The Ego and the I
The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the story of every man, for there lives within each one of us two selves—the ego and I : the self one seems , and the self he is ; a man other meet , and a man unknown to her men. The ego is what we think we are; the I is what, in fact , we are. The ego is the spoiled child in us—selfish, petulant—the creation of our mistakes in living. The I is our personality made to the image and likeness of God!
If true freedom is to be found within ourselves, the ego must yield to the birth of our true personality. Like a plaster cast, the false ego has to be cut away, pulled off, and this is a process that involves detachment, pain and some indignity.(3)
The ego is made to the image and likeness of the spirit of the world in which it lives, as the I is made to the image and likeness of the eternal God.(7)
The ego must decrease; the I must increase. But the I cannot increase without communion with other personalities, which involves the love of neighbor.(10)
Our happiness varies according to the center about which our lives revolve. The choice of the center rests within us: we must be satellites serving some center. Every person gives away his freedom. Some give it to the public opinion, some become the slaves of their own passions, but some give their freedom away to God. Only in the last sort of surrender does one become truly free(11).
The Egotist-An Escapist:
An escapist is one who calls religion “escapism” so as to avoid that amendment of life which religion requires.(13)
The worst thing in the world is not sin; it is the denial of sin by a false conscience—for that attitude makes forgiveness impossible. The unforgivable sin is the denial of sin.(19).
A person can deny sin, but he never escapes the effects of sin. A person can deny the law of gravitation, but if he throws himself off the Empire State Building in defiance of the law…(21). This conscience need not wait until the moment of God’s judgment to awake. It can rouse itself now…can start worrying and begin living.(26)
What makes us afraid of God? If He is Love, should we not embrace Him? Spiritual goodness can be feared because it will demand a painful uprooting of what is evil. Evil can get so deeply into a person that he revolts against the very thought of its removal from him by the perfect Goodness(28)
The way to change one’s idea of God is to change his behavior….Goodness is not to be feared, because Goodness is perfect Love. The sinner has nothing but the chains of self-love that chafe and torture him.(37)
Life is difficult for most of us because we have not read God’s meaning, written in his Universe. He gives us the power to have, and He promises us happiness through the right use of creatures. He intends that each thing may be used as a sacrament, a channel, a stepping stone to Him.
How God Breaks Into the Ego:
There are two breaches in our walls: two cracks in our armor: two hidden entrances to the soul through which God can enter. The first of these trapdoors in the soul is the love of goodness. Every quest of pleasure, every love of a friend, every approval of a godchild, every comparison of good and better, implies some Goodness beyond all these good things. To say that we want good things but not Goodness, which is Godness, is like saying that WE LOVE THE SUNBEAMS BUT WE HATE THE SUN, OR WE LIKE THE MOONLIGHT BUT DESPISE THE MOON. Even when the will is perverse---even then there are some few good and commendable acts that contradict one’s general attitude. These isolated acts of virtue are like a clean handle on a dirty bucket; with them, God can lift a soul to His Peace.(65)
The second trap door by which God enters a soul in flight from Him is by its ennui, its boredom, its loneliness, its despair. A lack in us points to the existence of something capable of filling it.(66)
When we do good, God begins to work in us as a Gift; when we are bored and dissatisfied, He begins to work in us as a longing.
There is not a single soul at which God has not knocked thousands of times. His knock may not be recognized because we have so little familiarity with Him; we recognize externally only the knock of those we know. But the sun is always illuming, so God is always acting on the soul. His knock may come as fear, frustration, emptiness, anxiety, despair…His summons may come in satiety after sin, in discontent with life, in disappointment etc.
Every misfortune and setback in life is a hint from Him that the contentment is not found along the way the egoist has chosen….The great tragedy of life is not what the soul suffers, but how close it can come to happiness without finding it…Many people nowadays want God , but on their terms, not on His.(70
Knowledge of the I:
Self-knowledge makes us face the fact that some of our attitudes and habits are evil and must therefore be abandoned….When we begin to use Christ as our measuring stick, we begin, for the first time, to see our lives as the inadequate things they are.(76)
The Crucifixion was the inevitable consequence of the Sermon on the Mount. He who preaches purity of heart to a sensuous generation, and meekness to an age of power, will not be tolerated.
