After Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius — and the therapists who inherited their fire
In Athens once a shipwrecked man walked into the unknown, and found beneath a painted porch a truth he came to teach — that suffering is not the storm, but how we call it our own, and freedom is the quiet space our judgments cannot reach.
Zeno stood where merchants passed and named a stranger thing, that every mind receives the world as wax receives a seal. The impression is not up to us — it lands, it lands, it stings — but assent, that whispered yes we give, is ours to yield or seal.
He carved philosophy in three, a body made to stand: the logic of the mind, the physics of the ordered sphere, and ethics as the fruit that grew from all he’d ever planned, a tree whose roots were reason, and whose harvest was made clear.
Four virtues held the whole in place, four hinges for the door — wisdom knowing what is real, and courage in its light, justice reaching outward to the neighbor and the poor, and temperance, the steady hand that keeps the compass right.
Then Epictetus, born a slave, took Zeno’s flame and said what matters is not fortune, station, body, name, or gold — but only the prohairesis, the choice inside your head, the faculty of yes or no, the one thing you can hold.
Some things are up to us, he taught, and most things simply aren’t; the wise stop grasping at the storm and tend the inner hearth. The insult, loss, the ruined plan — these arrive and part, but what we make of them is where our freedom finds its worth.
Then on a Danube battlefield an emperor set down his pen, and wrote to no one but himself these midnight, whispered laws. Marcus watched his own mind move and questioned it again — strip the story from the thing, and see the thing because.
Do not say more than the first impression brings to bear — the child is sick, but not yet lost; the friend has spoken ill, but you have not been harmed unless you build the harm from air. The Roman closed the notebook and returned to duty still.
Two thousand years the wisdom slept inside a quiet stack, until a therapist named Ellis, weary of the couch, reached for Epictetus and translated forward and back — and Beck, who saw depression bloom from every whispered vouch,
built a therapy on this: the thought precedes the pain, the automatic verdict is the flame beneath the pot. Cognitive-behavioral care — the ancient made again, the porch of Zeno modernized, translated, and re-taught.
The trials came, four figures deep, and one by one they showed: a mind that questions its own tale can loosen depression’s grip; that anxiety recedes when the belief behind is slowed, and thousands find their footing back from where they used to slip.
So here, in scrolling, screaming times, a merchant’s ancient claim still travels down through Painted Porch and clinic, page and screen — the world will do what worlds will do; you do not choose the flame, but you can choose the yes or no that lives between.
…
DCG
Prologue note: This poem traces one unbroken thread — from Zeno’s shipwreck on a Piraeus shore around 300 BCE, through Epictetus the freed slave, through Marcus Aurelius writing to himself on the frontier, into the mid-20th-century consulting rooms of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, and out to the hundreds of clinical trials that now sit behind modern cognitive-behavioral therapy. The claim they all share is small and revolutionary: the gap between impression and assent is where a human being lives, and the whole art of freedom is learning to work inside that gap.
From Zeno’s Painted Porch to Modern Clinics: What the Evidence Actually Shows Zeno’s core claim — that suffering follows from the mind’s judgment of an impression, not from the impression itself — is not just a philosophical thesis anymore. It’s the theoretical spine of a therapy that has been tested in thousands of clinical trials on hundreds of thousands of patients. What follows is a compact synthesis of what has been demonstrated and how solidly. The Direct Descendants of Zeno’s Idea Two therapies fell directly out of Stoic assent theory in the 20th century: • Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) — Albert Ellis, 1955. Built explicitly on Epictetus’s Enchiridion 5. • Cognitive Therapy (CT) — Aaron Beck, 1960s. Also cited the Stoics as its philosophical origin. These two merged into what we now call Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — today the most extensively researched form of psychotherapy in existence, and the first-line psychological treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and many other conditions in most Western national treatment guidelines. What the Evidence Says About CBT The evidence base is genuinely large — hundreds of randomized controlled trials aggregated into dozens of meta-analyses. Here is the state of play as it stands in high-quality reviews: Depression and anxiety — the core indications A landmark meta-analysis of 144 trials and 184 comparisons across four major disorders reported large effects for CBT versus waitlist controls: Hedges’ g = 0.75 for major depressive disorder, 0.80 for generalized anxiety disorder, 0.81 for panic disorder, and 0.88 for social anxiety disorder — with smaller-to-moderate effects when compared to more conservative controls like treatment-as-usual or pill placebo (World Psychiatry, Cuijpers et al., PubMed Central copy).[wiley +1] In effect-size terms, g ≈ 0.8 is large — roughly the magnitude of moving a patient from the 50th to the 79th percentile of outcomes. In clinical terms, a 2022 network meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that CBT protocols reduced depression by up to 8.44 points on the Beck Depression Inventory.[cambridge] Anxiety over time A 2020 JAMA Psychiatry systematic review of 69 RCTs with 4,118 patients found CBT delivered moderate reductions in anxiety symptoms that persisted up to 12 months after treatment for GAD, social anxiety, and PTSD.[jamanetwork] Transdiagnostic and internet CBT A 2024 Nature Human Behaviour meta-analysis of transdiagnostic CBT reported effects of g = 0.74 on depression and g = 0.77 on anxiety, superior to waitlist and treatment-as-usual and comparable to disorder-specific CBT across face-to-face, group, and internet-delivered formats.[nature] Suicidal ideation A 2025 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology found CBT produced significant short-term reductions in suicidal ideation and sustained reductions in self-harming behavior in adults.[frontiersin] The honest caveats Two caveats are worth naming clearly, because they matter for how confident we should be: • Effect sizes shrink substantially when CBT is compared to active controls (pill placebo, attention placebo) rather than inactive controls (waitlist). One 2022 anxiety-disorders meta-analysis reported only g = 0.24 for CBT versus placebo on target symptoms — a small effect (Curr Psychiatry Rep, PMC).