The ego and the spiritual life

In recent posts I've explored the role of the ego in your spiritual life generally, and prayer particularly. Rob added an important comment/correction that I think will help you: "I wanted to say that I think the ego is getting a bit of a bad press here," he comments. "My understanding is that the ego, in its Freudian sense, is that part of us which tries to mediate the demands of the id (unbridled instinct) and the superego (constricting legalism), as well as the pressures of the real world, to attempt to attain and sustain the health of the whole being." Rob, you're exactly right in your analysis, and in your warning and plea.

The ego is not bad (I do think I’ve said this). It must not be eradicated. Rather, it’s to be healed, restored, returned to its proper function. The ego, as I understand it, is a God-given faculty within us . . . part of the image of God. But because of the Fall (whatever that is), it’s not healthy. It does not properly mediate between the Id and Superego, but too often is nearly completely identified with them.

This is central to our problem as human beings, to our spiritual practice, to the union with God that is the mystery we are all intended to experience. I think sin is to a large extent this deep and “original” (that is, at the core of our being) misidentification of ourselves with our unhealthy egos. I’ve a hunch St. Paul might identify this wounded, broken ego with the “flesh” in his writings—”flesh” that is not to be discarded or abused or despised, but healed by it’s gathering into Jesus Christ. The Incarnation informs us here too.

Facing the ego and healing it

I'm writing a lot about the role of the ego as you move nearer to God.  Unseating the false self is no easy task.  For help along the way, here's a top-notch resource from two veteran guides to the Christian inner journey toward the fulness of God in Christ.

James Finley PhD has wrote Merton's Palace of Nowhere decades ago.  It's even more meaningful today then when he first wrote it.

"Spiritual identity is the quest to know who we are, to find meaning, to overcome that sense of 'Is this all there is?' At the heart of this quest are found Thomas Merton's illuminating insights leading from an awareness of the false and illusory self to a realization of the true self in Christ.

"Bask in the Stillness"---Psalm 4

Here's a summons into the Beauty within you. It comes from Psalm 4---Nan Merrill's translation of the Psalms called, Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness. Cynthia Bourgeault PhD has called Merrill "the Rumi of the Christian faith."

If you seek a biblical collection of prayers to sustain you on your inner journey, her Psalms is a faithful partner.

"You know that the Beloved dwells with all who are filled with love; Love hears when our hearts cry out. Though you may feel angry, do not give in to fear; Commune with the Heart of your heart as you rest; be in silence. Bask in the stillness. Face your fears with forgiveness, and trust in Love."

A dumb prayer that heals the deepest part of you

When you pray, check your ego.  A product of Enlightenment rationalism and individualism, it's got a hankering for the novel, unique, and so-called “authentic."  It wearies easily of praying the same thing because, frankly, it's not much interested in obedience to anything besides itself.

The ego wants to be your god, but it doesn't want you to know that.  In fact, it likes that you're trying to be spiritual, to seek God, to practice the life of prayer.  So long as you're trying, it can still boss you around.  It can swell with pride when you're good, and knock you around when you're bad.  All this only feeds the ego.

The perennial wisdom tradition in all spiritual traditions knows that humble, dogged obedience in the same direction bears the fruit of a holy life.

Modernity is quite ignorant of all that, and my ego, at least, is pretty well infected with its disease.

That's why I pray the Jesus Prayer over and over again.  It's a dumb prayer.  It's aim is to silence my ego who can't stand its simplicity or my dogged obedience to drawing my mind down into my heart.  When my ego is brought into submission to my heart, the Center, it stands dumb before Christ.

I still can't figure out why it resists its healing.

The authenticity that matters

I continue in this conversation about the use of repetitive prayers.  When Jesus commended the particular prayer known as the Lord's Prayer, did he mean for us to repeat the words as they are or to use them as a guide for our own improvising? Modern, Western culture prizes a heightened individualism—or I should say, an untethered individualism.  We who've drunk deep of its intoxicating brew will need to turn more toward the tradition rather than away from it.  Praying with firm connections to our spiritual heritage doesn’t mean a mere rote and empty repetition of prayers like the Lord's Prayer.  Rather it means, as in jazz, that we learn our scales so well that we can then improvise properly and freely when given a chord chart or lead sheet.

The Lord's Prayer (like the Jesus Prayer) is a lead sheet, as are the Psalms. From a prayer like this we can playfully  and confidently improvise.

Too many of us modern people want to improvise in prayer like jazz musician, Miles Davis, plays the horn but without the long, hard apprenticeship in the tradition.  That would be as silly as a teenager picking up a horn, stepping onto the stage and thinking she can imitate Miles Davis.

The saints and mystics would all tell us that there is power in the words, as-they-are (like scales to Miles Davis, they are non-negotiable).  So take up the words of the Lord's Prayer or Jesus Prayer.  Pray them over and over until they play in the heart, until the heart is alive with them, beating out the rhythm of the words, and the mind is no longer thinking them.   Only then will you approach the only kind authenticity that matters.

Continued next post...