Ego’s Constant State of Cognitive Dissonance and the Path to Clarity
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person experiences conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors simultaneously. This conflict creates a sense of discomfort or tension because the person’s actions or thoughts are inconsistent with their values or beliefs. ( Part 1, Part 2, Part3)
I’m not saying my ego is stubborn, but if it had a slogan, it’d be:
‘Reality is just a suggestion.’
Podcast Discussion
Cognitive dissonance is not just a momentary discomfort—it’s the foundation of ego life. The ego, constructed from a lifetime of beliefs, attitudes, and personal history, cannot perceive reality as it is. Instead, it filters the world through layers of cognitive biases, creating a constant dissonance between what is real and what the ego wants to believe.
The truth will set you free,
but first it will make you uncomfortable.
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful motivator for change, as people are driven to reduce the tension by altering their thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors to achieve consistency.
Cognitive Bias and the Ego’s Filtered Lens
Our previous explorations of cognitive bias uncovered how these biases serve as the ego’s defense mechanisms, preserving its identity and worldview. Whether through confirmation bias, where we seek out information that supports our existing beliefs, or through skilled incompetence, where we avoid confronting uncomfortable truths, the ego’s entire existence is a tapestry of cognitive dissonance. These biases ensure that the ego remains in a state of self-deception, clinging to narratives that reinforce its sense of control and certainty, even when they are at odds with reality.
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
Grouch Marx
The Enneagram: Nine Paths of Cognitive Dissonance
The Enneagram offers a powerful lens through which to examine the ego’s dissonance. Each of the nine Enneagram types embodies a unique form of cognitive bias driven by core fears and desires that distort perception.
- Type One may experience dissonance between their need for perfection and reality’s messy, imperfect nature, leading them to rigidly enforce standards that disconnect them from their more profound truth.
- Type Three might struggle with the dissonance between their drive for success and the emptiness accompanying external validation, masking their true feelings in pursuit of image.
- Type Nine, in their quest for peace, may avoid conflict to such an extent that they lose touch with their own needs, creating a dissonance between their desire for harmony and the suppressed chaos within.
Each type’s cognitive biases serve as filters that create dissonance, shaping how they perceive and interact with the world. The Enneagram helps us identify these patterns, but recognizing them is only the first step.
The Diamond Approach: The Power of Curiosity and Inquiry
The Diamond Approach® emphasizes the transformative power of curiosity and inquiry. This spiritual path encourages us to engage with our experiences not with preconceived notions but with an open and curious mind. Curiosity becomes the tool that allows us to explore the depths of our consciousness, question the beliefs and biases that the ego clings to, and uncover the truth beneath.
What you resist, persists.
By cultivating a genuine curiosity about our inner world, we unravel the cognitive dissonance that keeps us trapped in the ego’s distorted reality. Inquiry allows us to explore our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors with fresh eyes, free from the filters of the past. As we inquire deeply into our experiences, we see through the ego’s defenses, dismantling the cognitive biases that create dissonance and moving closer to a clear, unfiltered understanding of reality.
The point is that when we inquire into something, we also always inquire—though not necessarily in an explicit manner—into our positions and biases, judgments and assumptions, identifications and reactions, into all that might limit our openness. This will expand the openness at the heart of our questions. If you don’t understand this, you can’t truly engage in an effective inquiry.
A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey
Integrating the Diamond Approach’s focus on inquiry with the insights of the Enneagram, we can see how each type’s cognitive dissonance is not just an obstacle but an invitation to deeper exploration. Spiritual work becomes a journey of continuous curiosity—a willingness to ask hard questions, challenge our assumptions, and venture into the unknown in search of truth.
Clarity comes from questioning, not from knowing.
The Journey from Dissonance to Clarity
In this final reflection, we recognize that the journey of spiritual work is about moving from the ego’s dissonance to a state of clarity and alignment with reality. The ego’s filters, reinforced by cognitive biases and shaped by our Enneagram type, are the obstacles we must overcome. But as we engage in the Diamond Approach’s power of curiosity and inquiry, we begin to see through these filters and experience life without ego distortions.
A Call to Continued Inquiry
As we conclude this series, the challenge remains: Are we willing to confront the cognitive dissonance that governs our lives? Can we use the tools of the Enneagram and the Diamond Approach not just to understand ourselves but to transform our relationship with reality? And are we ready to embrace curiosity and inquiry as our guiding forces?
The path is clear in this journey—toward a life where our awareness is no longer shackled by the ego’s distortions but free to experience reality as it truly is.
At some point in the development of our capacity to discern, the cognitive capacity can take itself to its own limits. And that is really what the inner work is about: taking the discerning capacity to its ultimate limit, where reality itself is beyond cognition. Our cognitive capacity knows and knows and knows, until it begins to approach a reality that it cannot know. And the reason it cannot know it is not because our cognitive capacity is not developed, or because there is something wrong with it, or even because there is an obscuration, but because the reality it is now encountering has nothing to do with knowing—it is beyond knowing. When the mind recognizes that to be the case, it basically bows down and bows out. – A. H. Almaas, The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence