Can You Help Me Decipher Reason From Ego

I would like to know what makes a person do different things.

People can feel a good emotion from seeing others put down. An example is that someone lies to you, they figure out after a long time you discovered the lie, then they smile because they are happy. Is there nothing spiritual involved with this or is it an infrastructure they have created in their mind?

I don't know if that has anything to do with spirituality, but my mental growth has taught me to do undo others what I would have them do unto me, and I have meet alot more people who are like this. I am learning on my infrastructure so advancement shows evidence of being correct, sometimes I think of life as a game that can be unfair.

I think deception and Reason are two completely separate things. To deceive takes away from reason and vice versa. To lie and make up things for the sole purpose of hurting someone is not reasonable. It's a defensive deception people use to either protect themselves or belittle them to feeling lesser to gain control over a person. An ego to me in it's simplistic terms is a way to protect oneself from attacks. And a lot of time this leads to either a person believing they have control over others for fear of losing that themselves. Or, one day they are going to run into a person that won't let them have control causing conflict. I hope that makes sense but there you go.

Originally posted by greyer
I would like to know what makes a person do different things.

People can feel a good emotion from seeing others put down. An example is that someone lies to you, they figure out after a long time you discovered the lie, then they smile because they are happy. Is there nothing spiritual involved with this or is it an infrastructure they have created in their mind?

I don't know if that has anything to do with spirituality, but my mental growth has taught me to do undo others what I would have them do unto me, and I have meet alot more people who are like this. I am learning on my infrastructure so advancement shows evidence of being correct, sometimes I think of life as a game that can be unfair.

I believe their is a balence to the reality we live in. I am like you where I believe "do undo others what I would have them do unto me." With all bad all the time we would not learn anything and the same goes for all good, bad things happen to help us develop and learn and good things happen for the same reason. This isn't a great example but think of it as if your favorite team won every game, would you ever learn to get better or to play the game different and if you lost every game and the same team always won would you still be interested in the game. The game in this case is life. You touch the fire to learn it is hot and can burn you, after touching the fire once and getting burned do you do it again? Were all in traning to be better people and everyone has a role to play even the bad people and super egotistical people.

Karma - do good things and good things will happen to you. But do good things for the intention of doing good and not to get rewarded

Peace

i thought something similar earlier today

are you a figment of my imagination, or are we on the same level?

My thoughts are a long answer and not simple one:
- We are basically pack animals. Our morals are guided by the fact that we have had to work together to hunt and kill. So our morals are "do unto others...". If we were solitary predatory animals, our morals would be completely different.

- What use is ego? I am struggling to understand where confidence ends and ego starts. Certainly confidence is seen as a great attraction for women into men.

- I suspect that ego means that we ion the crowd are not all the same and hence an bring different characteristics into the pack. It may also be due to the fact that we have 3 separately wired brains - one very old brain that is used for "keeping the lights on" -breathing etc., one newer brain that is hot wired to our body and can react in terms of e.g. flight or fight and then we have the new but not so wired concious / upper brain. It is the two brains that cause most conflict - "your heart says one thing when your brains says another.." - not helped by the fact that the older brain [heart] is better wired too get a response and try to run circles a round your new brain

The ego is my mind controlling my life without my awareness. so in a way the ego is part of me, but it plays the game as it wishes ;when i give the power to my ego the balance declines to its side so i lose my natural way of being.

I can feel the ego as a voice in my head that judges everything, from the perspective of events from my past experiences. Its like a guard that keeps me inside the parameters it knows, by repeating the commands in my head; you know... the unnecessary self talking, like repeating myself things that i already know, like when i wake up late for school my ego says "DAMN ITS LATE FOR SCHOOL" or "I LOOK SO HANDSOME TODAY" or " I REALLY LIKE THIS DRINK". its pointless, i already know that.

The unknown is unconscionable for the ego, as its something outside its control, that's a good way of taking back the power from my ego, by modifying my daily routines, like taking a shower with the eyes closed, or walking backwards, or doing stuff with the opposite hand i usually do, or any different way of facing the daily life but the automatic ego response.

That is the premise of my ego, to think and analyse stuff that i already know, of course that the opposite to that is doing stuff.My ego can spend 12 hours a day thinking and looking for a reason of why is my house so dirty, blaming my brothers of it, on the other hand i do the house cleansing in 2 hours, and of course thinking uses my energy so by thinking for 12 hours ill be really tired to do anything else. Maybe that why sometimes im tired of doing nothing.

In conclusion it doesn't matter if there is a reason of anything, the life its not inside my thoughts but in my actions.

reply to post by greyer


What a great question and awesome replies.

The way one perceives things is ones reality. It is a two edged sword. Ego and rationality both play a big part in how we perceive things. As said previously in the post, “ The ego is my mind controlling my life without my awareness.” (Great reply Mr. Espinosa.). I will take it further to say that rationality is just plain common sense. How you use it will dictate how you react to life.

