Speaker 1: You know, there's a very strange paradox that occurs on
Speaker 1: the path of personal growth and spiritual development. We are
Speaker 1: told constantly to become more self aware, to examine ourselves,
Speaker 1: to understand our patterns and motivations, to watch our thoughts
Speaker 1: and analyze our behaviors. And this is generally considered to
Speaker 1: be unquestionably good, a sign of maturity and consciousness.
Speaker 2: But I want to.
Speaker 1: Suggest to you that there's a point at which self
Speaker 1: awareness becomes a trap, a prison of its own making,
Speaker 1: and that too much self consciousness can actually paralyze your
Speaker 1: ability to live spontaneously and freely.
Speaker 2: Let me explain what I mean.
Speaker 1: When you begin the journey of self awareness, it's tremendously valuable.
Speaker 1: You start to notice patterns you were blind to before.
Speaker 1: You see how you repeat the same mistakes, how you
Speaker 1: sabotage yourself, how certain wounds from your past continue to
Speaker 1: play out in your present. This awareness creates the possibility
Speaker 1: of change, of choosing differently, of breaking free from unconscious compulsions.
Speaker 1: And this is genuinely helpful, genuinely liberating. But something peculiar
Speaker 1: happens when you go too far down this path. You
Speaker 1: become so aware of yourself, so constantly watching and analyzing
Speaker 1: your own thoughts and feelings and behaviors that you create
Speaker 1: a split within yourself. There's the youth that's living, and
Speaker 1: then there's the youth that's watching the youth that's living.
Speaker 1: And then, if you're really far gone, there's the you
Speaker 1: that's watching the you that's watching the youth that's living.
Speaker 1: You become like a series of Russian dolls, each one
Speaker 1: observing the one inside it, and somewhere in all this observation,
Speaker 1: the simple act of.
Speaker 2: Being alive gets lost.
Speaker 1: This is what I call the curse of the observer.
Speaker 1: When you're constantly observing yourself, constantly analyzing, constantly trying to
Speaker 1: understand and improve and optimize every aspect of your exist distance,
Speaker 1: you lose the capacity for spontaneity. You can't simply do
Speaker 1: anything any more. You can't laugh without wondering why you're
Speaker 1: laughing and whether it's genuine or performative. You can't feel
Speaker 1: angry without immediately analyzing where the anger comes from and
Speaker 1: whether it's justified. You can't fall in love without dissecting
Speaker 1: every feeling and questioning every motive. Everything becomes an object
Speaker 1: of study, including yourself, And while this might make you
Speaker 1: very insightful, very psychologically sophisticated, very aware of all the
Speaker 1: mechanisms of your mind, it also makes you extraordinarily stiff, calculated,
Speaker 1: unable to flow with life as it unfolds. Think about
Speaker 1: a centipede. A centipede walks quite naturally, with a hundred
Speaker 1: legs co ordinating perfectly, without any conscious thought. But the
Speaker 1: moment the centipede becomes aware of how it walks, the
Speaker 1: moment it starts thinking about which legs should move next,
Speaker 1: it becomes paralyzed.
Speaker 2: It trips over itself.
Speaker 1: The unconscious grace is lost in the glare of consciousness.
Speaker 1: This is what happens to human beings who become too
Speaker 1: self aware. They lose their natural grace. They become self
Speaker 1: conscious in the most literal sense, imprisoned by their own
Speaker 1: consciousness of themselves. They can't dance without thinking about how
Speaker 1: they look dancing. They can't speak without hearing themselves speak
Speaker 1: and judging every word as it comes out. They can't
Speaker 1: simply be in a moment without immediately stepping outside that
Speaker 1: moment to observe themselves being in it. And here's where
Speaker 1: it gets really problematic. The more self aware you become
Speaker 1: the more you see your own conditioning, your own patterns,
Speaker 1: your own psychological mechanisms, And this creates a terrible bind,
Speaker 1: because now you're aware that everything you do, everything you think,
Speaker 1: everything you feel is conditioned by your past, by your upbringing,
Speaker 1: by your wounds, by your fears. Nothing feels spontaneous anymore,
Speaker 1: nothing feels authentic. It all seems like just another pattern
Speaker 1: playing out another conditioned response. So you think, well, if
Speaker 1: I'm aware of the pattern, I'll choose differently, I'll break free.
