Absent for two days because I had pushed too hard for the last several weeks. To say that the cardiologist was less than happy with the felt exhaustion is understatement. Two days of rest and sleeping completed, we continue the Lenten journey.
The Book of Numbers reading of today's liturgy can provide us with a serious reflection of how things might impact our relationship with God. The Jewish people were angered at God and Moses as well as the unsatisfying food they experienced in their wanderings. They had identified part of themselves with the previous lifestyle they had lived. Now that was gone. Their ego was damaged.
Consider this: the ego comes to existence through identification. The word itself is derived from two Latin words: idem (the same) and facere (to make). When you identify with something, you are making yourself the same with it. You might ask, "The same with what?" The answer is so obvious that we often miss it. When you or I make an identification with something that something becomes empowered with a sense of yourself or myself. I identify myself with whatever I proclaim as mine: my car, my computer, my camera, and so on ... all the mys that you can find in your life. These things become a part of what you or I call your or my identity. To lose anyone of these identifications causes a variety of reactions --- all, however, reflect a suffering because my ego has lost something with which I made an identification.
The wanderers in the Book of Numbers reading, so it seems, grew angry with God and Moses, because the wandering experience and all the pain it created for them reminded them that they had lost something of themselves, their previous lifestyle. It is the pain of loss, the suffering that results when the ego doesn't have its power over me even for a short time. Somewhere in their consciousness the wanderers had developed their previous lifestyle "as a means "to self-enhancement" (Tolle, Awakening To Your Life's Purpose, page 35). They were trying to find themselves through the various things or ways of life that they had decided was "mine." In this particular case, it seems to have been their earlier lifestyle.
The Lenten journey has brought me to consider what is there in my life that I have strongly identified with that distorts the real awareness of who I am. I can ask myself during these days and through readings such as today's what "things" have distorted my perception of who I am. Have I allowed myself to become so identified with "my computer, my car, my camera and so forth," that I have lost a genuine awareness, a consciousness of who I really am, of who the real me is? An interesting question, an interesting investigation!
The Book of Numbers reading of today's liturgy can provide us with a serious reflection of how things might impact our relationship with God. The Jewish people were angered at God and Moses as well as the unsatisfying food they experienced in their wanderings. They had identified part of themselves with the previous lifestyle they had lived. Now that was gone. Their ego was damaged.
Consider this: the ego comes to existence through identification. The word itself is derived from two Latin words: idem (the same) and facere (to make). When you identify with something, you are making yourself the same with it. You might ask, "The same with what?" The answer is so obvious that we often miss it. When you or I make an identification with something that something becomes empowered with a sense of yourself or myself. I identify myself with whatever I proclaim as mine: my car, my computer, my camera, and so on ... all the mys that you can find in your life. These things become a part of what you or I call your or my identity. To lose anyone of these identifications causes a variety of reactions --- all, however, reflect a suffering because my ego has lost something with which I made an identification.
The wanderers in the Book of Numbers reading, so it seems, grew angry with God and Moses, because the wandering experience and all the pain it created for them reminded them that they had lost something of themselves, their previous lifestyle. It is the pain of loss, the suffering that results when the ego doesn't have its power over me even for a short time. Somewhere in their consciousness the wanderers had developed their previous lifestyle "as a means "to self-enhancement" (Tolle, Awakening To Your Life's Purpose, page 35). They were trying to find themselves through the various things or ways of life that they had decided was "mine." In this particular case, it seems to have been their earlier lifestyle.
The Lenten journey has brought me to consider what is there in my life that I have strongly identified with that distorts the real awareness of who I am. I can ask myself during these days and through readings such as today's what "things" have distorted my perception of who I am. Have I allowed myself to become so identified with "my computer, my car, my camera and so forth," that I have lost a genuine awareness, a consciousness of who I really am, of who the real me is? An interesting question, an interesting investigation!
Put your hope in the Lord. Take courage and be strong. Ps 26:14
