The Religious Ego

Continued from yesterday…

To achieve the goal of being “good,” the ego must resort to fighting off evil impulses, and temptations. Unaware of the divine union of love, it’s, however, incapable of being good.

So, the religious ego then often hides behind its well-rehearsed chapters and verses that shift the focus away from love onto the sins of others. Consider all the preachers you have heard lash out against sin in society, and then get caught in their own hypocrisy. Often their intense rhetoric against the vileness of sin is rooted in their own inner self-hatred for not being enough the way they are.

So, the real story that we learned from Jesus is that reforming the ego is pointless. Obeying the Commandments was a device created by the ego that keeps us trapped in the fearful thoughts of guilt, thereby further alienating us from divine love. The writers of the Bible in the end, declare that Jesus is the end of the law, because our I (or the ego) was crucified with Christ, and a new guiltless person—Christ—was all of our identity.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren