Richard Rohr Quotes About Ego
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We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.
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The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both.
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The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.
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God, give me a good humiliation every day. It's good for the soul and it's good for the ego.
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The ego hates losing – even to God.
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Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.
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Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.
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In terms of the ego, most religions teach in some way that all of us must die before we die, and then we will not be afraid of dying. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.
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Everything has to be understood in opposition to something else. For some dang reason, the ego prefers to make one side better than the other, so we choose. And we decide males are better than females, America is better than Canada, Democrats are better than Republicans. And for most people, once this decision is made, it is amazing the amount of blindness they become capable of. They really don't see what's right in front of them. Once you see this, it's an amazing breakthrough, and that is the starting place for moving away from dualistic thinking.
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You do need some successes as a young person. They don't inflate the ego necessarily, they just give you identity and ego structure. But, don't construct your life around creating those. Or you will become narcissistic and ego-centric. That won't get you anywhere.
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Modern culture is in so much trouble, where people don't have a deep inner life, or any deep experience of their true self in God, who they were before anyone said anything about them, before they received their first medal or ego identification. That`s why suffering is so important, because suffering is when those little rewards are taken away from you.
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There are three things we have to let go of. The first is the compulsion to be successful. Second, is the compulsion to be right-especially theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this "need" churches split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally, there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control.
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I think most human beings are dualistic thinkers. It gets them through the day. It gives them a sense of superiority and security - that's what the ego wants.
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The ego knows itself by comparison.
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