Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #150 – ISLAM vs. The Ego
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the concept of submitting something outside of oneself to achieve one's goals. They also mention the negative consequences of acceptances of others' actions as a way to protect yourself. The speaker emphasizes the universal aspect of Islam, which involves submitting everything outside of oneself to achieve one's goals.
AI: Summary ©
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.