Tom Facchine – ISLAM vs. The Ego

			So
		

			the essence of Islam is submission is to submit something that's outside of yourself. And so the
essence of Islam is counter to the ego and counter to the development of the ego, because the ego
doesn't want to submit to anything outside of itself, the ego only wants to actually bend reality in
its image to its will, right. And people who write about narcissists, you know, in psychology and
things like that, like that's an extreme example. But it's something that's universal in the sense
that the ego always wants to do this work, the ego doesn't want to submit to anything, it wants to
make everything else submit to it, whereas the slab is about submission. And so you have to submit
		

			to something outside of yourself. And there's various sort of internal dimensions of that
submission. And there's external dimensions, some of the external dimensions are, you know, how we
make our prayer, right to be able to get on your knees and get down on your forehead, right, and bow
down to something that's greater than yourself, right? In Malcolm X's autobiography, you know, he
talks about how difficult it was for him to even get down on his knees, right? He was so used to and
a lot of people do this, actually. I mean, it's a really interesting phenomenon that he really,
really articulated very well about how in order to deal with the hardship of life, and the, you
		

			know, the injustice and all the craziness, you almost some people reactively build up their ego as
sort of like a coping mechanism, right to deal with, you know, like, everything else that's going
on. And so he was so puffed up because of that, that he found it difficult to get down on his knees.
And part of his process, or part of His coming to faith was that ability to get down on your knees
and submit to something outside of yourself to have that vulnerability, right. And there's many,
many other things in our tradition as well. You know, when it comes to charity, and serving, right
service, in general, serving the poor is something that's supposed to humble yourself, you're
		

			supposed to be at the same level as other people, right? You don't get to have a special part of the
message just because you're older or you're richer or more successful, or whatever else it is,
you're going to be in the same row with everybody else, right, and you should throw yourself into
serving other people. And that's how you keep your feet on the ground.