Doing The Inner Work  Hello I present you my ''tutorial'' or ''guide'' on how to do the inner work. This tutorial is basically what i learned over the last 2 years of doing personal development. Much of this stuff comes from watching Leo's videos and reading books but also doing mindfulness as much as i can during the day and meditating each day for 1 hour. Probably some of you are familiar with this stuff that i am going to write about,if you spent a lot of time watching Leo' videos and applying the knowledge in your own life. However i felt a need to share my insights with you. One of reasons  for this is that i want to give my personal experience and maybe someone will learn thing or two from it, and also someone else could post some insightful comment from which we all can benefit from. The third reason is write my insights on one place so i can reflect on them in future . I will probably start writing my online journal on forum so i can reflect on it but for now i will write everything here.  Note : I will try to keep this tutorial as clear and fluid as possible, but i have to notify you, i am not type of person who knows how to write good. I did not prepare any plan on how to do this but i will figure  out as i progress. First i will start with my model how the mind works.This ''model'' is just my observation so i will not quote researches and books, nor i will do with other stuff in tutorial. Maybe i will mentioned few books or information products. There will be edits in text such as correcting errors and adding more stuff. If you see some part of text that you don't understand fully, i will probably edit it to look more polished. At the moment, i am writing this at 2 am so i feel sleepy so excuse me for some sloppy parts.    1.Mind Mechanics  And Ego When i started my journey, i came to realization that mindfulness is probably the most important skill you should develop in life. The reason why i believe that is simple. Observing your mind gives the best possible clue on what you should in life. When you observe your mind, you start to notice how it functions in different situations. First implication of mindfulness helped me a lot with my ''seeking validation'' , ''judging people'' , ''victim mentality'' and so on. Whenever i noticed i behaved in certain ways, i would start to observe my thought process and my emotions. When everything ended, let' say i got angry at someone, i would play the movie backwards what really happened. What i learned from doing this over 1 year, i came with important insight. If you have ''problems'' in life, it is not that someone got you mad (let's say, my mother in my case) in external world ( by external i mean, what you think is external). Your worldview is the one that is causing problem in life. It is not your wife, husband , kids, boss or any person or situation. It is you and your worldview. Now someone may argue that this is not true but if you really practiced mindfulness and did meditation, you would realize it is true. Now... i am not saying the emotions you feel are not real. Everyone gets angry and it is natural but you need to realize the only person doing is you.  There was a good quote i found on internet few days ago that talks about this ... i don't remember it fully but basically what it says is this : If other person is angry for any given reason and it reflects ''negative energy'' on you, if you don't react to it, who will the one that will get angry ? Well not you since the energy stayed at same place. Now, our mind is hardwired to defend ourselves and that its main purpose. To be more specific, our ego is hardwired to react because its main purpose is to live. What you need to understand is that the base operating emotion of ego is fear. That's reason we all fear death.  What you need to understand now is next thing : Ego uses fear to protect itself from everything that is threatening  to it. In order to proceed, i have to explain what ego is.  Ego is basically how you see yourself and reality around you. It consists of self image, thoughts and subconscious mind in nutshell. I could go deeper but i think this is enough for you to understand everything else. First major insight is this one and it is obvious one but if you explore it deeply, you will get few aha moments : Every ego is unique. Now this seems obvious but when i talked to some people, they did not get the full depth of it. This basically means that your whole worldview is unique and there can't be another exact one. This means all your ideas about everything is unique but it is not more true nor false than other person. For example : If you think killing animals is bad, you are not right. For your ego it seems as something very true, but some other person it is completely normal. So if you think that being a psycho is bad, you are still wrong. For you it may look true and that is perfectly fine, but what you need to understand is that for psycho killing people or whatever seems very very true. Now, someone may talk about morality at this point and give us some generalization of what it means to be a ''good'' person. But yet... you are again false because in reality, there is someone who has different view on morality. You can read more on this topic in ''The Righteous Mind'' where Jonathan Heidt talks deeply about morality. Or you can simply watch Leo's video ''Good vs Evil.'' I will explain this is more detail in next paragraph. Now.. my point here is that your ego thru life picks all sorts of beliefs about life and it mostly functions like this : Seek pleasure, avoid pain. Now we go to childhood. Let's say you are born and your mind started to develop. Your parents feed you with all sorts of beliefs about life starting from your name, nationality etc.  Ego starts to develop itself image and subconscious mind stores everything it experiences. You can imagine subconscious mind as huge hard drive where your whole life is being stored. Your subconscious mind is responsible for every thought inside your head. I never have read too much on subconscious mind so everything i know is basically my observation. Now i present you next situation : Imagine you as kid approach a dog for the first time and the dog bites you. Now, your ego would raise its defense mechanism and remember that situation as something negative and something to avoid.  Avoidance main operating emotion as we mentioned is fear. So basically, now is most likely that you will develop fear of dogs.... Now the problem here is much deeper. Your subconscious mind which you are not aware of will start to build a self image of yourself as person who dislikes dogs. This means, when you see a dog, your will just reinforce your self image of dog hater. When you see a poster of dog sterilization, your mind will approve it.  