Ego, Inc: Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind

A person is a jumble of many different emotions, repressed desires and fears. There is seemingly no order in this soup of conditioned responses and (worse) no release for those we hide from the outside world.

Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind technique gives each of these feelings, fears, and passions a first person voice. Why is this powerful? It is self therapy that allows some repressed emotional mechanisms within us to have a place without conflicting or resuracing as stress or (worse) cancer. The best way to understand how powerful this technique is is to allow some of those pent up emotions, such as Anger to speak freely in the first person. Repressing Anger (or any other emotion) is not health.

The real power is in giving each of these parts of you a title and a role. The Big Mind Technique works because it allows you to not only fully own them (instead of disassociating them or displacing them as someone else’s fault), but also organize them into efficient manageble states of shades of your self.

EGO, INC

Imagine that you are not just one personality, but hundreds of personalities. You are in fact a whole corporation full of personalities each with an important task necessary to help the company stay afloat. Lets call this company Ego Incorporated. The mission is to preserve the precious “self”.

On the staff of Ego, Inc there is a security team assigned to protecting the self from the rest of the world and from itself. Security also ensures the self does not hurt others. The security teams is composed of individuals like: the Protector, the Skeptic, the Controller and Fear. Security knows that Ego, Inc has been hurt before (even by those close to the company… especially, by those close to it) so it has built WALLs and ceiling around EVERYtHING. The precious self in the middle of Ego, Inc (the precious asset) is not fond of being lock behind a wall. It conspires from the inside with staff members like Desire and Love who want to risk everything Ego, Inc has built. The self doesn’t like being locked inside with depressing employees like Loneliness and Sadness.
Other members of the Ego, Inc staff include Anger, the Victim (who does some PR work for the company every now and then), and Doubt.

Some of the sometimes neglected members include: the Inocent Child (the heart of the self), and the Damaged Self.

After taking a real hit from the outside world the Ego Inc Security team starts making not only 100 foot walls but moats and hot oil on the sides of the walls. The self with no way for genuine interaction with even the closest people in her life is left with only Dispair to talk to.

The CEO of this company is balanced with rational thought and emotional drive decides to hold a board meeting and allow each of the employees to talk. The CEO also highers consultants on to that company, Big Mind & Big Heart. They are a team who have all the answers. Big Mind and Big Heart don’t answer to anyone they are completely self sufficient. Ego Inc is actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the company Big Mind & Big Heart, who are global, beyond successful and rich beyond imagination. They have allowed Ego, Inc to run on its own to gather information for the expansion of Big Mind & Big Heart. They suggest that the company use one of its most valuable assets which they have hidden away, the Damaged Self. The Damaged Self takes on all the pain and damage that each of the employees incur. It does so openly and with total incomprehinsible compassion. It is the sum total of what some would call an unsung hero. Since the Damaged Self takes on all the hurt and all the hits and disappointment, the security team can relax some of their controls. And the self can take Joy out for a spin.