{"id":15922,"date":"2017-08-15T09:37:10","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T13:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15922"},"modified":"2017-08-15T09:47:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T13:47:33","slug":"the-illusion-of-our-false-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15922","title":{"rendered":"The Illusion of Our False Self"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>True Self and False Self: Week 2<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eLj2tZCs6Ms\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/the-illusion-of-our-false-self-2017-08-15\/\"><strong>The Illusion of Our False Self<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Tuesday, August 15, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the following text, Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false self is but an illusion:<\/p>\n<p>Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.<\/p>\n<p>This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.<\/p>\n<p>My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God\u2019s will and God\u2019s love\u2014outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.<\/p>\n<p>We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves\u2014the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin. [1]<\/p>\n<p>The false self, sensing its fundamental unreality, begins to clothe itself in myths and symbols of power. Since it intuits that it is but a shadow, that it <em>is <\/em>nothing, it begins to convince itself that it <em>is <\/em>what it <em>does. <\/em>Hence, the more it does, achieves and experiences, the more real it becomes. Merton writes:<\/p>\n<p>All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. [2]<\/p>\n<p>Eventually and inevitably that which was too awful even to think about finally happens. Death reveals in us that eventually tomorrow is today and that we have run out of time. We discover by force of death that, as Merton describes:<\/p>\n<p>But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasure and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake. [3]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gateway to Silence:<br \/>\n<\/strong>I am one with God.<\/p>\n<p>________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p>From My Utmost for His Highest<\/p>\n<p><strong>You must be born again. \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=John+3%3A7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">John 3:7<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>The answer to Nicodemus\u2019 question, \u201cHow can a man be born when he is old?\u201d is: Only when he is willing to die to everything in his life, including his rights, his virtues, and his religion, and becomes willing to receive into himself a new life that he has never before experienced (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+3:4\">John 3:4<\/a>). This new life exhibits itself in our conscious repentance and through our unconscious holiness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>But as many as received Him<\/em>\u2026\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+1:12\">John 1:12<\/a>). Is my knowledge of Jesus the result of my own internal spiritual perception, or is it only what I have learned through listening to others? Is there something in my life that unites me with the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior? My spiritual history must have as its underlying foundation a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be born again means that I see Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2026<em>unless one is born again<\/em>, <em>he cannot see the kingdom of God<\/em> \u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+3:3\">John 3:3<\/a>). Am I seeking only for the evidence of God\u2019s kingdom, or am I actually recognizing His absolute sovereign control? The new birth gives me a new power of vision by which I begin to discern God\u2019s control. His sovereignty was there all the time, but with God being true to His nature, I could not see it until I received His very nature myself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Whoever has been born of God does not sin<\/em>\u2026\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=1+John+3:9\">1 John 3:9<\/a>). Am I seeking to stop sinning or have I actually stopped? To be born of God means that I have His supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, \u201cShould a Christian sin?\u201d The Bible emphatically states that <em>a Christian must not sin<\/em>. The work of the new birth is being effective in us when we do not commit sin. It is not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have actually stopped sinning. Yet\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=1+John+3:9\">1 John 3:9<\/a>\u00a0does not mean that we <em>cannot<\/em> sin\u2014 it simply means that if we will obey the life of God in us, that we <em>do not have to sin<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>True Self and False Self: Week 2 The Illusion of Our False Self Tuesday, August 15, 2017 Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton. In the following text, Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15922"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15928,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922\/revisions\/15928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}