Ego and Ligaments

As stated in much of my writing, one of my primary goals in life is letting go of my ego. In Christianity, ego produces individuality that keeps us from God and, in yoga, when ego is disturbed we can’t see through it to the divine in ourselves. Resultingly, ego makes us individuals and takes us away from our godly nature. Sometimes, it’s really easy to see how to release ego. For example, yogic meditations lead directly toward one-pointed focus and zero-pointed focus, the end result of which is releasing ego completely. In essence, Descartes posed the fundamental truth, “I think therefore I am,” and yogic meditation responds with, “I stop thinking completely and still I am,” and adds that the experience of not thinking feels divine. However, when stepping into our daily activities, it’s much more difficult to see how to let go of our ego. Christian philosophy can be helpful but still often unclear. We, as Christians, obviously, give up all individuality as it separates us from God and others, but are there other aspects of ego that we need to also deal with and release? As an example, I love beer, especially craft beer. This doesn’t set me apart as an individual, it’s simply an aspect of my personality. I could abuse this attachment to my own detriment and that of others, but I could also keep control and it may be endearing and tie me together in community. However, this is an aspect of my person so, is it ego? By releasing this attachment, would I be able to draw closer to the divine? All the beer in the world isn’t worth one moment of heaven but God instilled this attachment in me so, should I value and use it or release it completely as part of my ego to be discarded? Recently, I listened to a podcast that seemed very useful so I’d like to share the ideas with you.

In “The Robcast” episode 243, Rob Bell runs with the etymology of the word ligament in a discussion I find very useful to define what I mean by ego that must be released completely. In the yogic tradition, releasing ego allows us to see into the divine at the center of ourselves. In the Christian tradition, it allows us to go beyond ourselves, commune with and love God, and show His light to others. Bell begins by noting that the word ligament comes from the Greek, liga, which means “to hold together,” and so our ligaments hold our bodies together. It follows that “re-lig” then means to reattach things, and it is the basis of the modern word religion. Being the origin of the word “religion,” it follows that religion is belief that helps us reattach to the divine or to ourselves and purpose in life. Of course, what Bell calls “capital R religions” or the modern defined religions, are meant to do this and, when our religion falls short, we either give up the faith or we deconstruct the faith and come to a new understanding. However, Bell goes beyond this to say that every person has many “small R religions” that we follow, and this is where the conversation begins to be interesting. We all have things that we do “religiously.” Maybe one person exercises religiously, which we take to mean they do it with great discipline and consistency. Or maybe a group of people are invited to share a meal that feels, at its end, like a religious experience, by which we mean there was a common, shared experience among the attendees of great emotional and binding virtue. In both meanings of the word, we see that these experiences help hold people together. Either it shows our values in the activities we refuse to miss and so do them religiously, or it shows the great value we have in certain remembered experiences. These “small R religions” help us hold our lives and experiences together as much, and often more strongly, than the “capital R religions.”

These “small R religions” are impossibly difficult to define as they are so numerous and often convey much deeper sentiments than we expect. Using myself as an example, I see myself as a certain type of person. I get up at the first alarm. I exercise six times each week. I read every day. These are important to me as habits build the moments of our lives, but they are also small R religions. They help me hold things together and make sense of the world. I could list very different, and very important values. Family is everything. I am a good son, father, sibling, uncle, godfather… Or much bigger, I am a good person. Or maybe: I am not a good person, I am not creative, I am bad at ______. All of these are small R religions that help us make sense of the world. They could also be big R religions, as in, I am a Christian or I am a yogi. Or even, I only believe in observable evidence and so I follow science and am agnostic or atheist. This may be small or big R religious statements and I think you’ll agree that it doesn’t matter. They are statements that help us hold things together. These statements make up the totality of our ego, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

Bell makes the most interesting logical jump when he notes that these religions help us hold the world together, until they don’t. When they fail, we enter identity crisis and must figure out how the world is still turning when our concept of it fails. When I have deep experiences and my faith in Christ is shaken, I either leave that religion and find another (possibly atheism or agnosticism) or I deconstruct and reconstruct my faith until it continues to serve me. For example, when terrible things happen to children, my values are challenged. I have to deal with what I now know of the world and wrestle with the question about how a good God allows this. These religions help us hold things together, until they don’t. When they don’t, what is left for us? I propose that those moments are when we are presented with the greatest opportunity to step into heaven. When we lose ourselves, God is waiting to catch us. Of course, in those moments we feel shaken, off balance, and broken. In those moments, we lose something foundational. Possibly we are confronted with some great evil and question the goodness of the divine. I know a family whose early grade-school age daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Would a good God allow this? Certainly nobody would fault this family for questioning their faith. When our foundations are shaken, I find it useful to know my foundations, which is why I recently wrote “My Christian Mystic’s Creed.”

The most important belief we can come to is the belief that our current beliefs don’t hold the whole truth of the world and, resultingly, our current beliefs are wrong in many ways. This way, when our beliefs are shaken, we aren’t entirely surprised. However, this alone isn’t enough to help us move through these experiences. To move through, we must know the absolute basis of our beliefs and be able to come back questioning them time and again, to find they are still solid. When I am shaken, I begin with questioning the existence of a Creator and find that nothing can shake my belief that our universe was designed, implying the Creator is also all powerful and all knowing, at least in comparison to us. Secondly, I question whether the Creator is good and the only way I can find to test this is inspecting the nature of His creation. When I consider the nature of the world, I see much more good than evil. Nature is brutal but the animals I’ve encountered seem to enjoy it. People can be terrible and yet they’re drawn to order and rules. As a counter-example, the Star Wars universe is build on perfect balance and, as a result, the most endearing characters (to people who really care) are villains. Fans are drawn to the likes of Count Dooku who was once one of the most powerful Jedi but, seeing how the Jedi play politics and refuse to simply do good, chooses to fall to the dark side in order to end slavery in the galaxy and pursue right actions. Real world villains don’t have the same endearing qualities because there is more good than evil in our world so they always had better choices to pursue their goals, or they actually pursued evil. Regardless, the world I see has more good then evil which proves to me that its Creator is also good. Given this foundation, and considering my experience, I find the natural result that God is perfect, active in this world, and has a perfect plan for this world. We often have trouble seeing how it can be perfect due to our limitations and false beliefs, of course, we don’t see the whole plan, and the only course of action is faith. Each of these steps is certainly a religion, small or large R, meaning that when we are shaken to the core we need to know the absolute basis of our beliefs so that we can revisit them to see how our view of the world should change and how it should remain the same.

The result is that I won’t completely give up my ego, which is truly interesting for me to say as release of ego is the greatest goal of my life. The sentiment I’m describing, however, is that I’m always ready to forsake my ego. Every belief is under question, but it’s important that we know which to question first as we we can be almost certain we’ll find those beliefs to hold solid.