Week Two: The Struggle with the False Self

Who am I?

This is a foundational question that we’ll forever struggle with in prayer and writing until we finally confront it. There may be no better tool for answering this question than Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self.

This is the book that saved my soul, or at least saved me from myself.

The false self won’t be silenced easily. In fact, I have found that the false self is so hard to fight because living into your true self in God’s love requires doing LESS. So much of religion is about doing more or doing something differently. Rohr’s wisdom about the true self appears to be counterintuitive at first.

 

“Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God . . . The great surprise and irony is that “you,” or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It’s sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn’t it? All you can do is nurture it.”

* * * * *

“The soul, the True Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things, you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go. The False Self cannot do this.”

* * * * *

“Remember, please remember, you do not (you must not!) fear, attack, or hate the False Self. That would only continue a negative and arrogant death energy, and it is delusional and counterproductive anyway. It would be trying to “drive out the devil by the prince of devils,” as Jesus puts it. In the great economy of grace, all is used and transformed, and nothing is wasted. God uses your various False Selves to lead you beyond them.”

* * * * *

“What the ego (the False Self) hates and fears more than anything else is change. It will think up a thousand other things to be concerned about or be moralistic about—anything rather than giving up “who I think I am” and “who I need to be to look good.”

 

Finding your true self in God’s love is largely a matter of practicing the presence of God rather than trying to do any one thing better. If we let God define who we are, we’ll start to recognize the times when the false sense begins to whisper lies to us.

Once we learn to rest in Christ, we’ll begin to recognize when the imposter of the false self emerges.

Learn more about Immortal Diamond today.

 

Keep in Touch

Get our latest blog posts delivered to your inbox or sign up for the weekly contemplative email and receive a free eBook: The Contemplative Writer.

 

For Reflection or Sharing