In a passage from Fr John’s book Moment of Christ there’s a chapter called ‘Smashing the Mirror’. Smashing the mirror, and the mirror is our ego, or our self-consciousness. And this is how Fr John describes it. He says that, first of all, we resonate on the same frequency as Christ, we are in tune with the mind of Christ. And this is the reality that Jesus is revealing, that we are in harmony with God. We are in union with this ground of being. We are in harmony with it, but of course we look at the world, look at ourselves, and we say, ‘Well, that’s a nice idea, but why don’t I feel that all the time? I only feel it after some meditation sessions or on some days when things are going well for me.’ So Fr John asks, ‘What prevents that union or that resonance?’ And this is what he says, ‘The only thing that can prevent it is what we might describe as self-consciousness.’ This is the self-consciousness I was describing as the witness, the hyper-self-consciousness of egoism.
( The Brick Wall of the Ego 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
