Ego at 75

Our ego is a creature of time. The more time that has passed, the more obvious it is that our time is running out, and the less we are able to ignore our mortality. Our self-centered ego begins to accept its own inevitable demise and starts to let go, because holding full power to the very end seems pointless. Instead, the eternal spirit grows more important, even to our ego, which reluctantly confesses itself to be the principal impediment between us and the Sacred. Hitherto, that did not matter to our ego, but with ever-advancing age it does. Though at secondhand from our evolving soul, the ego has heard of the timeless Sacred, the Deathless, that never-sleeping something hidden within us, and the ego recognizes that, though there is no hope for itself, there is hope for our soul beyond the lifetime of our body.

As our birthday count rolls ever closer to, or even past, our life expectancy, each moment remaining to us becomes a little more valuable. We know that each passing second is one less left to our future. We cannot stop time and we cannot store it up to save it for another day. But we can have enough respect for ourselves and our remaining time to live it well. Whatever we do externally, our inner life remains a realm of possibilities. Can we lead a full and vibrant inner life, one that is lived in the eternal and is only partially subject to time? A deep inner life turns the tables on time: our physical life is subject to time, while time is subject to how we live our inner life, with those passing seconds being enriched by our developing soul. One second lived in the eternal is worth perhaps hundreds lived in time.

But do we need to wait for our 75th birthday to value our inner life, our spiritual life? After all, our time is passing from the moment we are born. Every major spiritual path incorporates some form of contemplating our own inevitable death. Why is that? Perhaps to sober us into material and spiritual responsibility, so that we do not squander the time we have left. A principal feature of that sobriety is not to let ourselves be driven by our self-centered egoism.

Time imposes a severe and implacable limitation on us. Yet it also affords a chance to engage in spiritual practice and build our soul. Every such effort has the salutary side effect of stabilizing our metacognition, putting us more in touch with that never-sleeping something in us. With enough practice, we cannot avoid seeing and recognizing the tricks, habits, propensities, pretense, and narrow worldview of our egoism. This exposure weakens our ego, which thrives out of sight, behind the curtain of the thought "I." Time is thus our ally in the work of freedom, if we fill it with practice, with presence, prayer, meditation, kindness, and service. Yet the essence of spiritual practice and of the soul we are building is in eternity, not in time. Our body will inevitably wear out, but our soul need not.

Will our ego wear out? Will it be replaced by the wisdom arising from the depths of our soul? We get hints of this when we are ill or very tired. In those situations, we lack the energy to support full-fledged self-centeredness. Our thoughts slow down. Our feelings grow quiet. We fall into just being. In this way, the very process of aging can train us to be, train us to live in and from consciousness. Can we abandon our weakening ego for our real I, for the will that we are, for the will that connects with our common higher will?

The way toward this is outside of time, through the inner stillness between and behind all our thoughts, behind our emotions and sensory perceptions, through the vast silence that embraces everything. In that space, we find ourselves.

For this week, whatever your biological age, please ask yourself whether it is time to further loosen the grip of your own self-centered egoism and move toward a truly larger and more vivid life? Practice total, kind-hearted presence now; this moment will not come again.

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