliefs can sometimes create self-fulfilling prophecies. Then we have feelings about that. Those get suppressed leading to another belief, “I’m unlovable,” for example, and on and on and on.

And so the ego gets stronger and stronger due to the unawareness. The cycle continues and suffering gets deeper and deeper. So again, the ego has good intent, but it’s misguided. It’s trying to bring harmony to the system in the short term so it blocks the uncomfortable feelings and information from consciousness, but long term, which it doesn’t realize is that it’s causing more suffering due to the buildup of subconscious feelings in the body and limiting our worldview due to the false beliefs, which is really just a mental prison that we’ve created for ourselves. Again, each person’s cycle is different because we have different beliefs, different feelings, different defenses, different contexts and experiences. So it’s really important that we can look at each experience of suffering individually because there’s a lot of nuance and complexity. But I believe that no matter what the context, the same basic principles remain.

And so you could say that all of this on a relative level is caused by the inability to tolerate our heart. And I love a quote by Michael Singer here. He says, “The mind is the place where the soul goes to hide from the heart. And this cycle is the cause of all suffering and it can also end up leading to other mental, emotional and physical problems too.” All right, I’m going to talk about the cycle of peace now, which is the antidote to the cycle of suffering. If we look at the diagram again in the center is that star, which is our true nature, but now there’s nothing blocking the awareness. The awareness is free flowing. It’s all pervasive and the crown chakra is open. When we have awareness and we’ve cleared out the false beliefs, the defense mechanisms and the subconscious feelings, the crown chakra opens and we’re awake.

We’re enlightened for lack of a better word. So what is the key? The key is in the center, right? Awareness is the key to disentangling from the ego and from suffering and to attaining peace. But if we want to say it maybe in a different way, I really like the term loving awareness because that implies that there’s no fear, that there’s love. So loving awareness of all of these components is what cures suffering. Big picture, going back to Buddha’s wheel of samsara, wheel of delusion and suffering. When the Buddha was asked, “How do we get out of this suffering?” He said, “End your participation in the wheel of Samsara.” He said, “Step…” I’m paraphrasing of course, but he said, “Step off the wheel.” He said, “Don’t engage with the wheel or with the cycle. Don’t try to stop it because if you try to stop it, if you engage with it, you’re actually perpetuating it because you’re feeding it and you’re giving it credit.

You’re basically acknowledging this is real. And so when you are engaging with it, it actually gets stronger and stronger. So what he said is, get off the wheel. Don’t try to stop it. Just get off the wheel and it will stop naturally. And how do you get off the wheel? Awareness. Or similarly, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita when he’s talking to Arjuna, he says, Arjuna, get away from my ocean of suffering. Transcend the ocean of suffering by taking refuge in me. And when he’s saying me, he’s talking about God. Krishna is a, you could say a personification of God in that context. And what is God? Awareness. So get away from the ocean of suffering. Take refuge in me, meaning get into the awareness and the ocean of suffering will settle automatically. The waves will settle automatically. And I love this quote from Philip Weber in Grace Happens, which I edited.

He says, Trying to control life is like trying to hold back the ocean tide with a fork. Don’t even try to hold back the ocean tide. It’s pointless. Instead, just bring awareness. And that’s the ultimate antidote to suffering. That is what allows the cycle of peace to function. So a general example, we have awareness that leads to clear seeing, which is what dissolves the false beliefs. Clear seeing is a Buddhist term that basically means it’s synonymous with true nature, with oneness. It basically means it’s a precognitive or a preconceptual direct perception of what’s here. You could say that witnessing consciousness is like an approximation of that. So there’s clear seeing that dissolves the ego’s false beliefs. There’s acceptance, which dismantles the ego’s defensive tools. And then there’s conscious feelings that eliminate the ego’s fuel. And if you can do all of that, then you increasingly get more peace, more health and more awakening.

It’s a positive feedback loop that improves exponentially. So here’s a specific example. Same one, relationship breakup. When you have a breakup, the first thing you want to notice is the constriction. There’s constriction, there’s defense mechanisms. Relax the body, which may require a little bit of willpower and intention, but the willpower that we’re using is actually surrender. It’s actually openness. It’s an undoing like I’ve talked about before. And then you have to stop utilizing the defenses. You have to be aware of them and put them to the side. That will allow the energy to flow. The sadness about the breakup will arise. Bring awareness to the sadness. Accept it. Don’t attach to it. Don’t resist it. And then notice the false belief that gets activated by the sadness. Sadness is bad. Or I’m weak because I feel sad. Or I’m going to be alone forever or I’m unlovable.