Below are a few examples of how I have lied, deceived and been truthful. All rationally thought out and enacted upon and not always a good outcome either.

I have lied to protect someone’s feelings when they were down. I have lied to protect myself and others from harm. I have used lies to educate. It depends upon the size and circumstance. I have never lied to someone with the intention of hurting them.

I have conducted deception operations to entice my enemy into revealing his intentions prior to acting upon them. As above, I have deceived others so that I may continue doing what needed to be done without interference.

I have been brutally truthful, so much so, that it has cost me valued relationships with a fiancé, friends, and coworkers.

It depends upon the scope of the lie, deception or truth as to how it affects yourself and others. A cliché example would be;

If you keep telling a bill collector that the check is in the mail, but it really won’t be for two days. There’s minimal harm, except a small ding to your credit.

If you keep telling them that you have sent the check, or will be sending it soon, but you have no idea where/when the next check is coming, you are forestalling the inevitable. Repossession, bad credit, etc, all of which will affect you later in life.

To close out, I would say that always try to understand & control your ego as it also drives your emotions. You may not like al rational responses in your life, but it rarely steers you wrong in the long run.

Forgive me for taking a lot of time, I want to analyze every post closely because there is so much knowledge here on ATS.

Originally posted by Golithion
I think deception and Reason are two completely separate things. To deceive takes away from reason and vice versa. To lie and make up things for the sole purpose of hurting someone is not reasonable. It's a defensive deception people use to either protect themselves or belittle them to feeling lesser to gain control over a person. An ego to me in it's simplistic terms is a way to protect oneself from attacks. And a lot of time this leads to either a person believing they have control over others for fear of losing that themselves. Or, one day they are going to run into a person that won't let them have control causing conflict. I hope that makes sense but there you go.

I can tell this is simply more intelligent that what I understand. Interesting to seperate deception from ego, when I was merging deception as part of a human being, one with ego and one with reason. So is reason and ego one and the same? I need to look into this because I need to understand, to protect my own self from it.

reply to post by greyer


Rationality and Ego are part of the human psyche. You can’t escape them. Ego oft times will over ride a rational response because it is linked to emotion. So it is a continuous balancing act.

A couple of extreme examples.

Jim Jones ego over rode his rational response when he saw that his cult was collapsing under legal assault. But I’m sure that he rationalized that he was helping his flock when he told them to drink the cool-aid, killing them all.

President Truman rationalized that dropping atomic bombs would save lives in the long run, through two brutal attacks (Maybe more if Japan had not surrendered). Who would really want that on your conscience? Though I’m sure his ego took a boost though after the surrender.

You can’t escape either one. And they are always arguing.

Originally posted by templar knight
My thoughts are a long answer and not simple one:
- We are basically pack animals. Our morals are guided by the fact that we have had to work together to hunt and kill. So our morals are "do unto others...". If we were solitary predatory animals, our morals would be completely different.

- What use is ego? I am struggling to understand where confidence ends and ego starts. Certainly confidence is seen as a great attraction for women into men.

- I suspect that ego means that we ion the crowd are not all the same and hence an bring different characteristics into the pack. It may also be due to the fact that we have 3 separately wired brains - one very old brain that is used for "keeping the lights on" -breathing etc., one newer brain that is hot wired to our body and can react in terms of e.g. flight or fight and then we have the new but not so wired concious / upper brain. It is the two brains that cause most conflict - "your heart says one thing when your brains says another.." - not helped by the fact that the older brain [heart] is better wired too get a response and try to run circles a round your new brain

I like your idea of animals based on hunting, hunting can derange generations of minds slowly, of course on a subconsciour level. This has nothing to do with confidence, thats why I ask of a spiritual intent. As mileslong54 said

You touch the fire to learn it is hot and can burn you, after touching the fire once and getting burned do you do it again?

reply to post by greyer


Reason is logic based where as ego is protection based in my opinion and granted that is an arguable point. That being said there are many people who use reason to boost their ego I'll give you an example. say a person is trying to explain to somebody how to do something. He or she uses big words and long drawn out phrases about it and get's mad when the person doesn't understand. This is irrational and not based in logic so it leads to a person trying to gain control.
Here's something else you may find interesting in my opinion again there are three kinds of people, you have the Aggressive Alpha, you have the Passive submissive personality, and what I term as Guardians. I will use another example take a club scene you have couples dancing on the floor. One couple has an Alpha in it who when another guy approaches goes into instinctive block. Meaning he put's his physical body in the way, his head lowers protecting the neck, his chest rises to make himself bigger then the threat, and his adrenaline glands kick in. This is natural behavior for this person's type even though there maybe no threat at all. In another couple you have a Passive submissive when the threat approaches him he moves to block, but his head is risen, his chest doesn't puff out, his eye's turn down and his shoulders slouch down not knowing if he can confront the threat. In the third couple you have a Guardian, this person moves the other away from the threat, while his shoulders move up, and chest pushes out and spine raises, until the threat moves away he keeps a close distance away from it.

