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However in reality, the habits marked negative by you may not be negative when seen neutrally or they may not be as negative as marked by you. For instance, you strongly disliked how this person embarrassed you in front of many people when he mentioned how helpless you felt while tracking a mountain and how he helped you out of this situation, making him a hero and making you look like a poor person in need of help. But this is only your point of view and it may not be completely correct.
Let’s now look into his act of show off from a neutral point of view and see how bad it is. The first question to ask is whether one such incident happened at all or not? The answer is yes. The second question is whether you felt helpless or not and the answer is again yes. The third question is whether he helped you out or not and the answer is again yes. The fourth and the final question is whether the entire incident has been honestly described by him or he has exaggerated his heroic deeds as well as your state of being a helpless person at a time. Let’s suppose the answer to this question is also yes, more or less. It means this person may have added 5 to 10% exaggeration but he’s been honest on the whole.
It is the time to analyze all these facts and reach a conclusion. When you analyze all these facts in a neutral way, you’ll find that this person has only spoken truth and nothing else. You felt helpless, he helped you and you were able to make it with his help. This is all this person is saying and this is all that has happened. So what is wrong in it? How can you call it a negative habit? Do you think that even speaking the truth qualifies for a negative habit?
In reality, there may be nothing wrong with this person’s approach though he may have slightly overdone certain things while describing this whole incident. Hence he may deserve a tiny little negative rating for this incident but not the kind of big negative rating that you assigned to him. The reason you give him such rating is that by describing this incident in front of other people, he’s made you feel small as you’re portrayed as a poor and helpless person in this story and your ego doesn’t like it.
The million dollar question to ask yourself before giving this rating is that whether you were actually a poor and helpless person back then or not? If the answer is yes, then there may be no valid justification for this negative rating and it is simply your ego in play. It may be a small incident but it can give you a perfect window to look into the domain of your ego. So let’s use this window and see what is there on the other side of this window, the side called the domain of your ego.
At a time when tracking a mountain, you felt helpless and this person helped you out of your problems. Then after some time, he described this incident in front of other people and you didn’t like this fact. Hence you give him a big negative for this act. It means your ego pays less attention to the fact that someone actually helped you in time of need and it pays more attention to the fact that he told other people about such help. By doing so, he embarrassed you and your ego got hurt. Hence the act of help almost vanishes in the shade of the act of your embarrassment.
Some questions arise here. Is help more important or the privacy of such help more important? When this person described this incident, why were you embarrassed in the first place as he was telling the truth only? Instead of feeling very bad and disliking this person at that moment, why didn’t you like him and join him? Why didn’t you say in front of all those people that whatever he’s saying is absolutely true and you’re grateful for all the help offered by him at that time? There are many other questions like these ones but considering these questions will serve our purpose.
Looking at the first question, the fact that more than help, the privacy of help is important to you asserts that you have a well developed ego which wants to project you only as a hero or a capable person and it hates when people see you as a helpless or needy person. Hence whosoever is responsible for projecting this helpless image of yours is your enemy, according to your ego. Accordingly, you want help but you don’t want other people to know that you need help as that goes against your ego.
In the second question, the other person was telling the truth only and you should not have any reason to feel embarrassed or bad. Being humans, we’re all vulnerable at times and all of us may need help at times. If none of us needed help and each one of us was complete, what was the need to build a society to start with? The concept of society was established only because long back, some wise people realized that as humans, we’re not complete and each one of us needs help at one time or the other.
Yes, some of us may need help more often and some of us may need help less often. However, that is a quantitative change and not a qualitative change. It means even the people who need help less often are basically the same as the people who need help more often. The quality of needing help remains common among both these types of people and only the quantity of such help may change. Therefore, there is no qualitative difference and there is only a quantitative difference between these two types of people.
For example, sugarcane needs much more water to grow than certain beans or other crops need. However, one common factor between them is that they all need water to grow and they can’t grow without it. Hence their quality of needing water to grow remains the same and only the quantities of water they require are different. When two or more things or people have the same basic quality but the measure of that quality is different, they’re called qualitatively the same but quantitatively different.
This is because they have the same basic quality and only the intensity of this quality is different in different cases. The measure of intensity of a quality is called quantitative measure and hence it deals with the percentage or score of a quality possessed by a thing or a person, compared to percentage or score of the same quality, possessed by other thing or person. Since both sugarcane and beans need water to grow, they’re qualitatively the same in this aspect though they are quantitatively different as they need different amounts of water to grow.
