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EGO SURRENDER
Dr. Frank B. Smoot, MA, DD
Surrender.
The very sound of it puts us on the defensive and creates an immediate feeling of resistance in the deepest recesses of our being. For this reason, ego surrender may be the single greatest challenge confronting anyone on the path of spiritual or personal growth.
It is essential to understand that the need to surrender the ego is not only for those whom we would consider "egotistical." None of us is free of the ego's influence. Every human being, without exception, lives a life whose daily, hourly, moment-to-moment behaviors emanate from a core of learned beliefs. And every human being, without exception, has developed an ego whose view of life is intimately intertwined with this core of learned beliefs.
To fully appreciate the influence of our ego in our lives, we need to understand how it functions. The ego is best understood as a kind of "child king"--as one who wields great power, but who as yet lacks the wisdom and maturity to make decisions that are consistently in the best interest of those whom it governs: our own selves.
That's because, like any child, it only knows what it has been taught by influential others in its life. We need to understand that our ego learned most of what it knows during it's earliest and most impressionable years, when it was most suggestible by outside influences--and least able to distinguish between helpful and harmful information, between truth and mere opinion.
Is our ego by its nature negative or evil? Is it the source of all the problems in our life? Absolutely not. Many of the beliefs it has helped us adopt are positive and life-enhancing.
But is our ego by it's nature an obstacle to developing our connection with our Creator?
Yes! In every case!
Because, after a lifetime of having the voice of our ego speaking to us from within, we have come to believe that the ego's voice is the voice of who we are.
Yet, even though our ego speaks to us from within, the information is provides can only come from without. In truth, the voice of our ego today is merely the echo of a world we once lived in.
Unfortunately, because we have learned to believe that we are our egos, we humans seldom learn to distinguish between the voice of that ego and the voice of our true self. Indeed, we may not even be aware that such a distinction exists. As such, we cannot begin to grasp the degree to which our daily, hourly, moment-to-moment behaviors are the products of our egos.
But until we can learn to distinguish its voice from the voice of our true self, no one can be free from the ego's influence. The good news is that, contrary to what we may fear, ego surrender does not mean losing our identity or giving up who we are. It means losing our false identity and setting free who we really are. It means letting go of who we have pretended to be--who others convinced us that we had to be--and discovering and embracing who we truly are.
The best news is that, as we surrender our ego, any residual arrogance we may still have will be gradually replaced with humility. And what is arrogance? Nothing more than the conviction that our own beliefs and opinions--which were merely learned from others--are the truth.
But when we at last are ready to surrender our ego, and become willing listen instead to the voice of our Creator, we are finally able to hear Him. And as our habitual ego chatter gradually disappears, in the newfound inner silence we can at last begin to receive the wisdom our Creator has always wanted to give us, and to have our lives blessed by it accordingly.
Yours in perfect health,
Dr. Frank
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