:Porous Egos

Make your ego porous.

                     Rainer Maria Rilke

 

The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do

                     Warsan Shire

 

The ego stands firmly between the seeker and the light that hidden within

                     Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Prayer of the Heart  p. 18

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the word “ego”

as far as I know

does not appear in the Bible

 

it’s a word we use a lot

in a lot of ways

 

I am not sure we even know what it is

Freud may have gotten all of this started with his

Id, ego, and superego

 

The Id being the wild child of the soul

The superego being the soul’s moral (proper) self,

And the ego being that part of the self that mediates between those two

And keeps us protected and safe

 

Helping us satisfy our urges, but helping us do so in a way that is

“socially acceptable”

 

Go ego!

 

But most of us see ego a different way

For most of us the ego is our “self” asserting itself

 

It is us being self focused

Protective

It is that part of our selves that is “all about me”

 

For many of us the ego is who we think we are.

It’s our false identity, that faux front we have developed to hide ourselves from the world, which we have created to impress the world

 

It is our body image, education, theological knowledge, clothes, friends, social status, job, successes and accomplishments.

 

This aspect of ourselves, whatever we call it

is not so cool

 

our “inner control freak” has its uses (as Freud pointed out)

 

but it can also be a problem

 

it can make us self focused

protective

and closed

 

it can stand between us and the energy of God within

it can block us from the influence and guidance that come from

from that part of us where Sacred dwells

 

oddly, with ego, we close ourselves off from others

but we also close ourselves off from our own true self

 

which is why almost every faith system challenges us

to die to this false self, this self we have created

that keeps us from being the self God created us to be

 

that keeps us from being children of God

 

this is hard work, however.

it’s excruciating, to be honest, almost like dying.

 

Paul likens the process to being crucified

 

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

 

In Sufi literature the same wisdom exists

 

“He who loves does not think about his own life; to love truly one must forget about the self…  if your desires do not accord with your spirit, sacrifice them…(Attar – Conference of the Birds)

 

Buddhism as I understand it (not saying I do) holds that personal identity is delusional, that each of us is a self that turns out to not actually exist

and that clinging to or being obsessed with the delusional self

is the major cause of suffering

 

however we think about this

part of who we are that separates us from others

that insists on its own way

that puts itself over others…

 

its danger lies in the way it blocks us from being united with the Sacred

and being united with one another

and even, at a core level, being in touch with our true self

 

which is why Jesus talks us needing to have a new relationship with our self. .” (Luke 9)

 

If anyone would come after me,

that one must deny the self and take up his cross daily and follow me

for whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and

whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

 

The word life is not the word for physical life.

There’s a good Greek word for that: bios, from which we get our word biology.

The Greek word that’s translated “life” is psyche, meaning “self.”

 

what Jesus seems to be saying is that our old way of having an identity,

of gaining a sense of self,

has got to end.

 

In a sense we have to die to it.

Why?

 

So God can give us a whole new identity.

Or perhaps, better, restore our original identity

 

either way

we are called to find a whole new true self

 

a self connected to Sacred energy

a self permeated by love

a self that is porous

so that the light gets in

and the light gets out

 

and we find our selves able

to be more and more a part of a whole

people with others

people for others

 

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Spirit of the Living God, Fall fresh on me

Spirit of the Living God, Fall fresh on me

Melt me mold me

Fill me use me

Spirit of the Living God, Fall fresh on me