Conquering One's Ego Promotes the Soul to a Higher Level of Spirituality

By Archdeacon Habib Guirgus

The soul rejoices, knowing that it progresses to spirituality. But man's will is weak and the body prevents the spirit from ascending to spirituality.

If you subdued your will, quieted your ego, and trained yourself to be guided by God, you have achieved freedom and conquered your desires and lusts, which are alien to you. Doing so, allows you to have the image of God re-printed in you, along with His wisdom. His grace will overshadow you, and will become a candidate for His divine dwelling, for God wants to capture your heart to fill it with peace, calmness and tranquility.

As I mentioned earlier, you will not achieve that until you conquer the pain of the desires, and putting off the fire of lusts, which aches the heart, thus causing 'death' to the spiritual feelings and emotions. It also blinds the eyes, weakens the will, and steals the 'right' in you.

Once you controlled and detained your desires and your mind became enlightened, and your will has the freedom of choice toward 'good', your soul will be filled with gladness and spiritual joy, and will feel peaceful, calm and comfortable.

Being worried and concerned with fleshly desires, can prevent the soul from benefiting, and prevent the presence of God, and hardens the heart, for "we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God" (I Corinthians 2:12).

When the heart is captured and fascinated by the world, it attaches the soul to the earthly, and does not allow it to walk in the path of God. So, pluck out from your heart, first, the love for the temporal things to be able to reach eternity. Leave aside the earthly things to be able to ascend to the heavenly. Sell the fleshly, and buy the spiritual.

Everything moves according to its weight, the light ascend upward as fire and air do. While the heavy descends downwards as stones and water. Same goes for you, you either go upwards or downwards, according to your inclination, desires and likes.

So, if you are separated from the love of the world, the love of God will enrich your life and takes you upwards to the heavenly.

God is an all-simple Spirit, and unless you put away the fleshly things, you will never be able to deal with God and converse with Him in a sweet spiritual way. As the English idiom says; 'birds of same feather, flock together', so if you were a lustful person, desiring the earthly, you will be attracted to the wrong committing evil. And if your soul inclined to the spiritual, you shall not find comfort or rest except in conversing and dealing with God. So, purify your soul from the vile earthly thoughts and senses, and separate it from the despised earthly things, so God may reveal Himself to it, your soul, to understand and comprehend His mysteries, and see God face to face. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8).