The word of the Lord came to me:  Mortal, set your face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, and say to it, Thus says the Lord God: I am against you, Mount Seir; I stretch out my hand against you to make you a desolation and a waste.  I lay your towns in ruins; you shall become a desolation, and you shall know that I am the Lord.  Because you cherished an ancient enmity, and gave over the people of Israel to the power of the sword at the time of their calamity, at the time of their final punishment; therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, I will prepare you for blood, and blood shall pursue you; since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed shall pursue you.  I will make Mount Seir a waste and a desolation; and I will cut off from it all who come and go.  I will fill its mountains with the slain; on your hills and in your valleys and in all your watercourses those killed with the sword shall fall.  I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities shall never be inhabited. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Mount Seir can be thought of also as our ego.  When we set out on the path of prayer and the spiritual life, one of the first things which must happen is the destruction of our ego.  If we are sincere, the Lord stretches out his hand against it to make it a desolation.  It is utterly necessary for this false self to be destroyed in order to make way for Christ’s presence in our hearts.  He is to sit upon that throne: there cannot be another.

“Because you cherished an ancient enmity,” that is, the ego has attempted to sell us into slavery of the world.  It seeks its own gratification and idols and listens to the voice of the ancient evil that says “I shall not serve.”  Twice in this passage our ego is told “you shall become a desolation.”  But directly after each time we also hear “you shall know that I am the Lord.”  What sweeter knowledge could possibly be had?  To know in the depths of our hearts that we are not God, to know, truly know, that there is a Lord and he is acting in our lives to cause us to know him – what better?

Thus it is that we must enter into deep interior silence and solicitude so that all the false knowledge drifting about our consciousness may be flushed out and forever replaced by the Word, who is Truth.