True Self/False Self: Week 2
Summary: Sunday, August 7-Friday, August 12, 2016
Contemplation helps us to rest in God’s love; as we gradually take on the likeness of love, we will see love over there too. What you see is what you are. (Sunday)
Some form of suffering or death—psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical—is the only way we will loosen our ties to our small and separate false self. (Monday)
Longing for God and longing for our True Self are the same longing. The mystics would say it is God who is even doing the longing in us and through us. (Tuesday)
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When you are living in conscious connection with this Loving Inner Presence, you are in your True Self. God is forever united to this love within you. (Thursday)
You did not find the Great Love except by finding yourself too, and you cannot find your True Self without falling into the Great Love. (Friday)
Practice: The Song of True Self
Within us there is an inner, natural dignity. (You often see it in older folks.)
An inherent worthiness that already knows and enjoys. (You see it in children.)
It is an immortal diamond waiting to be mined and is never discovered undesired.
It is a reverence humming within us that must be honored.
Call it the True Self, the soul, the unconscious, deep consciousness, or the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Call it nothing.
It does not need the right name or right religion to show itself.
It does not even need to be understood. It is usually wordless.
It just is, and it shows itself best when we are silent, or in love, or both.
It is God-in-All-Things yet not circumscribed by any one thing.
It is enjoyed only when each part is in union with all other parts, because only then does it stand in the full truth.
Once in a while, this True Self becomes radiant and highly visible in one lovely place or person.
Superbly so, and for all to see, in the body of the Risen Christ.
And note that I did say “body.” It begins here and now in our embodied state in this world. Thus the Christ Mystery travels the roads of time.
Once you have encountered this True Self—and once is more than enough—the false self will begin to fall away on its own.
This will take most of your life, just as it did in Jesus.
What ballad or poem would you write about your True Self, telling its story, sharing its beauty?
Gateway to Silence:
God in me loves God in everything.
Reference:
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 56-57.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
Richard Rohr, True Self/False Self (CD)