Instinct play's a major part in the human mind and can't be ignored as many other's have pointed out. It all depends on the chemical makeup of the brain, and how those react with circumstance. Ego to me is a sense of control over something, or the attempt to do so. Reason is trying to balance the two Instinct and Ego using logical means. If that makes sense. I will suggest an author for you if you can stomach the material, it's mostly based on Serial killers and offenders. It's called Mind Hunters by John Douglas about the Behavioral Science division in the FBI. Another one would be Profilers by Don Denvi and John H Campbell. If you look at Serial Killers their motives for their crime is almost solely based on a sense of control either in themselves or with the victim. It may give you some more clues in your search if you can get based some gore and look at it in a Psychological point of way.

Originally posted by DavidEspinosa
The ego is my mind controlling my life without my awareness. so in a way the ego is part of me, but it plays the game as it wishes ;when i give the power to my ego the balance declines to its side so i lose my natural way of being.

I can feel the ego as a voice in my head that judges everything, from the perspective of events from my past experiences. Its like a guard that keeps me inside the parameters it knows, by repeating the commands in my head; you know... the unnecessary self talking, like repeating myself things that i already know, like when i wake up late for school my ego says "DAMN ITS LATE FOR SCHOOL" or "I LOOK SO HANDSOME TODAY" or " I REALLY LIKE THIS DRINK". its pointless, i already know that.

The unknown is unconscionable for the ego, as its something outside its control, that's a good way of taking back the power from my ego, by modifying my daily routines, like taking a shower with the eyes closed, or walking backwards, or doing stuff with the opposite hand i usually do, or any different way of facing the daily life but the automatic ego response.

That is the premise of my ego, to think and analyse stuff that i already know, of course that the opposite to that is doing stuff.My ego can spend 12 hours a day thinking and looking for a reason of why is my house so dirty, blaming my brothers of it, on the other hand i do the house cleansing in 2 hours, and of course thinking uses my energy so by thinking for 12 hours ill be really tired to do anything else. Maybe that why sometimes im tired of doing nothing.

In conclusion it doesn't matter if there is a reason of anything, the life its not inside my thoughts but in my actions.

Hello David,

I think to me I am craving to understand the reason, I feel that if I understand the reason there will be no psychological influences. I cannot help that being in a brain I am subject to subliminal atrocities when unprepared to deal with them, not all the time but when the test happens the only way to stand firm is pass it on a purely psychological level.

If the ego is controlling without awareness, this brings us back in the court of spirituality, when right and wrong has deeper suggestions, unless we were pack animals or solitary predatory animals as Templar wrote about. To me the motive and reason is still unknown, but at least there is force beneath the psychology. I will try to do things to disrupt my own habitual mind nonetheless and see if it leads to more understanding.

reply to post by greyer

Hello David, I think to me I am craving to understand the reason, I feel that if I understand the reason there will be no psychological influences. I cannot help that being in a brain I am subject to subliminal atrocities when unprepared to deal with them, not all the time but when the test happens the only way to stand firm is pass it on a purely psychological level. If the ego is controlling without awareness, this brings us back in the court of spirituality, when right and wrong has deeper suggestions, unless we were pack animals or solitary predatory animals as Templar wrote about. To me the motive and reason is still unknown, but at least there is force beneath the psychology. I will try to do things to disrupt my own habitual mind nonetheless and see if it leads to more understanding.

The reason of the ego.

The ego is the manifestation of the mental plane, as the feelings are the manifestation of the emotional plane.
The soul is the spiritual plane and the body the physical plane.
All humans are driven by those 4 basic planes, think of them as pilars supporting a circular plane structure where you are standing on top. it the 4 pilars are even you will be well standed, but if one of them ir taller or shorter your stand will be unbalnced and the tension starts, your have to do and effort to keep the balance and not falling down the structure, if you fall it means you die.

It doesn't matter which of the pilars is out of sync, it might be the mind the spirit, the body or the feelings, if your life has tension, your energy will be depleted in countering the in proper balance and you will have little to do anything, they all must be even so you can keep your energy and use it for your purposes without wasting.

So the ego is a PART of us,( just as the not less important body soul and emotions) and the ego is not bad, it's our friend, it's there for us to command it, is here to serve you and your purposes. you just need the sufficient energy to give the command, and make the pilars even, and take your power back from the tension.

The reason of your ego is your existence.
The reason your ego commands your life is because you gave your ego your energy, making it stronger than you. Its like if you own a company but your ego got 51% of the stocks that you gave for free to it. and the rest 49% of the stocks are divided between your mind emotions and body.

Use your tricks to fool the strong. Stand in the middle where you can reach the all.