About the ego. You are spot on, exactly right in your analysis and in your warning (plea).

The ego is not bad (I do think I’ve said this). It must not be eradicated. Rather, it’s to be healed, restored, returned to its proper function. The ego, as I understand it, is a God-given faculty within us…part of the image of God. But because of the Fall (whatever that is), it’s not healthy. It does not properly mediate between the Id and Superego, but too often is nearly completely identified with them.

This is central to our problem as human beings, to our spiritual practice, to the union with God that is the mystery we are all intended to experience. I think sin is largely this deep and “original” (that is, at the core of our being) misidentification of ourselves with our unhealthy egos. I’ve a hunch St. Paul might identify this wounded, broken ego with the “flesh” in his writings—”flesh” that is not to be discarded or abused or despised, but healed by it’s gathering into Jesus Christ. The Incarnation informs us here too.

Perhaps I sound a bit hard on the precious little one within us. I suppose that’s because I find we’re so ignorant of its tyranny.

We’ve all been around families whose little children are unruly, unmanageable, and frankly, rude, because they’ve not learned as you’ve said so well, to submit “to that which it understands to be for the good of the whole being.” Little children need to be loved and welcomed with space to grow, but they if they are never disciplined they become unhealthy. So too with the ego.

So, I probably exaggerate a bit much, but all with the purpose of bringing the ego back into its place—like a two year old who’s learning she’s loved but is not the center of the universe. Salvation is about this wholeness. And people whose inner lives are reordered, redeemed by Christ within become agents of healing in a world tyrannized by the mass insanity of egos run amok.

A writer you might find to be a good companion: James Finley. He’s a Christian, psychotherapist, and once a novice under the guidance of Thomas Merton. His little book, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, is a masterful exploration of just what we’re talking about here.

Peace to you, John.

However since I am studying counselling, I wanted to say that I think the ego is getting a bit of a bad press here. My understanding is that the ego, in its Freudian sense, is that part of us which tries to mediate the demands of the id (unbridled instinct) and the superego (constricting legalism), as well as the pressures of the real world, to attempt to attain and sustain the health of the whole being. It is pragmatic and amoral, but absolutely essential to any kind of psychological, and therefore spiritual health. A healthy ego can make its own decisions and can doubtless seek to become your god, but a spirtuality without a healthy ego is subject to too many of the appalling distortions of spiritual life that we see under the name Christian. So let’s not knock the ego too much. It will never be spiritual in its own right, but I think is capable of submitting to that which it understands to be for the good of the whole being.

I could well be completely wrong in the way I am conceiving this. But since most of my settled ideas have been turned upside down in the past year, I’m trying to re-conceive my faith in a new landscape, and trying out new ideas in the process. So thanks for this blog! – it is great to connect here from time to time and to be challenged with these disciplines. I need to hear these things.