The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo β even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.
Interpretation
The ego resists change and clings to familiar patterns, even if they are detrimental.
In this quote, Richard Rohr highlights the tendency of the human ego to resist change and embrace the status quo, regardless of its effectiveness. The ego, which is tied to our identity and past experiences, fears the unknown future and prefers the comfort of what it already knows, often leading to stagnation and dissatisfaction in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing change in the workplace.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know Godβs presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become βholding onβ instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
By helping readers understand these mechanics, I hope they will appreciate why freedom is for everyone, why it is essential for our security and why the free world plays a critically important role in advancing democracy around the globe.
There's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror. The brain behind that face never heard of razors, prayers, or the logic of the universe. You turn the mirror sideways and see your face reflected with a sinister left-hand twist, half mad and half sane.
I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.
What I'm concerned with is what I would call the missing history - the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time.
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.
When you start to think of revenge, you start to think of hate. I don't believe in hating people. It's a retrogressive thing.
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