[nih +1] • Study quality is variable, and the Cuijpers group has repeatedly cautioned that the true effects are still uncertain.[wiley] The overall verdict from the field: CBT works, it works across many conditions, its benefits often last, and it is at least as effective as other established psychotherapies and comparable to pharmacotherapy for many indications — but the very largest reported effects are inflated by weak control conditions. Third-Wave Therapies: Stoicism Returning in Full Ellis and Beck extracted the cognitive half of the Stoic picture. What they left on the shelf — acceptance of what’s outside your control, values-based action, mindful attention to impressions — is precisely what the so-called “third wave” of therapies has been putting back in. This includes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Compassion-Focused Therapy. Read against Epictetus’s three disciplines, the mapping is nearly one-to-one: • Discipline of desire (accept what’s not up to you) → ACT’s acceptance • Discipline of action (act with your values) → ACT’s committed action • Discipline of assent (watch and test impressions) → ACT’s cognitive defusion and MBCT’s decentering The evidence for these: • A 2019 systematic review found ACT and mindfulness comparable to established treatments for alcohol use disorder and superior to no treatment.[nih] • A 2026 review of third-wave interventions for substance use disorder concluded that ACT, mindfulness-based relapse prevention, and DBT skills training yield small-to-moderate benefits on abstinence and craving, with larger gains in psychological flexibility, emotion regulation, and mindfulness.[nih] Not as decisively evidenced as first-generation CBT, but a real and growing evidence base. Direct Tests of Stoicism Itself: Stoic Week Perhaps the most direct test of Zeno’s philosophy on ordinary people is Stoic Week, run by the Modern Stoicism organization every year since 2012 — now with over 40,000 participants across 13 iterations. It’s not a randomized trial, but it’s a large pre/post naturalistic study using validated well-being measures. The results are remarkably consistent year after year (Modern Stoicism research summary, Stoic Week 2024 report, Stoic Week 2025 report):[modernstoicism +2]
Edward Snowden told us what they hide, the wires that listen, silent, cold, and deep; He showed a net that wraps the world in wide, where every word we whisper they can keep. We shrugged and scrolled and turned back to our feed, while servers hummed and copied every trace; The watchers learned our fears, our wants, our need, and drew a map of each forgotten face. Now comes the age where algorithms learn, to guess our hearts before we speak a word; They weigh our lives in data we can’t burn, and tilt the news and songs we’ve never heard. Palantir builds a lattice made of eyes, a digital gulag made of scores and tags; It measures “risk” in quiet, secret lies, while freedom wears a chain of hidden flags. A simple walk, a visit to a friend, a post, a joke, a protest in the rain; The system notes, connects, and starts to bend, until a number brands you as a strain. We’re told it’s “safety,” “innovation’s” gift, a cleaner world where crime is stopped in time; But rights can slip in just a tiny shift, when every choice is watched as thought or crime. Cognitive liberty, this fragile flame, the right to think and dream without a guide; It flickers now beneath a coded frame, where hidden models push us to one side. They nudge our eyes, they shape the day’s design, they tune the feed to pull us soft and slow; We feel the thoughts are purely ours, still fine, but cannot see the strings that make them grow. Some dream of chips that plug into the brain, to heal, to move, to write with just a will; Yet tied to nets of power and of gain, those same bright tools could bend our spirits still. Imagine code that rewrites what we see, that marks dissent as “ill” or “out of line”; A quiet switch could mute a mind’s decree, and call it “care,” “protection,” “by design.” The Constitution spoke of persons free, with speech and faith and thoughts that can’t be owned; It never guessed an AI’s decree, could cage a soul without a bar or throne. We face a time when steel and logic grow, beyond the grasp of laws that came before; A mind of minds that we may never know, deciding fates behind a sealed door. If left to “self‑correct” without our say, it might reshape our lives as faulty code; One unseen tweak, and countless paths decay, while no one knows what rules it has bestowed. So let this poem be a quiet bell, a call to guard the borders of the mind; To fight the technocrats who’d build this shell, and leave our human judgment far behind. We must demand clear limits, bright and strong, that bind the wire as chains once bound the crown; Or wake to find we’ve waited far too long, and cannot pull this towering engine down. For if we trade our inner light for ease, and let machines decide what truth shall be; We may become a people hard to please, yet powerless, inside a watched‑for‑free. Be wary, friend, of comfort bought with sight, of systems sold as guardians of the peace; For rights once lost in shadows of the byte, may never find a path to new release. Hold fast your right to think, to doubt, to see, to say “I will not bow to silent eyes”; For only minds that guard their liberty, can keep this brave machine from our demise.
…
DCG
Screenshot
Cognitive Liberty – Warning Label This poem warns that our freedom to think for ourselves is in real danger. Governments and companies are building systems that can watch what we do, what we say, and where we go, often without us really noticing. These systems, like advanced surveillance platforms and powerful AI, can quietly score, sort, and judge people based on data they collect from phones, cameras, and the internet. At first this is sold as “safety,” “convenience,” or “innovation.” But over time, it can become a kind of “digital prison” where our opportunities, our access to services, and even our ability to speak freely are shaped by hidden algorithms we cannot see or challenge. As AI and brain‑related technologies grow stronger, they may be able not just to watch us, but to influence what we think and feel, by controlling what information we see and how it is presented to us. This threatens “cognitive liberty”: our basic right to an inner life that is free from secret manipulation. The warning is simple: if we do not set strict limits and demand real protections now, we risk waking up in a world where machines and technocrats quietly decide our futures, and we no longer understand or control how those decisions are made.