Speaker 1: But then you become aware that even this desire to
Speaker 1: break free is itself a pattern, its self conditioned. The
Speaker 1: very attempt to escape your conditioning is part of your conditioning,
Speaker 1: and you are caught in an infinite regress of self observation,
Speaker 1: like standing between two mirrors and seeing your reflection reflected
Speaker 1: infinitely in both directions. This is the paralysis of over analysis.
Speaker 1: The person who has become too self aware stands at
Speaker 1: every fork in the road, unable to choose because they
Speaker 1: can see too much. They can see all the possible
Speaker 1: motivations for each choice. They can see how this choice
Speaker 1: might be coming from their wound, and that choice might
Speaker 1: be coming from their fear, and every option is tainted
Speaker 1: by some psychological complexity, and so they stand there frozen,
Speaker 1: unable to simply act. You see this in people who've
Speaker 1: been in therapy for years and years, who've read all
Speaker 1: the psychology books, who can analyze themselves brilliantly. They can
Speaker 1: tell you exactly why they do what they do. They
Speaker 1: can trace every behavior back to its origin. They can
Speaker 1: see all their defense mechanisms and coping strategies. But they
Speaker 1: can't actually live. They are so busy observing and analyzing
Speaker 1: that they've forgotten how to simply be. There's a famous
Speaker 1: Zen story about this. A student comes to the master
Speaker 1: and says, Master, I've been studying Zen for years. I've
Speaker 1: read all the texts, I've done all the meditation. I
Speaker 1: understand now that the self is an illusion, that thoughts
Speaker 1: are just arising and passing, that I am not my mind.
Speaker 1: But Master, I still suffer. What should I do? And
Speaker 1: the Master hits him with a stick and says, did
Speaker 1: you think about that? The point, you see is that
Speaker 1: there's a kind of knowledge that comes before thinking, a
Speaker 1: kind of action that precedes analysis. When the stick hits you,
Speaker 1: you react, You don't analyze it. You don't observe your
Speaker 1: self reacting. You just react, and there's a wisdom in
Speaker 1: that direct response, a wisdom that gets lost when everything
Speaker 1: passes through the filter of self conscious awareness. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not advocating for unconsciousness. I'm not saying we should be
Speaker 1: ignorant of ourselves, should never examine our motivations or understand
Speaker 1: our patterns. What I'm saying is that there's a danger
Speaker 1: in getting stuck at the level of observation, in making
Speaker 1: self awareness itself the goal rather than a tool for
Speaker 1: living more fully. The truly wise person uses self awareness
Speaker 1: like a skilled craftsman uses a tool. They pick it
Speaker 1: up when it's needed, and they put it down when
Speaker 1: it's not. They don't carry it around constantly examining everything
Speaker 1: with it. They know when to observe and when to
Speaker 1: simply act. They know when to think about life and
Speaker 1: when to live it. But the person who has become
Speaker 1: too self aware has lost this ability to put down
Speaker 1: the tool. They carry it everywhere, looking at everything through it,
Speaker 1: including themselves, and in doing so they've created a prison
Speaker 1: of consciousness, a cage of constant observation from which there
Speaker 1: seems to be no escape. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: another dimension of this problem. When you become very self aware,
Speaker 1: you start to see all the ways you're performing, all
Speaker 1: the ways you're not being authentic. You notice that when
Speaker 1: you smile at someone, there's a calculation in it. When
Speaker 1: you're generous, you notice the ego that wants credit for
Speaker 1: the generosity. When you're humble, you see the pride in
Speaker 1: your humility. Everything you do seems tainted by some ulterior motive,
Speaker 1: some psychological mechanism, some lack of purity. And this creates
Speaker 1: a terrible crisis of authenticity because now you can't trust
Speaker 1: any of your actions, any of your feelings. Are you
Speaker 1: genuinely kind or or are you just trying to be
Speaker 1: seen as kind? Do you genuinely love this person or
Speaker 1: are you just afraid.
Speaker 2: Of being alone?
Speaker 1: Are you genuinely interested in this conversation or are you
Speaker 1: just performing interest. The more aware you become of all
Speaker 1: the possible impure motivations behind your actions, the more impossible
Speaker 1: it becomes to act at all. This is what the
Speaker 1: existentialists called bad faith, though they were talking about something
Speaker 1: slightly different. It's this terrible awareness that we're always, in
Speaker 1: some sense acting a role, playing a part, performing a
Speaker 1: version of ourselves, and the person who becomes too self
Speaker 1: aware gets caught in this awareness, unable to simply play
Speaker 1: the role without constant metter awareness that they're playing a role.
