Psychotherapist, President of the Italian Society for
Photosynthesis Psychotherapy
and VP of the European Federation of
Photosynthesis Psychotherapy.
"The ego is the worst confidence trickster
we could ever figure, we could ever imagine.
‘Cause you don’t see it."
Dr. Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.
Clinical Therapist, Foundation Professor at UNR
President & Founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
And the single biggest con is…”I am you.”
Clinical Psychologist
Freud Memorial Professor of Psychotherapy at UCL
The problem is that the ego hides in the last place that
you’d ever look -within itself.
In creating this
imaginary external enemy,
it usually made a real enemy for ourselves,
and that
becomes a real danger to the ego,
but that’s also the ego’s creation.
In that sense, you
could say that 100 percent of our
external enemies are of our own creation.
Founder of the Conscious Living Foundation
Author of "Journey into Now"
It disguises its
thoughts as your thoughts, its feelings as your feelings.
You think its you. People have no clue
that they’re imprisoned.
They don’t know that there is an ego. They don’t know
the distinction.
Andrew Samuels, Ph.D.
Professor of Analytical Psychology,
University of Essex, UK
People’s needs to
protect their own egos knows no bounds.
They will lie, cheat, steal, kill, do
whatever it takes,
to maintain what we call ego boundaries.
Psychiatrist
Physician, Researcher, Lecturer
At first it’s
difficult for the mind to accept that there’s some -something
beyond itself,
that there’s something of greater value and greater capacity for discerning
truth than itself.
*Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Chairman and co-founder of the Chopra Center
for Well-Being, Author
In religion the ego
manifests as the devil.
And of course, no one realizes how smart the ego is
because it created the devil so you could blame someone else.
In creating this
imaginary external enemy,
it usually made a real enemy for ourselves,
and that
becomes a real danger to the ego,
but that’s also the ego’s creation.
There is
no such thing as an external enemy,
no matter what that voice in your head is
telling you.
All perception of an enemy is a projection of the ego as the enemy.
Dr. Obadiah S. Harris, Ph.D.
President of the Philosophical Research Society and Author
Your greatest enemy, is your own inner perception,
is your own ignorance, is
your own ego.
-The Ego Has Landed - Guy Ritchie
(Revolver 2008)
The film stars Jason Statham as Jake Green, Ray Liotta as Dorothy Macha, and André Benjamin (a.k.a. "André 3000") as Avi. It centers on a revenge-seeking confidence trickster whose weapon is a universal formula that guarantees victory to its user, when applied to any game or confidence trick. This is the third feature film by Ritchie which is centered on crime and professional criminals.
The Bhagavad Gita (Sanskrit भगवद्गीता, Bhagavad Gītā, "Song of God") is one of the most important Hindu scriptures. It is revered as a sacred scripture of Hinduism, and considered as one of the most important philosophical classics of the world.
"Do without attachment the work you have to do.
Surrending all action to ME, freeing yourself from longing and
selfishness, fight - unperturbed by grief." (Bhagavad-Gita)
Once all claims on work have been renounced, including
whether it will succeed in its intent, the karma yogi's actions
no longer swell the ego.
People usually approach work in terms of its consequences
for their empirical selves --the pay or acclaim it will bring.
This inflates the ego. It thickens its insulation and thereby
its isolation.
The Way to God Through Work
Huston Smith
The World's Religions
While going through my journal entries last night, I saw that my original thesis idea was on theego as an adversary throughout the world's religions. Realizing this, I've decided to write my research paper using this point as the basis and also revising the submitted thesis.
Although you've already signed off on it, there were revisions I wanted to make anyway; and so I'm emailing you the present approach to the subject and will submit it tonight based on my initial point of view.
This is the revamped thesis:
A common source of contention in all world’s religions, is the selfishly-centered perspective of the individual ego personality.
The ego, is a psychological component in everyone that functions as a sense of self (me), separate from others, and its commitment to the preservation of personal concerns of the individual life.
Religion is always ultimately, a call to life lead by a will or ideal beyond our own.
All religious pursuit points to and is primarily concerned with transcendence of the self, be it personal or impersonally.
It is a paradox that a sense of selfish concern and defense is a prerequisite for a successful religious and spiritual adherence.
Yet, I will show that it is this very egotistical component of the psyche that serves to undermine the best efforts of the God-seeker.
Personified as the Accuser (causing disobedience) in Judaism, Satan (causing sin/separation) in Christianity, Shaitan/Iblis (causing forgetfulness) in Islam, Anarchy in Confucianism, Pain in Hinduism, Mara (causing suffering) in Buddhism and the failure to comprehend attunement/wholeness in Taoism, it is nothing more than our very own externally projected adversarial egos …a common religious enemy.
THE ADVERSARIAL EGO
A Common Religious Enemy (A Major Religious Enemy)
QIAN MECHALITH
My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli's Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality-not in "reason," still less in "morality."
One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression... Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Hellenes.
In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things.
Thucydides: Greek historian and author of the History of the Pelloponneisan War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory. More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behavior in such crises as plague, genocide (as practiced against the Melians), and civil war.
"It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions."
"But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