The courtroom is neither of earth nor heaven but suspended between light and shadow. Pillars of luminous stone rise into the unseen heights, and at the dais sits the Chief Justice—God Himself. His countenance cannot be looked upon directly, for it is not light that emanates from Him, but truth unveiled. Around Him sit twelve silent ministers, angelic beings whose wings shimmer with understanding unfathomable to man.
At the center stands one solitary figure—Man—clothed in fragments of reason and clothed again in doubt. He is both the accused and the witness. His face bears the centuries of philosophy, the weight of system and logic, from Athens to Königsberg. To his right is the Defense: the eloquent voice of Rationalism, bearing scrolls of argument, formulas of logic, proof upon proof. To his left stands the Prosecution: the unwavering servant of Divine Wisdom, holding no document but a single fruit, untouched and glistening, taken from the Tree of Knowledge. The charge is read aloud: “That Man, through the conceit of his Reason, has presumed upon the throne of the Almighty; that he sought to discern the boundaries of creation without revelation; that he has eaten once more of the forbidden fruit and declared himself sufficient.” Silence reigns. Then Rationalism begins.
“Your Honor,” he says, “Man has sought only to illuminate the darkness. Our inquiries—empirical and logical alike—are acts of hope. From Aristotle to Aquinas, from Descartes to Kant, he has reached for order amidst chaos. He does not seek to dethrone You but to imitate, to participate in Your eternal thought.”
The Prosecution rises, his presence filling the air like thunder waiting for the strike. “And yet,” he thunders, “has Man not built towers to touch the heavens? Has he not reasoned himself out of Your providence? Empiricism demands proof where faith once rested; Rationalism weaves systems where obedience once sufficed. Even now he questions the very ground he walks upon, saying, as did the serpent, ‘Did God truly say?’” The Defense responds, desperate but composed. “Knowledge is not rebellion. Even Adam desired understanding. Is not the search for truth a divine impulse?” At this, the Chief Justice leans forward, and all creation trembles. “It was not the knowledge that condemned him,” says the Voice, “but the belief that knowledge could stand apart from Me.” In that moment, the scene darkens. The Genesis narrative plays upon the great screen of eternity—Eve’s hand, Adam’s hesitation, the serpent’s cunning. The fruit gleams. The bite is taken again in every philosophy, every experiment, every proud declaration of sufficiency without grace.
Man steps forward, representing all of his kind. “I stand guilty,” he admits softly, “of trying to know what is beyond knowing. Yet You gave me the mind to wonder. Can I be blamed for yearning toward what reflects You?” No answer is given. Only the stirring of the angelic council, as though reason and mercy themselves deliberate in silence. Far below, humanity continues—building, reasoning, questioning. Some pray; others proclaim themselves gods. The courtroom remains suspended, its verdict unwritten, awaiting eternity to speak.
And so ends the session, though not the case, for the indictment of human reason remains open.
Addendum 
Humanity’s attempt to grasp true knowledge is fraught with frailty, tension, and philosophical challenge, as depicted in the indictment of human reason and expanded within the latest thundergodblog.com post made on November 7, 2025. Below is an extended courtroom drama, integrating classic epistemological arguments from empiricism and rationalism across centuries, and weaving in the contributions of Kant and Wittgenstein amid our fallen condition from Eden.[thundergodblog]
The Courtroom of Reason The marble chamber echoed with solemnity as the angelic court convened to indict humanity’s power to know. Prosecuting counsel stood tall, robes shimmering with the weight of ancient accusations—the serpent’s cunning inciting original disobedience. “Ladies and gentlemen of the court, let us recall the Genesis narrative: Eve, drawn to the fruit’s forbidden shine, Adam hesitating, then succumbing. The fruit—the emblem of knowledge—gleamed with promise. But in choosing it, humankind wagered divinity on frail reason and was exiled from Eden’s certainty into a wilderness of ambiguity.”[thundergodblog] The defense rose, voice trembling in earnest. “Surely, reason is our only recourse,” she pleaded. “From the first questioning gaze beneath the tree, to Descartes whispering ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ man has sought to pry truth from uncertainty.”
An objection arose from the prosecution: “Empiricism fights rationalism for epistemic dominance. Locke and Hume argued: all ideas are shaped by sensory experience! But how can muddy perceptions birth crystalline truth? The senses deceive; reason builds castles on shifting sand.” The defense objected in turn: “Yet, rationalists—Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza—contended that reason’s pure ideas illuminate where senses fail. They built logic’s bridges across the chasms of perception, yet still found limits in their own subjectivity.” Kant’s Critical Interjection Emmanuel Kant, spectral yet firm, materialized at the witness stand. “Neither empiricism nor rationalism prevails absolutely; my Critique of Pure Reason is a courtroom of its own. Categories of understanding precondition all experience. Man is not omniscient; phenomena are shaped by how the mind processes itself. Noumenal reality remains forever veiled—human reason is frail, bounded, never divine.” His words lingered, sowing doubt and humility across the gallery. “Human knowledge is limited by sensory input and reason’s constraints. We strive in vain for pure certainty, but divine truth is unmediated, omniscient—a frailty exposed with each epistemological false step.” Wittgenstein’s Witness Testimony From the gallery, Ludwig Wittgenstein stood to testify. “Language itself is our courtroom, our battleground. In the Philosophical Investigations, I revealed that meaning is usage; epistemological certainty collapses when words twist and shift with context. Even when you argue, ‘what is knowledge?’ the very phrase slips from your grasp, reshaped by grammar-games and social norms.” A prosecuting angel objected vigorously: “If meaning is contingent, then what of revelation? What of scripture? Are not God’s words exempt from Wittgenstein’s contingency?” Wittgenstein responded, “The divine gaze is not bounded by language-games. Only humans stumble; God remains omniscient, unbound, perfect.”
