I And The Ego Are One

By Rev. Brian Kirsch

“I and the Father are one.”

 ~Jesus Christ in John 10:30 King James Bible

I hear so many “spiritual” folks wanting to silence their egos. What’s up with that?

Let’s take a gander at the definition of ego:

Noun a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
"a boost to my ego"

• PSYCHOANALYSIS
  the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.
  
• PHILOSOPHY
  (in metaphysics) a conscious thinking subject.

We will take this article’s sojourn with the concept relating to the metaphysical/philosophical meaning. When we meditate, we are open to all the information and experiences that the universe has to offer. If we are to take action on the physical plane of existence, wouldn’t you agree we need to focus on one path? Kinda like having no other gods before me…pick one god at a time.

So we enter the subconscious or subjective mind. A practical way to achieve this would be to look at a brainstorming session…a Sufi’s way to meditate is throwing one’s self into life, much the way the swirling dervishes are performed. In brainstorming, we let go of any judgement and let ideas flow. Now that many ideas have presented themselves during our western style swirling dervishes, it’s time to breakdown the ideas to see which ones have any promise to move from the subjective mind to the objective mind. Enter the EGO!

To create, we bring ideas from the subjective mind to the objective mind. In other words, people (including ourselves) need to buy into our subjective idea. The ego is there to present us our flaws to the ideas. Our ideas and beliefs may be great but if our ego can knock it off balance, then we see our ideas and beliefs need improvement. It’s not a bad ego trying to stop us. It’s our omnipotent God-self bringing awareness to possible ways we can be thrown off track. Our ego is our protector. Ego supports and prepares our subjective presentation so that as it goes out to the objective world, we are able to stand firm in our path.

As a closing thought, if someone is saying to let go of our ego, let’s respond with the paraphrase of the commercial we’ve grown to know and love…”Let go of my ego” (as it pops up from the toaster). Egos aren’t just for breakfast anymore. Be friends with ego and ego will know that we are friends!