That Little Voice in Your Head: The Difference Between Logic, Intuition, Spiritual Guide and Ego

What is that little voice in your head that tells you what to do: logic, intuition, ego or spiritual guidance? There are often situations when we make decisions using either our past experience, reason or heart’s voice.

Generally speaking, all situations should be resolved following a logical path, but life can give us complex situations that cannot always be logically changed. In certain circumstances, your heart has better answers than your mind and sometimes past experiences are great examples and solutions for your current situation.

However, heart and mind are not the only guides throughout our life. Ego and spirituality are two strong “voices” that can be a great help in times of dilemma.

But when you hear that voice in your head, what is the difference between all these guides and how can we know which one is better than the others?

Logic

Let’s think of mind and its logic. Usually, logic tends to guide us using knowledge, statistics, and consequences of past experiences (either ours or others’ experiences).

For example: “If I leave too early, I might wait a bit too long until he/she arrives. I’d better leave later” or “I should not take this syrup. I heard some people suffered from severe side effects”.

Intuition

Opposite to mind, our heart or intuition is driven by emotions. When you have a dilemma and do not know what to choose, your intuition, that little voice in your head, will usually give you a hint on how you will feel after you make a choice.

Imagine that you are invited to two social events. One of them sounds interesting and fun to you, therefore, it makes you feel good thinking about how great you will feel around all those people.

On the other hand, the other event sounds a bit boring to you, it is slightly far from where you live and it does not feel like you would have much fun. This is your intuition or heart guiding you towards places, people or situations that could benefit your emotional wellbeing. The role of that voice in your head is to guide you towards your happiness.

Spiritual guide

But intuition is merely heart’s voice as it is strongly linked to spirituality. It is said that “intuition is God talking to us”. While heart’s voice tries to guide you at any moment of the day, spiritual guidance communicates through intuition when you must make important decisions that could have a profound impact on your life.

For example, you hear a voice in your head telling you “Maybe I should not ask him/her about marriage. I should wait and get to know him/her better“.

So, you feel that doing/saying something might not make you feel comfortable as you are not sure of the outcome (similar to the intuition example), but this time, it’s about an important decision that could affect or benefit your wellbeing for a longer period of time.

Ego

Speaking of intuition’s positive effect on our decisions, there is another side of our personalities that could be considered (in a way) a negative guide: ego.

Ego could be the “dark” part of our heart or mind that “lives” with society’s approval or attention. If our heart/intuition guides us towards a positive self-development, the ego is more driven by superficial aspects of a situation.

As a matter of fact, think about the moment when you bought an outfit just to impress the guests and not because that outfit was making you feel good about yourself. Or think about the moment you wanted to win an argument or a competition just to prove to other people around you that you are skilled and better than your competitor/friend.

This is how the ego can guide our behaviour or choices sometimes, mostly in social situations. The ego influences our reasons and choices by making us think about how we will be perceived by others.

The key is to understand which one of the above guides is stronger when you face a situation. Excluding ego, all the other guides can truly help you.

The dilemma usually appears when all “senses” try to advise and you are confused as you do not know which path is better. However, when all guides have a word to say, you can recognize the best one by its intensity and persistence.

If you have ever made a decision that has positively or negatively influenced a moment in your life, share it with us!

References:

1. Erin Pavlina
2. Huffington Post