i Trouble

 I am ego- I am a phantom, a ghost, a figment of your imagination. I am not your soul and not your self.   I am what you think others want to see. I am paranoid.   I want to impress, or repress, or hold on, or hold up a façade before the world.  I am easily offended, and easily hurt.  I brood and am easily wounded.  I am self-absorbed and like a parasite that feeds on the host of pride and the applause of others.  I am ego.  I dress to play a part.  I am a master on the stage of hypocrisy. I am at my best when I pretend to have your best interest at heart when, in fact, I am your worst enemy.  I am the self-consciousness that believes we are the center of the universe.  I refuse to let you be self-less and because I am heavy, I am like an anvil that not only holds you down, refusing to let you fly, I am the block of steel upon which the world will hammer you into something you were never meant to be. I am a false self that would hide your spirit in a dungeon of man-made dogma and fool you into putting your faith in the heresy of what others think of you.   If you were wise you would turn your back on me and become as a little child, innocent and unconscious of self, you would run barefoot in the grass, just because it feels so good and makes you feel alive.    

 Ego is an illusion and a liar.  It is an image of our imaginary self we wish to project to others.  Ego is our falsest friend, in fact our greatest enemy.  Ego keeps us down and holds us back.  Ego throws reproaches on our unguarded moments of joy and jubilation as Michal mocked David when he danced.  Ego will scold us, mock us, stumble us, and inhibit us.  Children are not big enough for egos.  The littlest among us know nothing of pretension even though they enjoy pretend.  They live in the moment and all they know is now.  They carry no baggage of regret, nor try to hide a weakness or deformity.  They care more to pluck the petals off a daisy or to blow the hoary heads of daffodils than worry about who might be watching them work.  They need no cosmetics and care not for blemishes.   Their cheek knows no rouge, and their eye sparkles with starbursts as they peer out on life. 

 Ego is obsessed with what others think and is all about appearance.  Ego is a nemesis to the soul.  While ego is in charge of public relations, the soul only wants reality.  This is why God hates hypocrisy.  Ego makes us read all the press and either puffs us up until God Himself resists us, or beats us down until we forget we are God's children and are fearfully and wonderfully made.

 Science is now unrolling the scroll of DNA, reading the human genome and discovering that we are a string of proteins.  Even when science lays life out on the table and combs the genetic kinks out of our biological hair, and corrects all the errant letters in our alphabetic soup of amino acids, it will not come close to discovering what we are.  We are a field plowed for an eternal harvest. We are on the brink of an eternal brilliance, and yet we are often duller than dirt.   The body is an energy field.  Somehow, somewhere back in the beginnings we were knocked off our spiritual axis.  Our magnetic north is not our true north and we have lost our way.  Some have long been suspicious of this and speak of bad “vibes,” or of “negative energy, ” and even of bad karma.  While I don’t believe in karma, I do believe in a higher power and calling.  I do believe in spirit and it is the spirit that God seeks most of all, along with truth.  David was not true to himself, to others, or to his God.  His penitential prayer is the plea of a broken heart and for God to “renew a right spirit” within him. 

 Ego thinks it is the great "i" am.  It is no more the rightful king of our life, than Herod was the rightful ruler in the days of the wise men, 'though he had the throne.  The first person “I” in Greek is spelled “ego.”  Of all the letters in our alphabet only it can stand alone.  As if afraid to be missed, overlooked, or lost in the crowd, it capitalizes itself as ego always will.  The only cure for ego, the only way to put an “i” in its place is for it to discover the reality of the unspeakable and great “I Am.” Ego must go, it must move aside and make way for the Alpha and Omega.   Then, and only then, will the magnetic power of God’s eternal majesty show us what we are made of and what (by His grace) He can do with a single vowel.

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