The seven capital sins are the seven pallbearers of the soul( Pride, Avarice, Envy, Lust, Anger,Gluttony, Sloth)….We cannot all be giants. To accept both our talents and our lack of talents as God’s will is true humility. …Observing our neighbor’s faults raises our ego; we depress the ego and face our own predominant fault, the neighbor who before seemed hateful takes on a new loveableness. By losing our own pride and vanity , we gain a world of friends.(95)
The Emergence of Character:
Because the development of character requires constant vigilance, our occasional failures must not be mistaken for the desertion of God. Two attitudes are possible in sin: we can fall down, and get up; or we can fall down and stay there.
Our failures can be used as a prayer that God be most attentive to us, because of our greater weaknesses. Sometimes, in the case of a continued weakness, it is well to count not only the falls but to count also the number of times a temptation to do wrong was overcome.
Most important of the rules for attacking evil in ourselves is to avoid direct in favor of indirect assault. Evil is not driven out—it is crowded out. … The joys of the spirit also crowd out the pleasures of the flesh; we must have happiness, but the man who has found it on the high road of the spirit will no longer need to pursue it on the low road of carnality.
There is today far too much discussion, analysis, and probing of evil, infidelity, sex….But the Church, in her understanding, demands that the details of our sins be excluded even from confession.(132)….In dealing with others, we should look for what is best, in order that, as we show mercy to others, god may show the grace of His mercy to us.
The only way of keeping evil out is to let God in. Character building does not consist in the elimination of vice, but in the cultivation of virtue; not in the casting out of sin, but in the deepening of love.
Man’s Capacity for Self-Transcendence:
Never before was there so much education, and never before so little arrival at the truth. The twentieth century is the century of the greatest attempt at universal education in the history of the world—and yet it is the century of the most terrible conflagrations, wars and revolutions in history. We have stuffed our children’s minds with facts, and neglected to teach them how to live….Ethical systems alone cannot save the world, because they are effective only in a religious environment.(171)
Prayer and Meditation:
Hyperactivity and love of noise and chatter characterize our age, as a compensation for modern man’s profound distrust of himself.
To have any effectiveness, a prayer for help must express an honest desire to be changed, and the desire must be without reservation or conditions on our part….God does not always give us what we want, but He always gives us what we need.
In meditation we do not think about the world or ourselves, but about God…Meditation allows one to suspend the conscious fight against external diversions by an internal realization of the presence of God. It shuts the world to let in the spirit. Meditation is not a petition, but rather a surrender, a plea to God that He use us. Meditation enables us to hold the mirror up to our souls to perceive the fatal disease of self-love…
Sanctifying the Moment:
We are to leave the past to Divine Mercy and to trust the future, whatever its trials, to His loving Providence.
Yet it is in doing perfectly the little chores He gives that saints find holiness. To accept the crosses of our state of life because they come from an all-loving God is to have taken the most important step in the reformation of the world, namely the reformation of the self. Sanctity can be built out of patient endurance of the incessant grumbling of a spouse—the boss’s habit of smoking a pipe at the office—the failure to find a husband or a wife—the unexpected illness—the inability to get rich(213)
It is not hard to put up with others’ foibles when one realizes how much God has to put up with from us.(213)
Every commonplace event now becomes a mystery because it is the bearer of the Divine Will. Nothing is insignificant or dull—everything can be sanctified, just as goats and sheep, fish and wheat…were given dignity as parables of the kingdom of God. Even the bitterest of life’s punishments are known to be joys in the making…Each trial is an occasion for faith and an opportunity for virtue.(217)
Motive is what makes the saint: sanctification does not depend on our geography, nor on our work or circumstances. Some people imagine that if they were in another place, or married to a different spouse, or had a different job…they could do God’s work much better. The truth is that it makes no difference where they are; it all depends on whether what they are doing is God’s will and done for love of Him. We can take whatever He gives us, and we can make the supernatural best of it. The typist at the desk working on routine letters, the street cleaner with his broom… .The doctor bending over a patient…the teacher drilling her pupils, the mother dressing the children—every such task, every such duty, can be ennobled and spiritualized if it is in done in God’s name.
Beyond the merely human:
A Christian is one who, believing that Christ is the Son of God, has that Christ-life in his soul.
Faith is like a microscope, in that it enables us to perceive a deeper meaning in truths that we already know; it gives a new dimension of depth to our natural knowledge. Knowledge without faith is made up of bits of information; faith, like a magnet, marshals them in order….The world is now seen from the Divine point of view, and through Christ-mind….Marriage is no longer seen as a temporary union of two sexes, but as a mystical symbol of the union of Christ in the church…Death is not viewed as a mere biological phenomenon, but as the moment of judgment when we must render to God an account of our stewardship.(225)
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