Now consider the comparison of taste between sugarcane, banana, bitter gourd and chilly. For this comparison, sugarcane and banana taste sweet though sugarcane is generally sweeter than banana. Bitter gourd tastes bitter as its name suggests and chilly tastes chilly according to its name. Hence when compared for taste, sugarcane and banana are qualitatively the same but they have different quantities of sweetness.
However, sugarcane and banana have qualitative difference of taste with bitter gourd and chilly since none of them tastes sweet and they have different tastes. This is what is called a qualitative difference which means that two or more things or people being compared for a certain aspect have qualities different than each other. Hence qualitative difference means having different qualities whereas quantitative difference means having different quantities of the same quality.
Coming back to the example, if all of us need help at one time or the other though some of us may need it more often, why do you need to deny this fact that you need or needed help? This is because your ego feels you’ll fall into the category of people who often need help and it instead likes to belong to the category of people who don’t need help much often. You see, on a subconscious level, your ego has assigned rating to each and every aspect of your life and it wants you to belong to the top rated categories in most of them.
This tendency in itself is not a very positive tendency as all you need is to be your natural self and if needed, try and improve yourself. However, it may still not be the biggest problem if you want to belong to top rated categories in most spheres of life and the way you try to achieve this target may be the biggest problem. There are primarily two ways of accomplishing this task and we’ll now look at these ways.
If you’re a fairly positive person, this is what your way is likely to be. You scrutinize most of your weaknesses, you resolve to overcome them and you start working towards improving yourself or towards making yourself a stronger and better person. Since you’re a positive person, you don’t hesitate in accepting your weaknesses as long as they’re there and in fact you welcome everyone who tells you about any one of your weaknesses.
This is because your primary goal is to overcome your weaknesses and this mission is accomplished step by step. In the first step, you have to learn that a particular quality in question is a negative quality and it is not a positive quality. In the second step, you have to realize that you also have this quality and you have to develop a desire to get rid of this quality or habit. In the third step, you have to start making efforts to get rid of this quality and in the fourth step, your mission is accomplished.
If you work on these lines, people who tell you about your weaknesses or negative habits complete the first two steps on your behalf. They tell you that a particular habit is a negative habit and they also tell you that you have it. If you’re a truly positive person, you should thank these people as they’ve made your job easier. After this, you only need to engage in the effort required to get rid of such weakness or negative habit. However, throughout this process, you have to consciously be aware that you have this habit and if anyone tells you that you have it, you should acknowledge that he’s telling the truth.
Doing so helps you stay aware about this habit and that further helps you engage in more and more effort to get rid of it. If you’re a truly positive person, you’ll follow this procedure as this is the correct procedure if you want to overcome your negative habits. Since this process is in tune with universal will, which means you don’t become jealous of anyone or you don’t think ill about anyone during this process, you’re essentially doing a good thing. Removing each one of your weaknesses in this way, you take one more step towards your higher spiritual growth or evolution of your personality.
However, if you’re not an overall positive person, this is the way you may follow. If you’re not an overall positive person, the chances are high that you have well developed ego as it is primarily your ego which tries to make you a negative person. As a general rule, the bigger is the size of your ego, the more negative you may become.
Since you’re a negative person and your ego controls most things you do, this is what may happen to you. The first thing you need to accept is that you have a weakness or a bad habit and this is where majority of negative people fail. The ego simply refuses to accept this fact and it may do this job in two ways. In the first option, your ego may tell you that though a particular habit is surely negative, you don’t have it and the people who think you have it are mistaken.
In the second case, you challenge the very fact that the habit in question is a bad habit to start with and the people who call it a negative habit are mistaken. Though both these approaches look different, they lead you to the same result which is to deny the fact that you have a particular negative habit. Since you have to realize that you have a negative habit in order to develop dislike for it and in order to develop a desire to get rid of it, failing at this step will restrict you from moving to the next step.
It means when you think you don’t have a particular negative habit to start with, you don’t feel the need to develop a desire to get rid of it and hence the process stops here. In the second case, you think that this habit is not negative at all and hence you may once again not develop a desire to get rid of it. It should be noted that you can only get rid of the things that you have and you can’t get rid of the things that you don’t have. Can you imagine a bagger getting rid of billions of Rupees? It is out of question and only a billionaire can do so.