Witness them without judgment. And then that belief is weakened because we’re not feeding it. Energy can flow and then ego dissolves. And that’s how it happens. So if we think about it, here’s like a little meditation you could try. If we understand that separateness for kind of going deeper into the clear seeing here. If separateness is the fundamental illusion and oneness is the fundamental truth, then a good meditation you could try is if I know or if I believe that everything is really one, how would my life be different? And can you live that way? Maybe fake it till you make it. But if everything is really one, what does that mean? What does that mean for all aspects of my life? Meditate on that. The antidote to defensiveness is acceptance, right? Non-attachment, non-resistance. The antidote to control is surrender. The antidote to constriction is openness.

But again, it’s really an undoing. And the antidote to subconscious feelings is conscious feelings, which is allowed through unconditional love or acceptance. So that’s basically it. Generally a good general approach to unraveling the cycle of suffering is to go from most outward to most inward. So first you want to dismantle the defenses, then allow the energy to flow, be conscious of it, and then witness and dissolve those beliefs. It will happen on its own. That was for the person who asked in the beginning, that was the order that I did it in. This was how I released myself from suffering as I first focused on the defense mechanisms, I moved them to the side. Then feelings started to rise. I came to accept them and then those feelings actually dissolved the false beliefs and then clarity and realization came. But you can do that in any order depending on what works best for you, what’s most available.

Some people have more access to false beliefs or they’re more aware of that mental level of reality. Some people have more access to their feelings. So you can start anywhere and it will all kind of take care of itself.

Another way of speaking about releasing ourselves from the cycle of suffering could be uncontracting. In the beginning, remember I talked about ego as a contraction of consciousness. So practice uncontracting, right? Notice the physical tension, uncontract as best you can. That tension will dissolve into energy, uncontract from the energy. That energy will dissolve into vibration and then uncontract from the vibration and everything will dissolve into stillness, which is the same thing as awareness, our true nature. And sometimes I like to say, if you could be fully relaxed while remaining fully conscious, you would be enlightened. It’s that simple. So we just went into the nitty-gritty and now we’re zooming out again. I do briefly just want to share that as we unravel the cycle of suffering and begin to align with the cycle of peace, it may seem sometimes that suffering is getting worse. It may seem like it’s not working, but this is temporary.

There’s a type of suffering that perpetuates suffering and there’s a type of suffering that unravels suffering and leads to peace. And in Christianity, there’s a term called redemptive suffering and that’s what I think they’re talking about there. And much of the spiritual path is about learning to increase our tolerance for discomfort. So we have to open up around and allow discomfort. So being okay with what is, being okay with this moment, which is the opposite of suffering. And that’s the whole game is increasing awareness over time and it builds momentum and it gets easier. Yeah, just a few things. The good news, remember that suffering is not our true nature. Peace is our true nature. So if you’re suffering, if you find yourself suffering, that’s your signal to become aware. And some questions you could ask yourself are, why am I suffering? What stories or narratives am I believing right now?

Can I be absolutely certain that they’re true? That’s the Byron Katie method called the work. What emotions or feelings are here? How am I resisting this moment and can I accept this moment as it is? And remember, the ego is the entire cause of suffering. It’s what labels things as problematic, but the real problem isn’t the thing that believes. The real problem is the thing that believes there are problems. So if there’s no ego, there’s no problem and it’s just a shift in perception and that it’s a subtle shift, but it changes everything. And that’s all I got for today.

Lorne Brown 

Eli, thank you. We’ll finish off with a question. Somebody asked, so now that you’re self-realized, do you not get swept up in life sometimes or are you at peace always?

Eli Recht 

Yeah, I would say both. Yeah, there’s always a peace, but that can still mean that I get swept up. Yeah. I mean, in a sense, you could say that is peace is being fully one with whatever’s happening. So is that being swept up? I don’t know. I’m fully integrated with the moment you could say, but every once in a while, this is what I call karmic runoff. Every once in a while there could be what Adyashanti calls a Velcro thought that shows up and it catches your awareness and you can maybe find yourself in a moment of unawareness temporarily, but it’s really simple. You just release the constriction, you release the grasp and you bring awareness and then there’s peace immediately.

Lorne Brown

Eli, thank you so much for sharing today. We are going to do this again June 6th, I think it is, 2026. Yeah.

Eli Recht 

Just want to say thank you so much everybody. Just beautiful, so much love.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you for spending this time with us on the Coherence Code Podcast. I’m Dr. Lorne Brown and I will see you next week for another conversation on coherence and healing. If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe or follow the show and also share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. Remember to take a moment to breathe, reflect and stay connected. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.