Zephaniah 2:15 · World English Bible
This is the joyous city that lived carelessly, that said in her heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.” How she has become a desolation, a place for animals to lie down in! Everyone who passes by her will hiss, and shake their fists.
Hear the voice of the ego in its pride: I am, and there is none beside me. This is the small self swollen with self-importance, sure that it is the center of everything, separate from all other life and certain of its own permanence.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
EGO & BEING
Hear the voice of the ego in its pride: I am, and there is none beside me. This is the small self swollen with self-importance, sure that it is the center of everything, separate from all other life and certain of its own permanence.
Such a structure cannot stand, for it rests on an illusion, the belief that you are a separate someone set against the world. In time it becomes a desolation. What felt so solid empties out, because an identity made only of thought has no real ground beneath it, and life will always, sooner or later, show you that what you defended so fiercely was never who you are.
Ego v. Being lens
What part of my self-image am I working hardest to protect, and what am I like without it?
The solid separate self you defend so carefully cannot be found when you look for it. Every bit of suffering built on it comes apart eventually.
Fill a cup past the brim and it spills. Push anything to its extreme and it turns into its opposite, which is why pride collapses on its own.
All the fame and importance you are clutching will be forgotten, and so will the people doing the forgetting. Hold it loosely and you can live without fear of losing it.
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Ego v. Being