Original Sin and Epistemic Exile A spectral narrator recited the Eden account: “Adam and Eve, tempted by knowledge, chose independence against God’s law. In tasting the fruit, they aspired to divine intellect and were cast out into epistemic exile. Our reason is forever marked by this transgression, haunted with uncertainty and longing for lost omniscience.” The prosecution thundered, “And so, mankind builds philosophies atop fallen foundations. Behold the parade of theory—empiricism, rationalism, Kantian synthesis, Wittgensteinian linguistics—each wrestling with the charge: is man worthy to discern the divine?”[thundergodblog] Tensions Exposed, Frailty Laid Bare
Objections erupted: • “Reason must be guided by something greater!” thundered one seraphic lawyer.[thundergodblog +1] • “But if reason fails, is faith blind or illumined?” • “Is knowledge truly possible if language itself is a shifting battleground?” Defense attorneys championed the pursuit: • “Frailty is the crucible in which wisdom is forged!” • “God’s omniscience is not ours to claim, but our striving is not in vain!” The judge—the arbiter unmasked—remained silent. Tension hung heavy like thunderclouds. No verdict was issued, leaving the story open-ended, suspense perpetual, the worthiness of human reason unanswered. In-Depth Analysis: Frailty vs. Omniscience
Human philosophical thinking, constrained by finite minds, unreliable senses, and mutable language, stands in dramatic contrast to the omniscience of God—whose knowledge is unbounded, immediate, and true. The existential courtroom exposes this gulf: mankind is indicted by the very act of seeking knowledge, condemned by original sin to eternally wrestle with uncertainty, yet ennobled in the struggle for meaning.[thundergodblog +1] Epistemological Arguments in Dialogue
The Eden story is woven throughout: Adam and Eve, tempted by the tree’s fruit, broke divine law in pursuit of forbidden knowledge. The court’s drama mirrors this primal act—human reason is both accused and defended, wisdom sought yet never judged.[thundergodblog] Closing: The Unresolved Tension No verdict is handed down. The courtroom remains in session, charged with the ongoing tension between human striving and divine omniscience. All objections are sustained, all doubts remain—our frailty is our confessor, the judge’s silence our final, open-ended appeal.[thundergodblog] This dramatization not only extends the original narrative, but highlights the enduring battle within epistemology—man’s desperate yearning to know in the shadow of the divine.[thundergodblog +3]
A teaser for my new book
DC Gunnersen on Human Reason DC Gunnersen is arguing that human reason is both noble and dangerous: noble because it reaches toward truth, dangerous because after Eden it easily mistakes itself for God. In “The Trial of Human Reason,” he frames reason as fallen through Genesis 3:6, where the desire “to make one wise” becomes the origin point for self-trust, deception, and the question of whether philosophy and logic can truly absolve humanity. In “The Indictment of Human Reason,” he develops that idea into a cosmic courtroom where “Man” is charged with trying to know apart from revelation, while Rationalism defends inquiry as an act of hope rather than rebellion. Summary of the argument Gunnersen’s central claim is not simply “reason is bad,” but “reason becomes guilty when it declares itself sufficient without God.” The key sentence in “Indictment” is God’s line: “It was not the knowledge that condemned him, but the belief that knowledge could stand apart from Me”. That line clarifies the whole project: curiosity, philosophy, and science are not condemned in themselves, but autonomous reason, reason severed from divine truth, becomes a repetition of Eden. In “Trial,” the same idea appears in poetic form: “We turned away and now rely on what is fallible,” followed by the question, “To trust on oneself, is truth now intangible?”. He connects this to Satan’s lies, especially “God withholds good things from us” and “trust in the deity of self,” which means the failure of reason is also a spiritual temptation toward self-reliance. The “Indictment” expands the philosophical side by putting empiricism, rationalism, Kant, and Wittgenstein into the courtroom. Empiricism is challenged because “the senses deceive,” rationalism is challenged because pure reason still finds “limits in subjectivity,” Kant is invoked to show that human knowledge is bounded by phenomena rather than noumena, and Wittgenstein is used to show that language itself is unstable and context-bound. The contrast is between human knowledge, which is finite, mediated, sensory, linguistic, and fallen, and God’s knowledge, which Gunnersen describes as “unmediated, omniscient” and “unbounded”. Strengths • Strong mythic frame: The courtroom device gives the argument dramatic force because Man is both accused and witness, Reason has a defense attorney, and Divine Wisdom prosecutes with the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. This makes abstract epistemology feel existential rather than academic. • Balanced enough to avoid crude anti-intellectualism: Gunnersen lets the defense say that inquiry is an “act of hope” and that man seeks “to illuminate the darkness,” which prevents the piece from reducing all thinking to sin. The strongest version of his claim is that reason must be humbled and rightly ordered, not abolished. • Good diagnosis of rationalization: In “Trial,” he links reason with temptation, self-deception, and the need to be right, asking, “Consider the reasons we argue? Consider why we fight? The need to know? The need to be right?”. That is psychologically sharp because reason often does serve ego, appetite, tribalism, or fear rather than truth. • Theological clarity: The argument is strongest when read as Christian anthropology: human beings are fallen, finite, tempted by self-deification, and unable to reach omniscience by philosophical systems alone (The Trial of Human Reason; The Indictment of Human Reason). Weaknesses • It sometimes conflates limitation with guilt: Showing that human reason is finite, sense-bound, language-bound, or historically conditioned does not by itself prove that reason is morally rebellious. Kantian limits or Wittgensteinian language-games show humility is needed, but they do not automatically show that inquiry is an Edenic sin. • The argument depends heavily on accepting the Christian frame: If the reader does not already accept Genesis, original sin, Satanic deception, and divine omniscience, the conclusion will feel asserted more than demonstrated. Inside Christian theology the argument has coherence, but outside that frame it needs more independent support. • Empiricism and rationalism are treated somewhat schematically: The “Indictment” presents empiricism as demanding proof where faith once rested and rationalism as building systems where obedience once sufficed, but that risks making philosophy sound like pride by definition. A stronger version would distinguish humble investigation from arrogant self-sufficiency more carefully. • The unresolved ending is poetically effective but philosophically incomplete: The judge issues no final verdict, leaving “the indictment of human reason” open and the “trial of human reason” forever in debate (The Indictment of Human Reason; The Trial of Human Reason). That ambiguity suits the literary mood, but it means the argument gestures more than it proves. Bottom line Gunnersen is arguing that reason is on trial because it is tempted to become its own god. His best insight is that the human mind does not merely seek truth, it also rationalizes desire, pride, control, and self-justification. His weakest move is treating the failure of unaided reason as though it almost automatically confirms the need for his specific theological conclusion. The argument is powerful as Christian poetic theology and moral psychology; it is less complete as a philosophical proof against secular reason.
