Sensitivity to others is essential for human flourishing, for human happiness. If we are blocked and prevented from that ability to give our attention to others, then we will find our world, our universe, our sense of self contracting and contracting, getting smaller and smaller, and more imprisoned in its own bunker, its own escape, its own self. The ego will never be able to sacrifice itself for others, it’s not what it’s about. In a sense, by itself, it’s incapable of compassion because its vision, its priority is separation rather than empathy or union. The reality that the ego attention can generate is not big enough for us to be conscious of God. So we have to lose ourselves, the ego self, we have to lose the ego, in order to know God.
( The Brick Wall of the Ego 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
