Letting Go of Your Ego Structure

Part 3 of a 3-Part Life Tasks Series

The Southern Gothic novelist Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “All human nature violently resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” A devout Catholic with a perceptive awareness of the link between suffering and grace, O’Connor believed that God’s grace is not something we will find easy to accept. While God gives us his grace freely in the sense that we don’t have to earn it, it does come at a cost. Many of us are familiar with this idea from Bonhoeffer’s writings on “cheap vs. costly grace.” And we can all look to Jesus to know that God’s mercy certainly does seem to have a strange connection with sacrifice and suffering.

In his book, Falling Upward, Richard Rohr posits a similar theory. Falling Upward outlines the two halves or ‘tasks’ of life: building a solid “container” for yourself (identity and security) in the first half, and discovering your deeper Self in the second half. He calls the first process “ego structuring,” by which he means the steps you take to establish an identity, career, family, and other preoccupations of early life (please see my previous article for more about the first half of life). In the second half of life, your ego structure must fail so that you can “enter the wonderfulness of the second half of the journey” (3). As Rohr puts it, “The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move forward” (xix). In other words, failure, risk, and suffering are all a necessary part of our growth and development; for most of us, these alone can empower us to let go of our ego structure and enter into the second half of life.

 

Discharging Your Loyal Soldier

While Rohr makes it clear that you must complete the first task of life before moving onto the second, he also emphasizes that you must be willing to let go of your container when the time comes to move to the second task. “If you try to skip the first journey, you will never see its real necessity and also its limitations; you will never know why this first container must fail you, the fullness of the second half of the journey, and the relationship between the two…” (3) The first container is not the end in itself, nor is it built to last forever. You want a strong ego structure so that you remain grounded when life’s challenges come your way, but you cannot hold onto the container forever. Trying to hold onto your ego structure prevents you from moving forward when God calls you into the second task of life.

Rohr has a name for this process of letting go – he calls it, “discharging your loyal soldier.” The loyal soldier is the voice which “gets us through the first half of life safely, teaching us to look both ways before we cross the street, to have enough impulse control to avoid addictions and compulsive emotions, to learn the sacred ‘no’ to ourselves that gives dignity, identity, direction, significance, and boundaries” (46). The loyal soldier will help you through early life, but he cannot accompany you into the second task. Rohr notes that many people try to hold onto their loyal soldier, using it as a “substitute for any real adult formation of conscience” (47). But, he also writes, “There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life. It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul… of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self. The true journey only begins at this point. Up to now everything is mere preparation” (48). Learning to yield your loyal soldier to the voice of God is a crucial step toward spiritual maturity. Unfortunately, most of us won’t choose to let go of our ego structure. It must be destroyed for us—and since this process means your first container necessarily fails, the transition almost always involves some level of pain.

 

Redemptive Suffering: Failing and Falling Toward the Second Task

Rohr points to an ancient axiom to explain this concept: “The way down is the way up.” Human beings have always in some way or another understood that in order to progress toward any deeper knowledge or spiritual state, you must first endure some level of suffering. According to Rohr, only those who have gone ‘down’ through failure will be able to understand the ‘up’ that is possible with our redemption. Learning to fall, accepting your failures as a necessary part of growth, and finding your way through suffering are all steps along the road to spiritual maturity.

“The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling or changing or dying… When you are in the first half of life, you cannot see any kind of failing or dying as even possible, much less as necessary or good” (Rohr, xxiv). Rohr rightly asserts that human beings do not like to think that falling or changing are necessary and healthy steps toward spiritual growth. Yet we must not deny the necessity of our own falling, for Rohr notes that those who try to deny their pain “have kept themselves from their own spiritual depths—and therefore have been kept from their own spiritual heights” (xxiii). When we try to avoid such suffering, we cling to our ego structure in an unhealthy way. Rather than let our container be destroyed (as it must be), we refuse to move forward into the new container God has in store.  Part of moving into the second task of life involves accepting your failures, fallings, and suffering as a part of God’s plan for your personal redemption. When you are able to see your suffering as redemptive, you can begin to make sense of the pain you have experienced, and you can move beyond your ego structure to discover your True Self.

 

Christian Counseling for Spiritual and Personal Growth

Learning to listen to the voice of God instead of your own ego is a challenging task for any Christian. Yet when our container has been destroyed, this is precisely what we must learn to do. If you find yourself in the process of transitioning between these two tasks of life, you may feel overwhelmed, isolated, and paralyzed. When life becomes difficult, it is a good opportunity to take stock of your spiritual health. A Christian counselor can help you discern God’s voice in the midst of suffering and pain. He or she can walk with you and provide spiritual counsel as well as companionship for the journey. To learn more about how Christian counseling can help you understand the second task of life.  I would be delighted to work with you toward spiritual growth and maturity in the faith to which God is calling you.

References
Principles from Falling Upwards by Father Richard Rohr

Photos
“New Life” and it’s by amenic181; “Beautiful Hispanic Woman With A Very Sad Expression Stock Photo” on freedigitalphotos.net, and it’s by Sira Anamwong.