Speaker 1: Think about when you're telling a story to a group
Speaker 1: of people. If you're unself conscious, you just tell the story.
Speaker 1: You're in the flow of it, you're animated, you're present.
Speaker 1: But if you become self aware in the middle of
Speaker 1: telling it, if you suddly notice yourself telling the story,
Speaker 1: Notice the sound of your own voice, Notice how you're gesturing,
Speaker 1: Notice whether people are interested or bored, the whole thing
Speaker 1: falls apart. You become stiff, artificial. The natural flow is
Speaker 1: broken by the intrusion of self consciousness. This is what
Speaker 1: happens to the overly self aware person, except it happens
Speaker 1: all the time, in every interaction, in every moment.
Speaker 2: They can never just be in the.
Speaker 1: Flow because they are always observing themselves being in the flow,
Speaker 1: and that very observation disrupts the flow. Now here's another
Speaker 1: aspect that's worth exploring. The more self aware you become,
Speaker 1: the more you see through the games that everyone is playing.
Speaker 1: You see through the social performances, the pretenses, the ways
Speaker 1: people are trying to impress each other, or dominate each other,
Speaker 1: or gain approval. And once you see through these games,
Speaker 1: you can't play them any more with the same unconscious ease.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. Society runs on these games professional life,
Speaker 1: social life, romantic life. They all involve certain performances, certain
Speaker 1: agreed upon fictions that everyone participates in. And when you
Speaker 1: become too self aware to play these games naturally, you
Speaker 1: find yourself increasingly unable to function in normal social settings.
Speaker 1: You're at a party and you can see that everyone
Speaker 1: is performing. They're saying things they don't quite mean, laughing
Speaker 1: at things that aren't quite funny, pretending to be more
Speaker 1: interested than they are. And because you can see this
Speaker 1: so clearly, you can't participate in it. Naturally, you become awkward, strange,
Speaker 1: the person who doesn't quite fit, because you've lost the
Speaker 1: ability to participate unconsciously in the collective performance. This is
Speaker 1: why overly self aware people often become isolated, not because
Speaker 1: they're unfriendly or antisocial, but because they can't play the
Speaker 1: social games that lubricate human interaction. They've seen through the games,
Speaker 1: and once you've seen through something, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 1: You can't go back to innocent participation. There's also a
Speaker 1: kind of creative paralysis that comes with too much self awareness.
Speaker 1: Many great artists, writers, musicians, they create from a place
Speaker 1: of unconscious flow. They don't know exactly what they're doing
Speaker 1: or why they're doing it. They're in a kind of trance,
Speaker 1: a state of absorption where the self conscious observer temporarily
Speaker 1: disappears and something just flows through them. But the overly
Speaker 1: self aware person can't achieve this state. They're always watching
Speaker 1: themselves create, always judging, always analyzing. Is this any good?
Speaker 1: Where is this coming from? Am I copying someone else?
Speaker 1: Is this authentic? The constant observation kills the creative flow
Speaker 1: before it can fully emerge. I've known writers who became
Speaker 1: so self aware, so sophisticated in their understanding of literary
Speaker 1: technique and psychological depth, that they could no longer write.
Speaker 1: They'd start a sentence then immediately see all the problems
Speaker 1: with it, all the cliches, all the ways it was inadequate.
Speaker 1: The critical observer had become so strong that it strangled
Speaker 1: the creative impulse before it could take form.
Speaker 2: This is the curse of the sophisticated mind.
Speaker 1: It knows too much sees too much, is aware of
Speaker 1: too much to simply do anything with naive enthusiasm. Everything
Speaker 1: is complicated by layers of awareness, layers of understanding, layers
Speaker 1: of self consciousness that prevent simple direct action. Now you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, is there a way out of this trap?
Speaker 1: If you've become too self aware, if you've fallen into
Speaker 1: this prison of constant observation, is there an escape? And
Speaker 1: the answer is both yes and no, because the very
Speaker 1: desire to escape is itself part.
Speaker 2: Of the trap.
