My wife Lorna had a hip replacement about four months
ago. Since that time she has been
working diligently to gain/regain the fullest use of her new hip. I have been most impressed with her tenacious
dedication to her rehab routine which until recently required her to do various
exercises three times a day. As she
noted in a recent blog, New
dawn for an old hip https://lmgharris.wordpress.com/,
she mentioned that she had missed only one day doing her exercises. I am truly impressed with her determination
and dedication and I sure I would have difficulty in being so disciplined in
similar circumstances.
One of the reasons—although by no means the only one—why she
has been able to be so disciplined is the consistent progress she experienced
doing the exercises. She noted that she
could see some improvement—however slight—each day. This naturally gave a direct payoff from the
effort she was making and encouragement for her to continue each day. I have often wished that my spiritual life
had this kind of immediate and consistent payoff. I have been attempting to maintain and deepen
my relationship with God for many years through such things as prayer,
meditation, being attentive to my dreams, and journaling. However, in my experience the spiritual life
does not give as direct and immediate payoff or reinforcement for spiritual
practitioners. This is of course my ego-based
expectation. My ego desires the
immediate gratification and assessment that yes, what I am doing is the right
thing and I am getting more and more spiritual and having a closer relationship
with God which can be measurable on its terms.
As I have written, the ego can be considered God’s greatest gift and
God’s greatest challenge for humankind.
The ego wants to be the center of existence and want to run each person’s
life on its basis. It doesn’t like to give
over authority to God and believes it knows best what is right for the
individual for its limited perspective. If
it acknowledges God it will at least initially be a God that is a reflection of
the ego and believes it knows the mind of God which just happens to be the same
as the ego’s view of the world. Therefore, if life doesn’t work out as it
believes it should, it believes that God is not living up to God’s end of the
bargain.
Our spiritual life does not run on our agenda and to our
schedule. We have times in the desert—as
Jesus did before his public ministry began.
There will be dry times when God does not seem to be in our lives—at
least on our terms. We will encounter
the dark nights of the soul. However, it
is our ego speaking when it decides that this means that God has abandoned
us. God does not abandon us even if God
understanding is not our understanding of our journey with God.
The best advice I know in these times is, “Be still and know
that I am God”. Don’t let your ego run
the agenda.
Readers of might enjoy my book
The Ego and The Bible. It is available on Amazon.ca:
It is also available on Amazon.com:
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