The False Self...

...cannot become aware of others as real persons because others are only extensions of themselves. You can see this in a person because for this false self everyone and everything else is ultimately utilitarian. They do not ask questions. They do not enquire. They do not try and see the world through anyone else’s eyes, let alone to set their own lives on hold and to meet the needs of others on other’s terms. They may present themselves as being helpful. But they live in a world of objectification.

This purely exterior ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of projects and goals. It is the ‘I’ that needs to possess things and make things happen. When life falls apart they rush in to cut and glue things back together. The false ‘I’ may even go on to make plans to ensure that these problems will never happen again. But this ‘I’ is alienated from the ‘I’ that is is hidden and interior.

The true self has no projects. For this interior ‘I’ nothing fits into any grand scheme, or at least not one that is discernable to any other ‘I’. This ‘I’ seeks only to be. It moves only to the promptings of God rather than to plans of its own desires. And this is precisely what makes it acceptable to God. This ‘I’ knows God as a subject, a ‘Thou’, and not as an object, an ‘It’.

The greatest irony of all comes when this exterior ‘I’ conceives of a plan to manipulate itself in a fashion that it believes will allow the true self, the interior self, the genuine ‘I’ to emerge. But once again, the true self seeks to accomplish nothing, which is its very nature. Any self that emerges in response to any manipulation is not the true self. The inner self is the self that cannot be either tricked or manipulated. The true self is a very shy animal . It never appears when an alien presence is about. I only emerges in peace and silence and solitude. It cannot be lured by anyone or anything. It responds only to the gentle, subaudible call of God.

There was once a man whom I met who was promoting himself as a writer. He gave writing workshops that purported to help aspiring writiers to write about ‘real stories’. When I asked him what distinguished a real from an unreal story he would answer with, Well, that’s the big question...that’s the challenge...the real trick isn’t it? It turned out to be nothing more than a solution requiring another step in a process of greater and greater discernment, another layer of interpretation, and therefore, alienation.

The call to contemplation can never be conceived or responded to by such an ‘I’.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My heart is not proud, O Lord,

my eyes are not haughty.

I do not concern myself with great matters

or affairs beyond my scope.

No, I hold myself in quiet and stillness

like a weaned child at their mother’s breast

like a weaned child so is my soul within me.

Even so let Israel hope in the Lord

now and forever.

Psalm 131