Ego and Essence: The Line Runs Through Everything Human.

I notice that every time I write a blog post about politics it could easily be transferred to the Church.  And vice-versa.  At least to my mind, the same issues and dynamics run through both.  Come to think of it, the same could be said for psychology and even for global civilization or world history.  The dichotomy between ego and Essence pervades and explains every human story.

I learned this from the Enneagram.  Humans are caught in personality structures developed by the ego for self-protection.  These structures initially serve a good purpose, but they become destructive because they are invented and separate us from the deepest truth of our being: our Essence.  The psychological and spiritual journey of a human being is this movement from being unconsciously dominated by ego and personality, to seeing our Essence emerge in us.

The ego is always about the individual self in some kind of adversarial relationship over-against the rest of the world.  Essence, on the other hand, understands that life is a network of intersecting and concentric communities in which the individual participates.

Political structures — from families to civilizations — are also caught between a self-serving ego narrative that dominates our behavior, and a deep and beautiful Essence that unites us to and embeds us within the rest of creation’s story.  

For instance, I have written about how America’s Essence is expressed in Jefferson’s words, “All [people] are created equal.”  But America’s ego is expressed in the fact that he nevertheless owned slaves.  The vestiges of slavery, the practice that, in Orwell’s words, “some are more equal than others,” pervade our laws, institutions, language, and history.  Thus our history is a struggle between our perverse and destructive ego-identity that proclaims its own exceptionalism, and our good and blessed Essence that celebrates diversity, inclusion, and equality.

The Church is no different.  As a human institution it has always (at least since about the 2nd or 3rd century) featured a division between ego-centric fears which cave in to  the temptations Satan threw at Jesus, and the realization of the Kingdom of God in following Jesus’ life and teachings.  The Church could succumb to the demands of Empire and serve as a lapdog for whatever the principalities and powers demanded (in our time it has been things like colonialism, capitalism, and casteism), or it could inhabit Jesus’ Way of humility, non-violence, service, and transformation.  

These are the “two ways” that get referred to often in our tradition, going at least as far back as Joshua: the way of death, judgment, and condemnation; as distinct from  the Way of life in obedience to God’s commandments.

In the end, Essence is about unity.  It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about individuals, families, nations, or civilizations.  The more we come to our Essence the more we come into communion and participation with and in each other, and with all creation.  Essence centers and grounds us in the truth.  Followers of Jesus understand this Essence to be Christ, the Word of God, the true human who is also true God.  In him we are united to our true selves, each other, all creation, and God.

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