Why Your Ego Makes You Miserable

In Matthew 5:14-16, Christ says "You are the light of the world" and tells His followers to let their light shine before men. People often ask what they should do when their spouse is not interested in the Orthodox faith, and by the time they ask this question they have already exhausted bombardment with tons of information and realized it is not working. The homily last Sunday addressed the fact that you cannot change other people, there are no magical words you can speak that will suddenly flip hearts and minds, because Christ did not do that in the gospel. St. Seraphim of Sarov had a conversation with Motovilov about the acquisition of the Holy Spirit where he asked how Motovilov felt and the response was "I feel a tremendous peace." St. Seraphim said "Acquire the grace or the peace of the Holy Spirit and a thousand around you will be saved." Your life in the faith is not merely going through the motions of prayer and fasting and services, but struggling to acquire and keep this peace that transcends all understanding. Bishop Emilianos said you either follow the path of peace or you follow the path of your own ego. The ego wants everything the way it wants it right now, wants to control, wants people to do what it needs them to do, wants to be in charge. When you distill down all ego and egotistical thinking and behavior it is one thing: man trying to be God, trying to control his life and the people around him and the circumstances. The ego becomes inflamed, angry, defensive, argumentative. The ego constantly needs to be right, cannot suffer being in any discomfort, needs to constantly be affirmed and needs the most attention. The more somebody follows this path of their ego and their pride, refusing to accept life and circumstances in firm trust in God, the more the person is constantly miserable and suffering from anxiety, depression, and fear because everything in their life becomes about themselves. You sacrifice that peace and connection to the Holy Spirit because you want to be right, want to be justified, want to be served instead of serving. You harbor bitterness or unforgiveness or feelings of injustice and constantly lose the presence of the Holy Spirit. Somebody comes to the church and says they had one peaceful day last week, they really prayed and let things go and forgave people and had one day of peace. You might think that is nothing because there were six other days with no peace, but before they came into the church they would have a whole year with not even one or two days where they felt any real peace. One more day last week than all of last year is tremendous spiritual progress, astronomical spiritual progress. All you are trying to do is knit those days of peacefulness together. Maybe you have one peaceful day, then get mad and blow up at the kids, then two days not at peace, then one day at peace. Glory to God, because if you are struggling to kill that ego within you in order to be knit to the Holy Spirit it is going to be a lot of ups and downs. When you begin to see that all discontentment is linked with your thoughts and your thoughts are causing you distress, you must turn the eye of your soul back to Christ. If you seek to acquire the Holy Spirit through watchfulness and prayer and humility, you will become a light upon a hill that emanates warmth to all the world.