EGO'S WATERLOO IS OUR SPIRITUAL GOAL

We work so hard to learn how to "stand up for our self," to "take no guff," to "push back."  For whatever reason, we have accepted the canard that our self-esteem rests there.

In pondering Proverbs 3:5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, it seems to me that all that hard work bolstering our self-esteem is simply us leaning on our own understanding, serving our egoic wants as opposed to seeking our spiritual needs.

Clearly, trusting in the Lord with all our heart is not being ever prepared to stand up for our self, etc. Who's kidding whom? If that's our prep work, the cause will come to us, and it's off to battle we go. Who has given up fighting anything and anybody?

Trusting wholly in the Lord requires training our self to let the Father within do his perfect work, speak his perfect word, through us. That training is all about giving over, giving up, giving in...and for way long feeling just rotten about it. We question our own self or our own sanity, our own motives, as in, Am I being a chicken? Is this me copping out? Am I just currying favor?

So we stand up, take no guff, push back and, if we're doing it right, shortly thereafter feel rues, regrets and remorses. That's spiritual growth for you. If we've got that feel-good going for us, we're almost certainly going down that wrong road again...mainly because that feel-good usually comes from getting over on someone...setting her straight, making him pay, having the last word. There is no spiritual there...a boatload of ego, but no God.

We can tell we're on the right road going in the right direction by the tone of our response and our inner peace...say when we're pushed and our response is our truth spoken softly without defenses. We need never worry that God will expect us to feel  less-than in order for another to feel better-than. If s/he thinks they are, that's on them and not ours to accept or resist.

As it turns out, that will ever be the nut of our problem.  If we let it, ego will resist till three days after we're dead another thinking they won. It isn't necessarily their thinking they won, it's our believing they think that. That's ego's Waterloo and our spiritual goal...that's our within proof that our worst fear realized can be our saving grace.

The way there: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding,

Thank you.