Ego (Self-Will)
“How do you know if you’re in demonic possession? How do you know if you’re deceived? Well, you don’t know, really. Every day I should say to myself, “Maybe I’m in delusion. Maybe I think I’m great and I’m judging others and thinking and going on an ego trip by giving talks on the radio. But maybe this is not pure; maybe this is not from God.” But what can I do about it? What can you do about it? The only thing we can do is to pray to God and say, “O Lord, lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil one.” That’s the end of the Lord’s prayer. We should say it a hundred times a day. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil one.”(Fr. Thomas Hopko)
“When the ego (the false self generated by our anxieties, fears, grandiosity, etc.) becomes our public voice, the true self is rendered mute. Conversations with the ego are almost useless. Conversations with the ego also tend to provoke responses from the ego – “like calls to like.” Thus one set of defenses speaks to another set of aggressions, switching places as the war of words waxes and wanes. No information is exchanged. No minds are changed. The heart remains inert, shielded in a fog of make-believe….How do we distinguish the ego from the Other? The only means is to recognize boundaries – that there is a line, a place, a fence, that separates me from the Other. Love does not cross the boundary nor seek to blur it. Love requires a limitation on the self and the projected ego. Your life is not about me. An old friend once said, “The only thing you need to know about God is that you’re not Him.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The self that needs the things of this world to survive is actually the false self. To tell if you are living out of your true self or your false self, ask yourself the following two questions: What do I need in order to be truly me? What conditions need to be realized in order for me to be able to express who I actually am? If the answer is that you need anything from this world before you can truly be yourself, then there is a good chance your true self may have been hijacked by your false self, or ego self. The paradox of Christianity is that we find our true selves not by grasping for good things, but by giving ourselves away (Luke 9:24). The message of the gospel is that we become more truly ourselves when we strive to fulfill the needs of others, preferring other people’s well-being to our own (Matt. 20:16; Rom. 12:10).” (Robin Phillips)
“...we might consider the passions as distorted when the ego is in control of their direction. Then, we desire whatever fills the ego, whether praise, or power, or whatever it is that we crave. When we feel enslaved by what we desire, then we know we have gone down the wrong path. The spiritual journey is always one toward freedom, and an essential aspect is to direct the passions and desire toward God. The more we become clear about our places of wounding, the more freedom we gain because we are no longer controlled by unconscious impulses.” (St. Zosimas)
“Utter denial does not mean depriving ourselves of the necessities of life, nor does it mean we must become paupers and live in rags. Neither does it mean we must lose our individuality, personality and identity. When Jesus speaks of total and utter denial of self, He means we must subordinate our clamoring ego that prohibits us from being the Children of God we were intended to be. Good intentions are not enough. This is why Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (George Nicozisin)
“…mortality is both what enables repentance and is also an infection that can be the occasion for more sin. The fear of death is what leads to sin. Repentance is about accepting death, not just physical death but every death of ego and selfishness -- which is what humility is. So the question is how we use death. We can use it for our repentance, or we can use it to fall deeper into sin….In an age when self-focus is the rule of the day, and where the ego seems to reign, it is hard for people to see the value of humility.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, Abbot Tryphon)
“Repentance is a freely-willed, internally cultivated process of contrition and sorrow for having distanced ourselves from God through sin. True repentance has nothing to do with intolerable pain, excessive sorrow and relentless guilty feelings. That would not be sincere repentance, but a secret egotism, a feeling of our “ego” being trampled on; an anger that is directed at our self, which then wreaks revenge because it is exposing itself and is put to shame—a thing that it cannot tolerate.” (Monk Moses of the Holy Mountain)
“…Christ speaks to us today, admonishing us that “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” It’s in dying to our own selfish wants, ego, and passions that our lives take on real purpose and we are made fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ knows that if we put self, i.e., ego, first we become what we ‘eat’ –we’re swallowed up by our passions, by the world around us. In contrast, the Christian comes outside himself to love and serve God and in learning to live in the light of His truth, he overcomes the passions, step by struggling step, to become the glorified and adopted children of God He’s created us to be…Hence the paradox: in order to share in Christ’s victory, we humble ourselves to become not just Christ-like but what Christ is. In order to gain the victory, we die to ego and the world, and to all secular demands that we keep the cross hidden to ourselves.” (Holy Archangels Orthodox Annapolis Mission)
“No one can be a disciple of Jesus if he does not deny himself. The precondition for speaking in the name of Jesus is that a person must renounce himself and his deadly ego. The true disciple of Jesus is the one who crucifies himself for the sake of the world, not the one who wants to crucify the world for the sake of pleasing himself and his lusts.” (Fr. Georges Massouh)
“St. Paul wanted God to free him from his torment – the thorn in the flesh, whether physical, mental or spiritual – and God told him, “NO!” Now many of us might wish that God would answer our prayers clearly, but what if what we were sincerely pleading God to deliver us from is something that God wants in our life? What if God’s clear response to our prayer is “No way!” Would we lose faith? St Paul didn’t. Rather, he gracefully accepted that his infirmity was something God was allowing for some mysterious reason. For St. Paul it appears that his ego had to be limited for a reason known only to God, and St Paul accepts that. He realizes he is God’s servant and God apparently wanted him to experience some weakness in his life, an infirmity perhaps to remind him of his human limits. Paul remained a faithful servant and accepted that God’s plan for him and world included a weakness in his own life which required him to remain dependent on God to help him through his struggles.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“The world encourages us toward godless self-reliance rather than meek dependence on God…The spirit of contemporary culture is foolish, for it never invites us to consider God. Many people never think to turn to the Lord “until they [are] struck” (Isaiah 9:12). What an accurate definition of godlessness! And even the nicest people are guilty of indifference…” (Dynamis 3/26/2019)
“Divine love does not tolerate this elevated status of self, for the ego is the enemy of our communion with God...worship of self dooms us to a life of total loss. We were created for communion with God, and the worship of the ego has led us into a state of spiritual bankruptcy....We need to return to the worship of God and reject the worship of self...The destruction of the ego begins with repentance and the acquisition of a humble and contrite heart, that we might have this communion.” (Abbot Tryphon)
“What most often gets in the way of the Lord’s word? It is our self-will…Self-will rules our lives quietly, slipping in unnoticed. We do not like being told what to do! We may never say out loud, “I do not like God telling me what to do,” but in fact we often tune Him out.” (OCPM 11/2/2016)
“Within this soul stands an idol: the Ego. This idol is offered constant incense and sacrifices. How can such a soul combine service to the All-Holy God with service to the foul idol? The soul is in horrifying delusion, in terrible darkness, in frightening numbness.” (St. Ignatii Brianchaninov)
“We use pleasure as a painkiller, because our egos have been weakened and damaged by our distorted vision of God. We see Him as the great killjoy in the sky and not as our Father. We act like greedy and angry consumers rather than grateful, peaceful children. When this conviction and experience reverses, freedom and detachment follow.” (Kevin Scherer)