Becoming Nothing through Kenotic Self-Emptying

My Mystical Path, Part 2

A young Monk sat on his bed for a time of centering prayer. As he sat there cultivating inner silence for several minutes, he suddenly had a sense of divine presence. He opened his eyes, and before him, sitting on the foot of the bed, was Jesus smiling at him. 

And then, suddenly, Jesus was gone. 

Startled, the young monk jumped up from his bed. He had to tell someone about this. So he ran out the door. 

Coming down the hallway was another monk, one who had resided at the monastery for many years, a wise and respected member of the community. 

The young monk called the old man over to him. 

“You'll never guess what happened to me. I was sitting in prayerful silence, and suddenly, Jesus appeared to me, sitting right on the very end of my bed!”

The old monk smiled, put a hand on the young monk’s shoulder, and said, “Don't worry about it. Eventually, you'll get past that.”

The ego

I believe I heard that story told on a Thomas Keating video in the late 1990s. When I first heard it, I was a bit confused. Isn't having a vision of Jesus sitting on your bed smiling at you a good thing? Little did I know, how much the story revealed that I had a lot to learn about Christian mysticism. 

The path of the mystic (at least as I pursue it) is really about a certain kind of death: ego death.

In short, your ego is your sense of self. Your ego is what prioritizes you with your health and well-being over that of others.

As I said many times before, human beings are wired to survive. And part of that survival-wiring for the ego means that it views the world through a lens that is sensitive to threats so it can defend against them when needed. Remember, one of your ego’s primary goals is to keep you safe. 

Here’s the big problem, In order to keep you safe, the ego separates “you” from the world around you. And that separation often generates a natural antagonism between you and your world. In other words, it is the power of the ego that creates adversarial relationships. 

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