The point here i want to make is next : Your subconscious mind is creating self-image of your self that suit the ego. So if your ego ''learned'' to avoid certain situations it is because it experienced something negative. For example, if you dislike ANY person for any reason, your ego is avoiding something that it experienced negatively in the past. Or it was fed to it as belief as a child so it was build in to avoid it. Now here lies the problem Let's say as a kind you were told that you were beautiful and you were really fed that belief and your ego created really strong self image. Now imagine you go to school and everyone tells you that you are ugly. As a child, probably you would react emotional to it  and your ego would start to dislike it. Imagine the process is being repeated over and over again and now you have huge conflict inside yourself. On one hand, ego loves the belief of parents calling you beatiful and it receives pleasure but on other hand it receive pain from social pressure. Now ego will create a huge conflict because it can not figure out what to do. And now you will start seeking validation. This is reason why ''ugly'' people take most photos because they want to validate it. This is just random example but this can be applied to anything in life. My point here is that your ego thru life learns what it suits him and what not but you need to realize it... everything you consider to be good and bad was just being fed to you thru life. This goes for any belief you have about anything.So if you argue that killing people is bad, you need to understand that belief was fed to you and you never even questioned it much because you were never probably never conditioned to kill a person. Your subconscious mind picked it up as true for the ego and it basically that self image was supported by society. Now imagine yourself in African tribe where killing other tribe is treated as heroic deed and plus, it would be rewarded. Now, you may think : Those people are less civilized than us. But that is just another belief you were fed as true and it was reinforced by society. In their worldview, killing is normal. Now, many of you may argue that this is true or false but be mindful that is just worldview. This whole text is just worldview and it can be treated as completely false in reality. But i would like for you to become aware of it if you did not already. This can help you understand yourself more deeply and others. But the most important insight here is this one : Question all your beliefs. You will realize any single one of them was just fed to you. And i dont think only about negative ones but positive ones as well. When you think you are good person, you need to realize that is a lie. You were just conditioned to believe  that and you are just probably seeking validation for it. That's why most people start to believe in God just in order to feel good about themselves when in reality they are bullshitting themselves and they are avoiding pain. This can be applied to many situations. None is perfect... i hold too much bullshit for myself as true just because i feel like it and i was conditioned for it. But being mindful about it helped me to be more openminded and to change my worldview because i know my worldview like anyone is false. So now here are few insights i got from my observing : 2. Dealing with Anger When anger is being triggered in you by some other person or situation, you need to know that you the one who did it in first place. What that means is that your mind is conditioned to pick certain experience from reality and to trigger emotions which erupt into negative thoughts. For example, i noticed that i am really getting angry whenever i hear my mother' voice. This si the case because i was conditioned as a kid to take her voice as something ''negative'' for me. Now i will not go into details but let's say my mother had too much influence over me in my life as child and after in teenage years i started to push that influence away from me because my ego developed a conflict. The reason for this was her bad parenting over me and her victim mentality she developed when she was a kid too.All this had major influence on what i consider good or bad etc. But over the last years i could not stand my mother nagging me until i realized why i was doing it. Just becoming aware what was going when she started speaking, and my emotions coming thru followed by thoughts, i became more aware that it was something that i need to solve myself because i was conditioned to do it.  Ego created defense mechanisms that are triggered by fear which cause you to get angry. So whenever you are angry at someone, it is because you are being scared of something. Your ego puts your defense mechanisms to defend your self image in order to protect you. But in reality in does not help one bit. Finding out the root cause of all that is what makes a change. So whenever you get angry, start questioning what beliefs are you defending and why. Why are conditioned to hold them and why you think they are true ? What you will discover that they are not true and it is jsut fabrication of your mind, but you need to explore it deeply. Also be aware of anger triggers because is major clue what is really bothering you. For example, when someone calls you stupid or ugly, try to see what self image you defending if you get angry. But i repeat, nothing is perfect so probably you will get angry for lots of stuff in your life... but when it happens be mindful why is that so. 3. Being Judgemental of Others Before i even start this topic, i want to give you one insight. Have you ever realized that everything you experience if being filtered by our ego. So when you see a painting, your mind will probably judge that painting based on what ego picked up thru life. Let's say you somehow hate cats and when you see painting of cats, you ego will filter that experience. What you need to understand that everything you experience is being filter your ego... but even more strange and paradoxical in a away.. when you reflect on your thoughts, your experience if of reflection is being filtered by your ego.  Now.. the reason why i mention this is next : All the people you meet in life, you experience as some part of you. Now.... what this means, you are basically filtering other person with your own ego. So in a way, if everything we experience if being filtered by our ego, that means we see so called ''external world'' as part of ourselves. Now, the big illusion of your mind tells you that is not the case but if you take a closer look, every person you experience you can experience it as one part of you. In a way... you are projecting yourself on the world. So when you are seeing other person, you are seeing just part of your ego. Now this part of ego may be the one which asks itself : What i need from this person to suits me ? but still that is part of your ego. Your ego maybe sees that person as source of validation but still nonetheless, it is still part of it. Now really big insight here is whenever you are judging other people, you basically judging one part of yourself that ego dislikes. I will give you example .... my friend who smokes weed from time to time but like anyone else who build the habit of smoking weed (or any ''negative'' habit) will mention how he is above it and he is in control. But in reality, i know (as ex weed smoker myself) when he sees opportunity for joint he will smoke it. Funny thing is that he recently became a gym junkie and he is doing all healthy stuff but i know he still smokes weed from time to time. Then he started judging our third friend who is weed smoker and is basically a slob and total opposite  of him. I just listened to him but what he did not realize was next : He was basically judging part of himself that he dislikes (the part of being weed smoker from time to time ) in order to maintain his self image of gym guy and healthy guy (positive self image).   When you fully realize this, it will transform your life. If you find yourself judging people, try to find that part of your self that you are trying to avoid, It must exist because ego would not make judgement of it in first place. In order there to be a  judgment,  ego needs to avoid some negative self image it created and it requires a reference which must exist in ego. This can also be applied to anger as well and any negative emotion in general. Now, you may ask yourself : Why i would i even do this ? ... well just see how much you are bullshitting yourself when make judgements.  To be continued ...