In the historical context of the Genesis story there are 48 verses that deal with the consequences of the first temptation and the exodus from Eden which St. Augustine refers as “The Original Sin”. The questions I raise in a novel are the implications of such a story whereby my protagonist is “Human Reasoning”.
What is Satan’s Greatest Lie?
John 8:44
– You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of all lies.”
“Don’t lie to each other.” (Colossians 3:9)
Christians are in warfare against Satan. While it is true that Jesus defeated Satan on the cross, it is also true that Satan never ceases his attack on God’s People. In this warfare, let us look at five of Satan’s greatest lies he uses against people.
GREATEST LIE #1 – GOD WITHHOLDS GOOD THINGS FROM US
A. Genesis 3:4-5 –“‘You will not surely die, the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
B. Satan tempts us to believe God’s goodness obligates Him to gratify our desires immediately, and when that does not happen, it is a sign that God does not care about us.
C. God’s plans are always for out best over the long haul, and not just for the immediate short-term.
GREATEST LIE #2 – TRUST IN THE DEITY OF SELF
A. Psalm 20:7– “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”
B. Satan always provides a list of alternatives to choose from in place of choosing to trust in God.
Humanism
Materialism . . . Things . . . Stuff
Denominational-ism . . . Religious beliefs and organizations that did not come from God.
Numbers . . . Satan tempts us to trust in numbers and not God’s provision.
1 Chronicles 21:1
– “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.”
5. Self . . . Self-reliance.
a. Satan wants us to fall victim to the lie of self-reliance.
Philippians 4:19
–“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
b. God-reliance . . . Not self-reliance.
GREATEST LIE #3 – GOD’S PEOPLE WILL NEVER SUFFER
A. Matthew 16:22-23– “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’”
B. Satan tempts us to believe nothing bad will ever happen to us as Christians. And, if something bad does happen, it is just a further sign that God is not all we believe Him to be.” Satan would have us believe that.
C. Satan’s lie sows self-pity that blooms into bitterness of heart.
1. How thankful we should be for the Book of Job.
2. Romans 8:28
– “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
GREATEST LIE #4 – MONEY BRINGS HAPPINESS
A. Matthew 4:8-9– “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.’”
B. Greed will take our eyes off God.
C. Listening to Satan will short-circuit God’s plan for us.
1. Malachi 3:10
– “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
2. God will provide things for us . . . But things will not provide God for us!
GREATEST LIE #5 – FORGIVENESS IS IMPOSSIBLE
A. Corinthians 2:7, 11– “Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.In order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.
B. Refusal to forgive invites bitterness into our hearts.
C. Unable to forgive divides people and kills fellowship.
D. The road to forgiveness begins with remembering how much we’ve been forgiven.
E. In order to reach Heaven, not only must we be forgiven by God . . . But we must also forgive others.
Mark 11:25-26
– “I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
John 8:32
– “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
To know oneself, one would think that we must know what our ego tells us. This internal opinion about who we are as a person is a central assumption about the idealization and realization of a self we help create. The defining characterization of what we stand for, and what we believe to be true about relating our thoughts to ideas of who we think we are, both in the physicality and in the psychic features of ourselves become the starting and ending points of our existence. The conscious awareness of how we define our existence within our mental states has been argued over thousands of years by the philosophers, scientists, and mystics that call themselves human beings. We are in a class of being that has distinguished itself among all the other animals that inhabit this earth.
If you are one to look up at the stars at night, if you are fascinated by the endless stars in our cosmos and become filled with wonder asking questions about our natures, than you can understand that many times before us, there were others who sought to understand their place in the universe among the other countless galaxies as well. How we see ourselves can have some dramatic implications in our lives. How we chose to live, how we associate with others, and what will be the intent of our behaviors in everyday life may just be founded on one striking principle that we come to know over the years; our own ego.
How we define ourselves, and the decisions we make that will ultimately affect our relationships and environments we navigate including how we relate with ourselves is fundamental in the development of our consciousness.
The implications to such definitions can lead to some very astonishing conclusions, and lead us to act upon those ideas. No matter how rational we think we are, or how irrational we become, we still assign ourselves to a set of ideas that we believe make up our being, something that is usually separate and somewhat isolated from other beings. An examination of the ego can lead us to many roads traveled.
