The Spirituality Of Saint Francis

SA SAM. So this is a typical example. Hear of St. Francis teaching and spiritual practice, which is to make yourself into nothing. A very radical form of spirituality, to allow yourself to disappear. Don't be the total opposite of what the ego wants. The ego wants to stand out, and St. Francis goes that way. I sometimes call that the mountain or the valley. The ego wants to be the mountain. It wants to assert its form, identity, its form, its me. It wants, in some way, it wants to stand out, it wants to be the mountain. If it cannot be the mountain in victory triumph, it can at least be the mountain in misery. So when you see yourself as a victim egoic identity, you're still a mountain, you haven't become a valley. It's a very strong ego identity. And you complain to people how miserable you are and how life and other people have treated you. You're still a mountain. It's exactly the same, as you say, how great you are and the great things that you have achieved. Both are egoic mountains. And by strengthening your form identity, you cut yourself off from the true power, which is, of course, that which is beyond the person, which is deeper than the person. So in one way or another, the ego has to dissolve, either through intense suffering that life inflicts on you, or the voluntary surrender to life, which is what St. Francis preaches, but also that what we do here, it's voluntary coming into the present moment and so on. They're all ways of transcending the ego.