Our True and False Selves
Image by Bp. Jim Gonia
When we think about the spiritual journey, we tend to imagine ourselves traveling toward God. But Thomas Merton describes it differently.
In New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton describes the concept of the true self and the false self. The false self is the image we have of ourselves as separate from God. This is an illusion. Whenever we see ourselves in one place (e.g. earth) and God in another (e.g. heaven) we are viewing the world from the perspective of our false selves. In Genesis, when Adam and Eve ate from the apple they began to see the world from a new perspective - the perspective of the false self. After the apple, they saw themselves as separate from God. When they considered themselves from this perspective they saw they were naked so they covered themselves. That could not have happened if Adam and Eve had continued to understand themselves as part of God and creation just as they were. According to Merton, “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.”
When we reduce the world to what we can perceive with our 5 senses and attempt to interpret all of our experiences through this lens, we cut ourselves off from our true nature and our deeper relationship with God. Once we cut ourselves off from God, we come to worship our false self as “reality”. Merton says, “To worship our false selves is to worship nothing, and to worship nothing is hell.”
Our true self is aware of the essential truth that we are not separate from God. We are not God, but we are united with God. God dwells within us as we dwell within God. This is something our souls know, but that our minds don’t comprehend because they are caught up in the illusion created by the false self.
The spiritual journey opens our minds to reality. As Merton puts it, “Our inner self awakens, and a momentary flash, in the instant of recognition when we say “Yes?” to the indwelling Divine Persons. (Father, Son, Spirit) We are only really ourselves when we completely consent to “receive the glory of God into ourselves. Our true self is, then the self that receives freely and gladly the missions that are God’s supreme gift to his sons. Any other “self” is only an illusion.” According to Merton, the only true joy on earth is to escape the prison of the false self and engage our union with God.
Faith allows us to experience our union with God without needing to understand or interpret it. This is important since our union with God is incomprehensible and even offensive to our false selves. Left to our own decisions, we reject the idea of union because it threatens the illusion we’ve created. Our false self likes the way it has organized the world. To the false self, the world is a place where we have control and where all things are manageable. Of course, this is a fragile image. Anyone who has faced crisis knows that our sense of control is an illusion. God invites us to let go of that illusion and embrace our genuine mutual relationship with God’s self.
As Merton says, “Faith goes beyond words and brings us to the light of God himself. …faith opens a higher realm of unity.” Faith is experiential in nature. For many of us, our greatest challenge is simply accepting our experiences of God as “real”. Faith isn’t an understanding we develop, it is a choice we make to be open to God.
It’s all about perspective. If we can suspend the perspective of the false self which sees ourselves as separate from God, then we can become open to God showing us another way. God shows us this other perspective through prayer.
Prayer is the manifestation of God’s will in our soul. It is initiated by God and it is the means by which God transforms our will into his.
Stop and think about this a minute… Prayer is the manifestation of God’s will in our soul. The next time you pray, imagine that your desire to pray comes from God and that you responding to that nudge. Does this idea change the way you see prayer?
Prayer is the mechanism by which “oneing” (our awareness of our union with God) happens.
Contemplation is an exercise in union. In contemplation we sit with the awareness that God is within us, and we are within God.
The next time you go outside by yourself, take a few moments and simply be present in the moment. Notice the gentle breeze, the sounds of birds, the smell of flowers and the warmth of the sun on your face. In that moment, recognize that you are not alone. God is with you and within you. At the same time, recognize that you are standing within God along with the rest of creation. Hold on to this possibility even if it doesn’t make much sense. Simply be open to God’s presence. Allow God to breathe into you with sighs too deep for words. When the moment passes (however long or brief), give thanks to God and go about your day. You will find that these moments with God nourish your soul in ways it is hard to explain. Don’t try to explain it, just accept it and keep giving thanks and opening yourself to God. God will be your guide and bring you back to your true self.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was one of the more influential spiritual writers of the last century. Read more about him here: http://merton.org/chrono.aspx
As a Trappist was a monk, peace activist, and teacher, he described the Christian spiritual journey and its implications for how we engage with the world. Merton noticed many striking similarities and differences between Buddhism and Christianity. He promoted East-West dialogue by visiting the Dalai Lama and other Buddhists and writing about the similarities between Christian mystics and Buddhists teachers.