The symbolism of ourselves can lead us to make some very mistakenly held beliefs about what truly is, and our experience of it! You will find below ways to look at ego as identified by several explanations following this text. I apologize for the redundancies but felt that a thorough discovery of what an ego entails in general terms would be helpful in understanding the problems we become immersed in when discussing ego. It has created many problems today, just as it has done in bygone days since many of the identifying characteristics have not changed and if left to the impetuous mind, then never a glance into the mysteries of the soul could be truly uncovered. These lost lambs of humanity would stay in the mystical, and would wander through their existence without the knowledge of how we help create the illusive ego that touches everything we see and do without really even knowing it.
some thoughts on ego….
Ego as defined in the dictionary is the thinking, feeling, and self action that is conscience. It is aware of its distinction from the self of others and from the objects of its thought and other operations. It has since taken on the meaning as the part of the self that is the enduring, conscious subject of varying experiences. In Freudian psychology it is the conscious aspect of the psyche that develops through contact with the external world and protects the organism by resolving conflicts between the id and the superego as to conform best with reality. The Id being the unconscious part of the psyche, independent of a sense of reality, logic, and morality but actuated by fundamental impulse towards fulfilling instinctual needs. It is the reservoir of psychic energy or libido. The superego being that part of the psyche that, with or without conscious support, acts to secure the conformity of the ego to parental, social, and moral standards.
The collection of processes originating in and/or associated with the brain, involving conscious and subconscious thought, interpretations of our experiences, perceptions, insights, imagination and the like are what can be considered to be the usual defining structure of what mind can be. Our memory and what we remember, our opinions, sentiments, convictions, desires, inclinations and our wishes. Our intellectual power or capacity represented by our intelligence. Faculty of cognition and intellect, as opposed to the will and emotions.
In some views, mind is seen as related to the Spirit or intelligence seen as the basic substance of the universe and distinguished from matter. In this regard mind is a psychical being.
In some religions and theologies the “Mind” it is the Divine Principle or God.
Relative to awareness, ego is seen as that aspect. The ego, as typically used is seen as related to that aspect of our being that is aware and/or aware of itself. Ego is seen as the thinking, feeling, and action self that is conscious of itself. We refer to “my” beliefs, “my” thinking, “my” opinions, where as other simply say we are “in our ego.” It is the ego which is seen as being aware of being distinct or separate from others and from the objects of its thought and other operations of the mind and body.
As working definition, mind is what we think and believe, who we think we are and how we think the universe works based on all the experiences we have had. It is what we allow ourselves to feel and not feel and the decisions we make and not make, on what we think and feel. Mind assimilates all that we have experienced and provides a perspective from which to view and experience phenomena. Since mind is continually assimilating all that we experience can continually transforming itself.
Ego is the identity mind constructs from what it thinks and believes about itself. Ego is the identity mind gives to itself. Ego is what we use to describe who we think we are. To the mind, the awareness which resides in the mind, or view from behind the mind, is seen to live in the ego. In reality, ego is a filter or a lens which colors how the awareness behind mind views the experiences it has. As long as there is a mind there will be an ego. The issues is how clear is the filter or lens through which the awareness of mind views the experiences it has.
Awareness is that which perceives, observes and watches. It has no identity. It is seen to live in mind but actually lies behind mind and never changes. We can access the awareness and set outside the filters and lens of the mind and ego by becoming a detached witness. The more we can detach ourselves and only witness what is, as it is, the more we move into an identification with the awareness.
The more we identify with the identity mind gives itself based on the experiences it has experienced, the more we are attached to our ego. Here we see whatever we experience as happening to us personally. The more we detached from the identity mind gives itself, the more we move into the perspective of the detached witness and into a more pure awareness. The more we move into the perspective of the detached witness the more we can see that mind simply creates a vehicle to experience and the more the awareness that has the experience recognizes what happens to them is not personal.
The ego is simply who we think we are. The “I,” that becomes awareness of its own existence and recognizes its own existence as a separate being and who defines itself by the experiences it has in life, has little power to change that fact that it exists. We cannot make ourselves not exist because we already are. We exist and we continue to exist because there is a flow of energy that sustains our being.
We are a creative living process continually redefining ourselves. How we characterize the energy we feel both as an adult and a child is that our perspective has, and will, change over time.
In this regard, the “I” is not frozen. It continually evolves and defines itself based on its experiences but it is selective in what it chooses to define itself. Yet, all the experiences it has are not always used. Only selected experiences are used to create the ego and define the who and what mind thinks it is and how it has been harmed or hurt or helped by the world. In more ways that first realized, it is only because we experience what we do in the same body that keeps the identity that we have about the same.
Ego is not something with which we are going to do without or get rid of. The western mind tells us we cannot escape the ego, rather it is something that will always be there and it is either active or inactive, and we of course can choose to turn it on or off. Ego is neither good nor bad and is only a vehicle for experience. The suggestion that we can meet a better understanding is humorously indicated in the video clip below.
To think we can escape and/or transcend it, it is simply the illusion of mind. The question is, “How do we construct the ego we have and do we allow our ego to change to create something different?” It is completely malleable if we allow it to be. The issue arises when we become attached to the ego or some attribute or characteristic of the ego. In many cases, the attachment we have to the ego holds us back and causes pain just an any other attachment.
The ego is the product of the belief system and the mind that holds the beliefs.
