...grant that I may seek to understand rather than seek to be understood. - from the prayer of Saint Francis
Contrary to what I've read, that it is our ego that insists on understanding, I suspect it is our ego that insists on being understood. Which leads to my belief that we get to choose which life-path we're going to walk...seeking to understand in order to get control, or seeking to understand to come to agreement and thus to love.
I am humbled by gratitude that that part of the Saint Francis prayer spoke to me over all the rest of the prayer from the first time I read it...at least according to my memory. I cottoned to it originally since it said in a few words all the anti-war chants that ever were...all of which I love, I hasten to add. Ain't gonna study war no more...War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...I shall fight no more forever. etc., etc., etc.
Loving the slogans, talking love and peace, mentally preaching the Sermon, etc., it is still, and no doubt will ever be, the second thought I ever have when my ego gets the bird. Sometimes the third, fourth and/or fifth thought, but invariably the second. Yours, too?
Since our ego's hidey hole is the reasoning mind, it gets first thought...which in our walking-around, Me Human, world is always on behalf of our self. Ego legislates for itself...that's its job. Our job is to love it anyway just not take orders from it.
There it is...the crux of the matter: To love our ego, our Lucy With The Football, rather than resist her is to go to God for God and that is all. And that is all.
Thank you.
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