Hence you have to have something in order to get rid of it. At the same time, you have to be aware that you have such thing in question. Now imagine a person whose grandfather left billions of Rupees for him and he doesn’t know this fact. This person can once again not get rid of these billions as he doesn’t know he has them to start with, though he certainly has them. Hence you have to have a negative habit and you have to be aware about it, in order to initiate the process of getting rid of it.
Though both these ways lead you to stay away from getting rid of your negative habit, their impacts may be different in quantum. If you’re the first type of negative person who thinks a particular habit is certainly negative but you don’t have it, your problems is relatively smaller and the chances of recovery are better. On the other hand, if you’re the second type of negative person who thinks that a particular negative habit is not negative and on the contrary, it is a positive habit, your problem is the biggest type of problem and recovery may become very difficult in this case.
This is because if you’re the first type of person, you still manage to complete the first step of getting rid of a negative habit. The first step is to learn that a particular habit is negative. Since you agree that a habit in question is certainly negative, the first step is finished. In this case, you’re stuck on the second step which says you have to realize that you also have this negative habit. The chances are there that over a period of time, you may be able to realize that you do have this habit. When that happens, you may wish to get rid of it and hence the process of effort may start.
This way, you may take more time in order to get rid of this negative habit compared to the time taken by a positive person for the same job, but you may still be able to do this job. If you’re a negative person of this type, it is also an indicator of the fact that though you certainly have a developed ego which fools you and tells you that you don’t have this negative habit, the size of your ego is not very big. This is because when the size of your ego crosses a point, you become the second type of negative person.
It means instead of thinking that you don’t have a particular negative habit, you start thinking that the habit in question is not negative at all. In fact, you may consider it as a positive habit. As you like this habit; the question to get rid of it doesn’t rise to start with. Hence you may not wish to get rid of it until you realize it is a negative habit.
When you have a relatively small ego, you tend to use your conscience also at times. It should be noted that conscience and ego are sworn enemies of each other as the former tells you to do the right thing whereas the latter tells you that whatever you do is right even if it is the worst thing to do.
As your conscience grows, your ego starts reducing and hence you start becoming more and more positive. On the other hand, as your ego grows, your conscience starts reducing and hence you become more and more negative. If you’re a negative person of the first type, you are a likely to be a mixture of conscience and ego where you may have a developed ego but it may not be big enough to kill your conscience. Hence they both affect you in their own ways.
The job of your conscience is to separate right from wrong and hence it tells you that a particular habit in question is certainly a negative habit and so you admit it. However, when it comes to admit that you also have this habit, your ego comes to play and a clash happens between your conscience and ego. Since your ego finds it very hard to accept that you have any negative habits at all, it strongly votes against the suggestion that you have this negative habit. Hence you end up deciding that this habit is negative but you don’t have it.
If the size of your ego is even smaller, you may even accept that you have it but you may convince yourself that you have just a little of it. This means if your conscience is stronger than your ego but your ego is also significantly strong, your conscience may convince you that a habit is negative and you have it. However, your ego may also want to get something to satisfy itself and hence it may convince you that though you have this negative habit, it is not very intense in your case and it is mild.
For example, your conscience may convince you that arrogance is bad and you’re arrogant but your ego may convince you that you’re just a little arrogant. You see, there’s a constant conflict between your conscience and your ego where the former is supported by the positive energies and the latter is supported by the negative energies in your aura. Hence the more positive is your aura, more developed is likely to be your conscience whereas the more negative is your aura, the more developed is likely to be your ego.
Your conscience and ego engage in such conflicts for almost each and every decision you make and for each and every situation you face. Even if you have a mixture of 90% conscience and 10% ego, the latter won’t hesitate from misleading you as much as it can. It means that in this case, though your conscience is likely to win most of the arguments, your ego may still reduce the degree of correctness of certain facts related to you, in order to feel satisfied.
For example, if on a scale of 100, your arrogance now ranks at 20 and your conscience tries to convince you about this remaining amount of arrogance, your ego may still play a trick. It may convince you that your arrogance is only about 10 on this scale and hence you don’t need to worry as much as if it was 20. If you’re a person with arrogance score less than 10, your ego may try its best to convince you that now you don’t have any arrogance at all.
It happens in case of all other habits and situations and this is why there is a constant need to be aware as nothing less than that may deal with your ego. It is the job of your ego to blur your vision as much as it can and it is the job of your conscience to clear your vision as much as it can. Accordingly, the people with very high egos are almost blind in their vision whereas the people with high conscience seem to possess super vision. Since all this happens on microscopic level inside your subconscious mind, you don’t get even a remote idea about all this.
