False Self, True Self-Intro
We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real and lives for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth. Thomas Merton
Gregg’s Reflection
As a second son, I rebelled against the expectations of my father and spent my college years experiencing the counter culture. I grew up with the understanding that I was to follow my father into the family business selling heavy construction equipment. My experience of better living through chemistry in the ‘70’s helped me see through the American dream and realize that working myself to the bone to make my family wealthy while ignoring those less fortunate would not make me happy. So, I swore never to go to work for the old man.
Three years after marrying Genie, we were expecting our daughter, and living in a garage apartment near Emory in Atlanta. I made a fundamental choice to defer my own dreams in order to create a home and rear our children. So, I cut my hair and beard, and went to my father with hat in hand and asked for a job.
When I went to work in the family business, I put on a mask that I rarely let down for 25 years. Most of our customers were contractors who did not much appreciate the counter culture types. I knew that the real me would not be accepted by our customers, suppliers and employees. So, I pretended. My father was a workaholic and perfectionist, and the message I heard as a child was, ‘you’re not good enough.’ So I put on a false identity, cleaned up my act, and kept my personal views to myself at work.
I spent nearly 50 years believing I was “not good enough.” Ever struggle with low self esteem? Consider this, “if we are willing to respond to the opportunities God places in our path, instead of saying we are not good enough; if we are able to respond to the nudges from God’s Word and Spirit, rather than make excuses based on our negative self-evaluation; if we are stubborn enough to persevere in following Christ despite our mistakes-then God, through us, can carve a furrow through this earth’s murky waters and leave a shimmering residue of hope and faith in our wake.” Notes on Luke 9:20 in RENOVARE Study Bible. What a hopeful thought!
Robert Fritz and his work on Structural Thinking helped me see that I was living out of a distortion of reality as I tried to prove myself to my long-dead father, and really to God. I realized that the identity I had put on, the mask, was really keeping me from living into the fullness of life as a Christ-follower. Even though I consciously believed in Salvation by Grace, subconsciously I was still trying to prove myself worthy. Take a look here for a post on how identity can limit our spiritual growth and our relationship with God.
In the last dozen years, I have had some success putting space between myself and my structure of trying to prove myself. Yet, the tentacles of structure are still lurking just beneath the surface waiting to reach up and grab me. I have found myself wrapped around an axle, and back in my structure several times. Sometimes, it has lasted months.
I am now a structural consultant, working with organizations and individuals. I am helping others see the false identity, the mask they have been wearing. It is incredible to see the fog lift when someone sees reality clearly, and sees the distortion of living in false identity. As the Buddhists would say, finding true self is finding the face you had before you were born. Think about that one.
Enjoy this audio introduction.
If you’d like to go deeper after reading this intro, look for the full post here.
Journaling Prompts
Are you chasing success in the world, so focused on doing that you cannot just ‘be‘? What would it look like to live true to your deeper self? Can you pull free from what others consider an obligation to follow ’the road less traveled’?
Scripture
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Mark 8:36
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2
You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and diluted by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and clothe yourself with a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:22-24
Ancient Writings
Often our trust is not full. We are not certain that God hears us because we consider ourselves worthless and as nothing. This is ridiculous and the cause of our weakness. I have felt this way myself.
Julian of Norwich, Christian Mystics Matthew Fox, p. 53
For He says, “I shall totally shatter you because of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you together and make you humble and gentle, pury and holy, by oneing you to myself.”
Julian of Norwich, The Complete Julian, Fr John-Julian
Modern Writings
The neurosis of our age is the fear of being all that we are. Afraid of being all that we are, we pretend to be less than we are. But, because at some level, we know we are pretending, we experience anxiety that our charade will be discovered, and we will have to stand up and become all that we really are and are called to be.
Rollo May
We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real and which lives by a shadowy autonomy for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth and whom he subsists. It is this inner self that is taken up into the mystery of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, so that in secret we live “in Christ.”
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 295
If what you attempt is not to change yourself but to observe yourself, to study every one of your reactions to people and things, without judgment or condemnation or desire to reform yourself, your observation will be nonselective, comprehensive, never fixed on rigid conclusions, always open and fresh from moment to moment.
Then you will notice a marvelous thing happening within you: You will be flooded with the light of awareness, you will become transparent and transformed. Will change occur then? Oh, yes. But it will not be brought about by your cunning, restless ego that is forever competing, comparing, coercing, sermonizing, manipulating in its intolerance and its ambitions.
No, the transforming light of awareness brushes aside your scheming, self-seeking ego to give Nature full rein to bring about the same kind of change that she produces in the rose: artless, graceful, unself-conscious, wholesome, untainted by inner conflict.
Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love, p. 83-84
Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project.
We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self – the false self – and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.
Basil Pennington, A Place Apart
Jesus, if we do not get some new wineskins, “the wine and the wineskin will both be lost” (Luke 5:37–39). The second half of life can hold some new wine because by then there should be some strong wineskins, some tested ways of holding our lives together.
But that normally means that the container itself has to stretch, die in its present form, or even replace itself with something better. Only when we have begun to live in the second half of life can we see the difference between the two. Yet the two halves are cumulative and sequential, and both are very necessary.
We cannot do a nonstop flight to the second half of life by reading lots of books about it. Grace must and will edge us forward. There are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.
We are a “first-half-of-life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their own development up to now, because it is all they had time for. We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.
But it takes us much longer to discover “the task within the task.” Problematically, the first task invests so much of our blood, sweat, tears, and years that we often cannot imagine there is a second task, or that anything more could be expected of us. “The old wineskins are good enough,” we say.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, p. xiii–xiv, 2–3.
People who are still living in the false self are history-stoppers. They use God and religion to protect their own status and the status quo of the world that sustains them. They are often fearful people: the nice, proper folks of every age who think like everyone else thinks and have no power to break through or, as Jesus’s opening words state, “to change” (Mk 1:15, Mt 4:17) and move beyond their small agenda. Courage is a foundational virtue. Without it, faith, love, and hope do not happen. It takes immense courage to trust our own experience and be willing to pay the price if we are wrong-and we just might be.
Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p.59
The spiritual journey is about living more and more in that abundant place where you don’t have to wrap yourself around your hurts, your defeats, your failures. Your true self is characterized by radical contentment.
Richard Rohr, Spring Within, p. 230
Cynthia Bourgeault, in her commentary on Bruteau’s work below, says, “our locus of identity is constantly fluctuating back and forth along a continuum from constructed to unboundaried.”
