The readiness to surrender his lower nature to the higher one, to give up his own will in obedience to God's will, to put aside the ego for the sake of the Overself, puts a man far in advance of his fellows, but it also puts him into certain dangers and misconceptions of its own. The first danger is that he has given up his own will only to obey other men's wills, surrendered his own ego only to fall under the influence of other men's egos. The first misconception is to take lesser voices for God's voice. The second danger is to fall into personal idleness under the illusion that it is mystical passivity. The second misconception is to forget that although self-efforts are not enough of themselves to guarantee the oncoming of Grace, they are still necessary prerequisites to that oncoming. His intellectual, emotional, and moral disciplines are as needed to attract that Grace as are his aspirations, yearnings, and prayers for it. He cannot expect God to do for him work which should be done by himself.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 4 : Detaching from The Ego (Part I) > # 210