Speaker 1: The moment you try to become less self aware, you've
Speaker 1: just added another layer of self consciousness. You are now
Speaker 1: aware that you're trying to be less aware, which is
Speaker 1: just more awareness. This is like the famous paradox of
Speaker 1: trying to fall of. The moment you try to fall asleep,
Speaker 1: you're too awake to fall asleep. The trying itself prevents
Speaker 1: the thing you're trying to achieve. In the same way,
Speaker 1: the moment you try to be more spontaneous, you've killed spontaneity.
Speaker 1: The moment you try to be more authentic, you're performing authenticity.
Speaker 1: The moment you try to stop observing yourself, you're observing
Speaker 1: yourself trying to stop observing yourself.
Speaker 2: So what's the answer.
Speaker 1: Well, in a sense, the answer is to see through
Speaker 1: the trap itself, to recognize that the observer and the
Speaker 1: observed are not really separate. The you that's watching and
Speaker 1: the you that's being watched are the same you. There
Speaker 1: aren't really multiple layers of self. There's just this one
Speaker 1: consciousness playing a game of hide and seek with itself.
Speaker 1: When you really understand this, when you see it not
Speaker 1: just intellectually but experientially, something shifts. The exhausting effort of
Speaker 1: constant self observation begins to relax, not because you've achieved
Speaker 1: some new state, but because you've seen through the illusion
Speaker 1: that there was a problem to solve in the first place.
Speaker 1: The centipede doesn't need to figure out how to walk again.
Speaker 1: It just needs to stop thinking about walking, And in
Speaker 1: the same way, you don't need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to be spontaneous again. You just need to see that
Speaker 1: the whole drama of observation and being observed is a
Speaker 1: kind of game you're playing with yourself, and you can
Speaker 1: stop playing at any time. But here's the final twist.
Speaker 1: Even this understanding can become another trap. If you are
Speaker 1: not careful, you can become someone who's aware that they're
Speaker 1: too self aware, who understands the trap intellectually but is
Speaker 1: still caught in it experientially.
Speaker 2: You can quote zen.
Speaker 1: Masters and talk about spontaneity and non duality whilst still
Speaker 1: being just as imprisoned by self consciousness as you ever were.
Speaker 1: This is why the ancient teachers insisted that understanding must
Speaker 1: be experiential, not just intellectual. You can know all about
Speaker 1: the trap of self awareness, you can analyze it brilliantly.
Speaker 1: You can explain it to others and still be completely
Speaker 1: caught in it. The knowing about it is not the
Speaker 1: same as the seeing through it. The real freedom comes
Speaker 1: when self awareness becomes so complete that it includes awareness
Speaker 1: of itself, and in that completeness it somehow transcends itself.
Speaker 1: It's like when you become so aware of your breathing
Speaker 1: that you suddenly realize you don't need to control it
Speaker 1: and you let it breathe itself. Or when you become
Speaker 1: so aware of your thoughts that you realize you don't
Speaker 1: need to manage them and you let them think themselves.
Speaker 1: This is the paradox at the heart of consciousness. The
Speaker 1: solution to too much self awareness is not less awareness,
Speaker 1: but more awareness, so much awareness that it includes awareness
Speaker 1: of awareness of awareness, until the whole structure of observer
Speaker 1: and observed collapses into simple direct experiencing. But I want
Speaker 1: to end with a warning, because even this can become
Speaker 1: just another sophisticated trap. The mind is very clever. It
Speaker 1: can take everything I've said and turn it into a
Speaker 1: new program, a new thing to achieve.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, I need to have awareness of awareness until it
Speaker 1: collapses into direct experiencing. Let me work on that, and
Speaker 1: we're right back where we started. Another layer of self consciousness,
Speaker 1: another observer watching, another program to follow. The mind will
Speaker 1: endlessly create new levels of complexity, new things to be
Speaker 1: aware of, new ways to be self conscious. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: real wisdom is simply this. Be aware of yourself when
Speaker 1: awareness is called for, and forget yourself when life asks
Speaker 1: for your presence. Use self awareness as a tool when
Speaker 1: it's useful, and set it aside when it's not. Don't
Speaker 1: make a religion out of it, don't make it your
Speaker 1: whole identity, and for God's sake, don't spend all your
Speaker 1: time watching yourself live Sometimes just live.
Speaker 2: Thank you,