EGO = Edging God Out

Whatever problems confront me, large or small, they can be solved wisely.

Or they can be solved my way.  The choice is mine.

If I want to know God's will, I must pause and ask: "What would God have me do?"

Why, then, is it so difficult for me just to pause, to meditate, and to allow God to guide me?

The reason is my ego.

I know -- though sometimes I forget -- that by myself my capabilities are nil.

Came To Believe . . ., pp. 60-61

 

I asked from the heart, and I received.

 

 

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Self-Justifying Historian

The ego is a self-justifying historian,
which seeks only that information that agrees with it,
rewrites history when it needs to, and
does not even see the evidence that threatens it

Anthony G. Greenwald

शिप्व्रेच्केद इन साउथ कैरोलाइना

Guilt

Guilt is really the reverse side of the coin of pride.

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Guilt is in the past;

worry is the future.
Both are manifestations of ego.

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Ego

Someone once defined the ego as "the sum total of false ideas about myself."
Persistent reworking of the Twelve Steps enables me to gradually strip away my false ideas about myself.
This permits nearly imperceptible but steady growth in my understanding of the truth about myself.
And this, in turn, leads to a growing understanding of God and other human beings.
Do I strive for self-honesty, promptly admitting when I'm wrong?

Moving Through Darkness

In life, most of us want things to go to the places we have envisioned ourselves going.
We have plans and visions, some of them divinely inspired, that we want to see through to completion.
We want to be happy, successful, and healthy, all of which are perfectly natural and perfectly human.
So when life takes us to places we didn’t consciously want to go, we often feel as if something has gone wrong, or we must have made a mistake somewhere along the line, or any number of other disheartening possibilities.
This is just life’s way of taking us to a place we need to go for reasons that go deeper than our own ability to reason.
These hard knocks and trials are designed to shed light on our unconscious workings and deepen our experience of reality.

Often it takes something major to wake us up, to shake us loose from our ego’s grip as it struggles to maintain an illusion of control.
It is loss of control more than anything else that humbles us and enables us to see the big picture.
It reminds us that the key to the universe lies in what we do not know, and what we do know is a small fraction of the great mystery in which we live.
This awareness softens and lightens us, as we release our resistance to what is.
Another gift gleaned from going to these seemingly undesirable places is that, in our response to difficulty, we can see all the patterns and unresolved emotional baggage that stand in the way of our unconditional joyfulness.
Joy exists within us independently of whether things go our way or not.
And when we don’t feel it, we can trust that we will find it if we are willing to surrender to the situation, moving through it as we move through our difficult feelings.

We can take our inspiration from any fairy tale that finds its central character lost in a dark wood, frightened and alone.
We know that the journey through the wood provides its own kind of beauty and richness.
On the other side, we will emerge transformed, lighter and brighter, braver and more confident for having moved through that darkness.

DailyOM

Elder's Meditation -- Our Secrets

We are as sick as our secrets.
Our ego takes over control of our lives and when that happens our minds get very sick.
Then we hurt people and our minds will always justify our actions.
Our minds will give us rationalization and excuses that we are justified in doing what we are doing.

My Creator, Let me live today with an open heart.

Let me realize to be vulnerable

is a strength, not a weakness.

Let me realize the power of an open heart.

Let me be available to truth.

If I get into trouble,

let me hear the whisper of your guidance.

Let me make heart decisions and

let my head catch up to that decision.

Ego

The ego seeks the destination;

the soul seeks the journey.