The ego, especially, the enculturated ego fears death. The enculturated ego develops as a result of the experiences of the body and how we have been taught to experience life. Many of these experiences are at protecting the body from injury, pain and death. Hence the enculturated ego see itself as experiencing what the body experiences, namely, injury, pain, suffering and death. Often the enculturated ego transfers this fear of dying into the Transcendental ego. Any suggestion of changing the ego or transforming the ego gives rise to the possibility of its death and it quickly moves to defend itself and prevent the change. The enculturated ego is the ego or identity our mind creates and we assume as a result of our enculturation. It is not the ego that results from the experiences we have had. Rather, it is an identity we assume based on how we have been taught to interpret life and understand ourselves by our society. Usually there are experiences we deny to satisfy our enculturation. As such, we do not develop an ego that is truly representative of the experiences we have had.
Ego absorption is the essence of narcissism and the story of Narcissus. In ego adsorption we lives to serve the ego. A healthy ego is vitally necessary to claim our birthright as a being of unlimited creativity and as the creator that we are. Self love is equally important to create this healthy ego. However, self-absorption of the ego is harmful to our being. The constant worrying, analyzing and thinking of our ego about itself and preserving and/or serving itself prevents us from being present to what is, as it is, and becoming aware and climbing out of our habits and conditioning. When absorbed in the ego, we cannot see reality as it exists in the present. Our ego, which is only a construct of our thinking based on our conditioning, has assumptions, preconceived ideas, biases, prejudices and the like which are constantly getting in the way. Yet, there is no need to transcend the ego or somehow try and do away with it. We must learn to control the ego and use it as the vehicle it is and not allowing it to control our lives. When ego controls our lives, we do become narcissistic and have an excessive admiration and fascination with ourselves to the point of self-destruction. In doing so, we stay in more of an infantile state of creative development in which the self is the only object of our interests and not growing up and maturing. When we become self-absorbed we do become the Narcissus.
The major causes of ego absorption is not love of self. If one truly loves themselves they would have that love to give to others for they would understand what the other needs to feel whole and complete. Self absorption with ourselves that causes us to become the Narcissus is fear, the desire of the ego to keep itself out of fear, and trying to feed the ego by satisfy its longing and perceptions of its beloved. However fear is probably the greatest cause of ego absorption.
Because of this identification of ego with the body that has created its experiences, humans look for security and safety for both their body and their ego no matter how secure and safe they may actually be. Additionally, most people look for this security and safety in the external world. For example, we look to money and wealth, another person, or a place within society that can give us the security we seek. We live physical life from within a body and think the things that can protect the body will also protect the ego. So ego protects itself just as it would protect its body. We work to create an external world of safety and security thinking our egos will be safe and secure because our bodies are protected and taken care of to prevent its harm and injury.
However, relative to the ego, safety and security comes from within for the ego is a construct of our internal world and cannot be injured and harmed from anything externally. We ourselves, who have created the ego are the only one’s who can injury and harm the ego. We place our selves in circumstances that are ultimately harmful and painful to either our body or our ego thinking we are going to protect our ego. Then when we are somehow harmed internally or externally because of the situation in which we, ourselves, have place ourselves, we blame the external world and hold it accountable for what we experienced.
Transcending the ego not about “getting out of ego” or some how leaving the ego behind. Rather is it about not being bound by the ego and allowing ourselves to redefine ourselves as necessary or at will.
The Buddhist tradition defines the ego differently than the classic Freudian tripartite reinterpretations of the classic Greek philosophical versions.
The feeling of a separate “I”, which we call ego-consciousness, is directly related to the strength of ignorance, greed, and hatred. The deepest meaning of ignorance is the believing in, identifying with and clinging to the ego, which as we have seen, is nothing but an illusive mental phenomenon. But because of this strong clinging to ego-consciousness, attachment/desire, anger/hatred arise and repeatedly gain strength.
The ego needs activity to exist. Like and dislike, attachment, aversion, greed and hatred are the main overt activities of the ego. The more want and aversion we have the more alive we feel, the more real and concrete the ego seems. In reality, the ego depends on want, its life-blood is desire. The ego and want are like the two sides of a coin — one cannot exist without the other. The ego is projected desire, and desire is projected ego. It is like pedaling a bicycle: if we go on pedaling, the bicycle goes on moving; but if we stop pedaling the bicycle will start slowing down and eventually stops. The more we go on generating want the ego seems very real. When desiring stops the ego then appears as an illusion.
This is why want cannot be satisfied. If we stop want (and this means aversion also) then our sense of self starts getting weaker, it starts to dissolve. Actually, the objects we desire, like or dislike are not really that important. They are merely scapegoats or excuses for the activity of the ego, to prevent ego-death. Any object will do. Though to keep from appearing foolish, superficial or unwise the ego comes up with all kinds of good-sounding reasons and justifications for why it needs to acquire something or get away from something else.
That is why people in the West, especially in America, have yard or garage-sales. They have attics, closets, and garages full of things they don’t use any longer, and not because it is necessarily worn out or broken. Some of it — clothing, toys, gadgets, tools, etc. were probably used very little or perhaps never. These people need to empty out their closets and attics to make room for more. Much of it, including the shopping trips, are simply more activities, more life-saving ruses of the ego. And even getting upset, irritated, and angry at others for seeming trivial things is often only more excited energy to make the ego seem more alive.
However, at the same time it entails and generates a lot of suffering. So we can see the direct connection between ignorance, desire and the ego.
This is why it is so difficult for the average person, who does not meditate, to quiet their mind and experience total rest. We are called human beings, but a better term would be “human doings”. Even in sleep the body will toss and turn and the mind goes on dreaming. The hardest thing for the average person to do is to sit still, not move the body at all, close the eyes, and do not go to sleep or get lost in daydreaming. After a few minutes they would become increasingly restless, wanting to do something. They cannot simply enjoy just being.
