Ego Prepares our Human Machine Just Like Others do to Others – (1786)

Many Tricks

The ego has many tricks you know up its sleeves.

There are also many ways to uncover these tricks. All tricks can be found using observation and self-observation.

One way of finding these tricks is to observe how people treat others when they want something. Because there is so much ego in us, watching others treat others is basically watching an ego treating a person. Which is the same situation within us, where we are the person being treated an ego, except that the ego is our own ego.

Trick One

When say, we want to do something out of the ordinary and we know our family won’t like it, we begin to slowly prepare our family, so that when we tell them they won’t get so shocked.

You know our ego does the exact same. It slowly prepares us, it works on us over a few days preparing the ground for its manifestation.

Trick Two

People often work on people over time, slowly bending them to get what they want. Husbands do this, wives do this and children do this. The ego does exactly the same thing. It works in the background breaking down the resistance to its desires from other egos and slowly hypnotising the essence. Then it strikes and we are in trouble.

Trick Three

Persistence pays. When children want something they nag and nag until the point the parent is so sick and tired of hearing the nagging that they give in. The ego too is persistent and it works on us constantly. So much so that we are tempted to give into it just to clear it out of our mind.

Trick Four

When people ant something they use reasons and arguments. They present benefits, they present values, they use morality, they use you name it. They use experimentation, a test drive, a taste, a sip, etc.

The ego does exactly the same within us. It presents us with so many interesting arguments and reasons, it presents us with sensations, emotions, values, it says I can just try it but not do it, I’ll do it once, it won’t be bad etc. etc.

Trick Five

When people want something they use force, blackmail and threats. The ego within us uses the same ways when it wants something. It usually resorts to these means as a last resort when all the other ways fail. This is like the last stand of the ego, it reveals itself, shows us it true colours gives us a huge fight and then retreats it fails. This is its last gamble, because it knows with such a stance it runs the risk of it being discovered for what it really is and then the fight to its death will be on, if we are serious about working on it.

End (1786).