Egos Anonymous Reflections — Egos Anonymous

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." — James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro The small self is a gifted avoider. Not always through obvious denial—sometimes through busyness

Wendy Etter 8/30/26 Wendy Etter 8/30/26

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"Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories." — Joy Harjo, Remember There is a kind of forgetting that the spiritual traditions across centuries have named as the root of human suffering. Not fo

Wendy Etter 8/23/26 Wendy Etter 8/23/26

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"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." — Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love You have probably heard this line before. It arrives on cards and in sermons, offered as reassur

Wendy Etter 8/16/26 Wendy Etter 8/16/26

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"The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer." — Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God The small self believes it needs the right conditions. Enough quiet. Enough time. Enough distance f

Wendy Etter 8/9/26 Wendy Etter 8/9/26

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“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites one's body to one's thoughts.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness The small self lives almost entirely in its thoughts. It narrates, plans, rehears

Wendy Etter 8/2/26 Wendy Etter 8/2/26

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"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." —Elie Wiesel, US News & World Report , October 27, 1986 We have been taught to think of hate as love's opposite — the dark side of the same coin, the shadow that follows th

Wendy Etter 7/26/26 Wendy Etter 7/26/26

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"You understand so little of what is around you because you do not use what is within you." —Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias , 1.2.29 The small self is an avid student of the outer world. It watches, analyzes, compares, and catalogs.

Wendy Etter 7/19/26 Wendy Etter 7/19/26

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"Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of man." —Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man The small self is never amazed. It is too busy managing—categorizing, evaluating, deciding what things mean before i

Wendy Etter 7/12/26 Wendy Etter 7/12/26

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"A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it." —Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass , "

Wendy Etter 7/5/26 Wendy Etter 7/5/26

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I believe that Spirit is one and is everywhere present. That it never leaves me. That in my ignorance, I may withdraw from it, but I can realize its presence from the instant I return to my senses... — Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Not

Wendy Etter 6/28/26 Wendy Etter 6/28/26

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"Though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are." —Rumi, The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks There is a word for wha

Wendy Etter 6/21/26 Wendy Etter 6/21/26

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"I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind." — Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ The mystics across traditions have said this in a thousand different ways. That the distance we feel from the divine is

Wendy Etter 6/14/26 Wendy Etter 6/14/26

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"As you find the light in you, you begin to see the light in everyone else. As you find God in yourself, there is God everywhere." — Ram Dass, Be Here Now We tend to assume the inner life and the outer life are two different proj

Wendy Etter 6/7/26 Wendy Etter 6/7/26

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"Oops" For the past three months, the daily reflections posted here have included quotes sourced with the help of AI. While every quote was intended to be accurate and attributable, we have found that many quotes don't hold up to veri

Wendy Etter 5/20/26 Wendy Etter 5/20/26

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"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Much of what we manage, evaluate, and track is visible—quantifiable, comparable, availa

Wendy Etter 5/19/26 Wendy Etter 5/19/26

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"But one day, I know, it will be otherwise." —Jane Kenyon, Otherwise The full poem this closes is a meditation on an ordinary morning—getting up, eating breakfast, the dog following at her heels. Kenyon wrote it knowing she was

Wendy Etter 5/18/26 Wendy Etter 5/18/26

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"It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life can only be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards." —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (1843) Self-will tends to live backward—

Wendy Etter 5/17/26 Wendy Etter 5/17/26

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"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." —Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity Change tends to activate self-will. When things shift—relationships, circumstances, the grou

Wendy Etter 5/16/26 Wendy Etter 5/16/26

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"on the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree" —W.S. Merwin, Place Self-will tends toward the strategic. It asks whether an action will pay off, whether the investment will be worth it, whether what we are doing will

Wendy Etter 5/15/26 Wendy Etter 5/15/26

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"As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them" —Denise Levertov, The Avowal Most of us were not taught to float. We were taught to keep moving—to stroke, to kick, to maintain effort so as not to sink. The idea tha

Wendy Etter 5/14/26 Wendy Etter 5/14/26

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