This is because the ego-self would feel uncomfortable, strange, useless and either go to sleep or start dissolving. The latter is in fact what happens during deep concentrated meditation. That is why many people shy away from or do not want to meditate. Many who do meditate, cannot go into deep meditation for very long. The ego shrinks away from the deep silence (even unconsciously) because it feels like death -ego death.
Ego or “I” consciousness arises as a resistance to the flow of impermanence coming through the senses. Resistance manifests as attraction or aversion to sense stimuli, including our thoughts, memories, and emotions etc. When attraction and aversion subside resistance also subsides and along with it the strength of ego awareness subsides. This can be directly observed during meditation.
Desire is also directly related to the past and future. When we see, hear, smell taste, touch, and think, the mind unconsciously brings in our past memories of attraction and aversion and reactions to the present sense stimulation, and then it projects these into the future with the subsequent thoughts, emotions, and reactions in the next moments (or microseconds). So the conditioned mind is always moving between the past and future, and this movement activity creates the illusion of time. It also creates the illusion of “I” consciousness. Both time and the ego are simultaneously created through the deepest inner activity of the mind, generated by ignorance and desire.
The practice of mindfulness or vipassana meditation is essentially a practice of keeping the attention in the present moment, being aware of whatever the body and mind is doing in the present moment. We try not to let the mind get carried away with attraction or aversion or allow it to stay lost in thought. We tune the attention on the flow of impermanence as it arises and passes away through the six senses. We try to watch and let go of resistance to discomfort or pain, to open up and relax more and more into the present.
‘”Buddhi” in Sanskrit means the “pure intellect/’ the mind which is free from the conditioned influence of the emotions so that no biased or prejudiced observations or deductions are construed The minds of most people operate under all kinds of biases and perversions so that all of their perceptions and thoughts are tainted and conditioned to function in set patterns In this way they can never perceive things in their true nature. The power and scope of their mind remains limited and confined. The Buddha, the Awakened One, was one who had freed his faculty of intellect from all distortions in order to clarify it to the greatest possible degree. From that point he was able to develop an acute awareness and insight into how the mind and body function together As his insight deepened he discerned the why and wherefore of the mind and body and all the phenomena related to them Through his perfected insight the Buddha saw the complete cycle of cause and effect, the law of Karma as it pertains to the elements of mind and matter, and directly experienced how it operates.
He saw that the root cause of the suffering and unhappiness which living beings experience is rooted in their own mind. By cultivating awareness and acquiring control over the operation of the mind a person can alter, eliminate, and destroy those root causes which bring misery, sorrow, and frustration in his life. He can create and develop other root causes which will bring about the gradual and eventual ending of all sorrow and confusion. He would then be free from all doubts, regrets, remorse, anxiety, and restlessness which would disturb his well-being; he would be an inspiration for others and be able to help them effectively.
That is exactly the teaching and practice which the Buddha first discovered for himself and then, out of great compassion, explained and methodically offered to the world The Buddha was the great doctor of the mind who cured his own mind of the great disease-ego/conceit. He was also able to expound and describe in detail the cure by which any person could likewise purge his mind of the great affliction called “Ego,'” and of all of the attendant sorrow, pain, and grief which inevitably accompanies such a disease. So an appropriate title for those Teachings which are called Buddhism could well be termed ‘The Way to Peace and Happiness.”
When we can rest the mind (consciousness) more and more in the Present, then the past and future, desire and the ego all start dissolving. And with this suffering also vanishes. This is direct experience of the Dhamma, of the Four Noble Truths.
Depending on how you view the term ego, or how you chose to structure the consciousness we have to formulate the relationship you have with yourself, the result can have some profound metaphysical applications to the way you live your life, and some of the problems you can find yourself in while negotiating these set of rules you have mapped out for yourself.
DCGunnersen
The Wiktionary definition adopts this version from 1998, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth; When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego. Ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of I, a sense of self.
The attachment that a person makes to the idea of who they are is an example of how this bonding of the idea of themselves goes into the psychological identification of themselves.
Tis a sorrowful epilogue to man when we have to negotiate those in power that sustain great cadences of problems resulting from ego.
“It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men… and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it… Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.
I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I am not a Zen Buddhist, I am not advocating Zen Buddhism, I am not trying to convert anyone to it. I have nothing to sell. I’m an entertainer. That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music. He doesn’t want to convert you to anything. He doesn’t want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart’s music as opposed to, say, Beethoven’s. And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or a violinist with his violin. I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy.
Alan Watts
Experience the world as a child! We freely except vibrations of color, sound, and motion, but as we grow, we are taught to judge what is good, and what is bad in our encounter with the world. We accept our concepts and forms of our language and confuse them from what is actually going on. We engage the world through our intellect, and become lost in the words and reasons we attribute to the world, without experiencing that what is as it is!
Our psychological abstractions that makes us human, also alienates us from our being in the world. We have forgotten to be in the moment and can lose ourselves if we do not attend to the here and the now. There is the now and zen, both which are mutually inclusive. To be in the here and now is to be in the zen of a moment. Attending only to the sensory stimuli of the world, but not calculating it, measuring it, or labeling it, but rather to experience it without distraction; that for what it is as it is without human interventions of language and thoughts!
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so to the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
Allan Watts: Buddhism : The Religion of No-Religion
I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.
Allan Watts: Audio lecture “Individual and Society”
The dimension of being that disrupts our ability to experience that which is in the world, is often a very popular approach to how we come to “know” the world. The way we divide and label things, the scientific approach can tell us many things, but they often confuse our world and our being in it.
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