True Self / Separate Self
This week the Daily Meditations focus on the fifth of CAC’s Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy:
The “separate” self is the major problem, not the shadow self which only takes deeper forms of disguise. [1]
Father Richard Rohr believes that growth in spirituality involves detaching from our separate or false self and living from our True Self. Richard explains:
I learned the terms “True Self” and “false self” from Thomas Merton (1915–1968)—words he used to clarify what Jesus surely meant when he said that we must die to ourselves or we must “lose ourselves to find ourselves” (Mark 8:35). Merton rightly recognized that it was not the body self that had to “die” (which much of Christian history seemed to believe), but the “false self.”
The “separate” self is the major problem, not the shadow self which only takes deeper forms of disguise. [1]
Thomas Merton memorably describes his mystical experience of the True Self:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut [now Fourth and Muhammad Ali Boulevard], in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.… The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream….
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift….
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. [3]
Mining for an Immortal Diamond
Richard Rohr invites us to the transformative process of discovering our True Selves:
In the first ending to Mark’s Gospel—the oldest gospel—the text ends on a very disappointing, and thus likely truthful, note: “They ran away from the tomb frightened out of their wits. They said nothing to a soul, for they were afraid” (see Mark 16:5–8).
Such running from resurrection has been a prophecy for Christianity and much of religion. I interpret this as the human temptation to run from and deny not just the divine presence, but our own True Selves—our souls, our inner destiny, our true identity. Our True Self is that part of us that knows who we are and whose we are, although largely unconsciously. Our false self is just who we think we are—but thinking doesn’t make it so.
We are made for transcendence and endless horizons, but our small ego usually gets in the way until we become aware of its petty preoccupations and eventually seek a deeper truth. It is like mining for a diamond. We must dig deep; and yet we seem reluctant, even afraid, to do so.
The question the three women ask in this first moment of would-be resurrection is still ours: “Who will roll away the rock?” (Mark 16:3). Who will help us in this mining operation for the True Self? What will it take to find my True Self? How do I even know there is an “immortal diamond” underneath and behind this rock of my ego, my specific life experience, my own culture? Up to now, it has been common to religiously believe that Jesus’ physical body could really “resurrect.” That was much easier than asking whether we could really change or resurrect. It got us off the hook—the hook of growing up, of taking the search for our True Selves seriously.
Up to now, we have been more driven by outer authority than drawn in by the calm and loving inner authority (the in-dwelling Holy Spirit) of prayer, practice, and inner experience. This has a much better chance of allowing us to meet and know our True Self. For all practical purposes, this change of identity from the separate self to the connected and True Self is the major—almost seismic—shift in motivation and consciousness itself that mature religion rightly calls conversion. It is the very heart of all religious transformation (“changing forms”). Without it, religion is mostly a mere belonging system or a mere belief system, but it does not radically change our consciousness or motivation.
The clarification and rediscovery of the True Self lays a solid foundation—and a clear initial goal—for all religion. We cannot build any serious spiritual house if we do not first find something solid and foundational to build on—inside our self! “Like knows like” is the principle. God-in-us already knows, loves, and serves God in everything else.