Coming back to the point, if you’re a negative person of the first type, you may admit that a habit is negative but your ego may convince you that you don’t have it. However, if you’re a negative person of the second type, the problem becomes much bigger as you think it is positive habit instead of being a negative habit and so the question of getting rid of this habit doesn’t rise in the first place. In this case, the size of your ego is very high and hence it may try to control each and everything you do. It is the time to know that your intellect can be used as a tool by your ego in most cases though it may offer its services to your conscience also.
Many of you may think that intellect is the best thing when it comes to tell right from wrong or when it comes to make decisions, it is not true. Your conscience is far more superior to your intellect and it can accomplish tasks which can’t be accomplished by your intellect. Another surprise is that your conscience doesn’t believe in doing so many calculations as your intellect does and instead, your conscience can reach a better decision with minimum number of calculations.
The reason your conscience is superior to your intellect is that your conscience lies at a level which is higher than the level at which your intellect lies. Your physical body lies at the fist level, your intellect as well as your emotions lies at the second level and your conscience lies at the third level. Your ego also lies at the second level and hence the second level becomes the most important level as a number of important entities are playing at this level.
Physical level is given to all species whereas the entities in the upper levels need effort to grow. Hence you need effort to grow your intellect, your emotional strength and even some effort in order to grow your ego. It is through the journey of a number of lives that you’re able to grow these entities in a gradual way. Since your conscience lies at an even higher level, it is even more difficult to grow and hence you may need even more time and effort to grow it.
Another problem on the way is that the entities lying on each level try to bind you to them, thereby making it difficult for you to leave them and pay more attention to the entities on the next level. It means your body makes it difficult for you to grow intellect, emotions or even ego at times; and all these make it difficult for you to grow conscience.
Hence all the people who spend most of their time for physical pleasures may have been tightly gripped by the entity on the first level and so they waste their chances of growing the entities on the second as well as on the third level. A significant number of people belong to this category and that is why you may witness many people living, primarily in order to fulfill their physical desires which may be of many types.
Then are the people in the second category. These are the people who are able to rise above the first level and hence they are able to develop entities lying on the second level. Some of them grow more intellect compared to emotions and hence they may use their intellect to achieve things which may be more significant and valuable than the things targeted by the people dealing on the first level.
It means some of these people may become officers in governments, some of them may become politicians, some of them may become scientists and some others may achieve success through other fields which require the application of intellect in order to give results. Since these people have become able to rise above the first level which is the level of physical body, they may now be able to practice control over this level, which means they may be able to control their physical urges.
This is because intellect is an entity higher than the physical form and if it grows beyond a point, it starts controlling your body as well as its physical needs. Hence it can control you in way that you may choose not to consume alcohol or drugs though your body or heart may lure you into them. However, your intellect warns you against these habits and as you value your intellect, you listen to it and you stay away from such things or you keep them under control in a way that they don’t do damage to you.
Then there are people who rise to the second level and who develop more emotions than intellect. These are the people who use their emotional strength to achieve bigger things in life and these people are also able to control their physical urges. Taking a look at some examples, the poets, the singers, the actors, the painters and all other such creative people primarily belong to this category, though some of them may grow some intellect also. It should be noted that it may be relatively difficult for this type of people to control their physical urges as their emotions may get attached to some of those urges at times and hence they may not be able to get rid of them.
Talking about the third entity existing on the second level, as any one of the first two entities grows, the third one called ego essentially grows in most cases and this is where the problems starts. It should be noted that as your intellect grows, so may your ego and as your emotional strength grows, so may your ego. Another interesting fact is that your ego can use both your intellect as well as your emotions in order to get what it wants. We’ll discuss the exact working of ego, later on.
Some people may think that emotionally dominant people are not egoistic or they have far less grown egos than the intellectual types. However, it may not be true in many cases and both your heart and intellect can give rise to ego as well as to the problems generated by that ego. We’ll discuss this aspect in details, later on.
Moving on, as your intellect or emotions grow or so to say as your mental or emotional plane grows, so does your ego and this is where the problems starts. It is the time to understand that this entity called ego can give you surprisingly good material results as the attachment of ego to your material goals can speed up your chances of achieving success, many times. It is your ego which focuses on the targets and which motivates you to achieve them so that it may feel satisfied and it may grow even more. It is your ego which may tell you to stay away from alcohol and other such vices as they may weaken you and hence you may not achieve the goals set by it.
Himanshu Shangari