Jesus also tells us that holiness and prayer is not about standing on the street corners looking for people’s admiration. Don’t do your good deeds publicly, he also says, to be admired by others, because you will lose your reward if you’re doing it just for show, just because your ego wants to look good in the eyes of other people. We are all very concerned about the way people see us, about our reputation, our image, what people say about us, of course. But it’s the ego in us that is concerned about that. And when it comes to our prayer, the ego really has no place. In prayer we go beyond the ego, our egocentricity, our obsession with our self-image. We go into another space, another place which is the Holy Spirit.
( Christian Life in the Light of Christian Meditation 2, Laurence Freeman )
