The True Self and False Self (continued)

The true self is now hidden, buried underneath the layers of falsehood and deception of the false self. The false self is constituted of empty projections and illusions, which Merton says we construct to "[…] conceal the truth of our misery from ourselves, our brethren and from God" (Silent, p.22). The force drawing us away from our true identity is the influence of original sin (Shannon 1981). Because of original sin, we desire complete autonomy from God, to actually become our own god. Of course, this dream is crushed by the reality of our brokenness and misery, so we construct myriad ways of covering our weakness and sin with superficial projections of ourselves and others. The superficial quality of our false self is denoted in what Merton later called the exterior self. The exterior self sees everything as something at a distance to be used for one's own ends. It has withdrawn into exile from the true inner self, in which there was once contemplative union with God. In place of that blessed union, one's fulfillment becomes a matter of constructing an identity out of perceived and imagined successes, and, as Anne Carr (1988) explains, "Having become dependent on self-observation and self-assertion, one seeks happiness outside oneself" (p.49).

We construct the scaffolding of the false self out of the pleasures, experiences, power, knowledge, and glories of this life, in order to "clothe its nothingness into something objectively real" (Seeds, p.28). All this scaffolding, this cosmetic décor, is a vain attempt to mask the shame of our own nothingness apart from God. It is an illusion we fashion to "exist outside the radius of God's will and God's love—outside of reality and outside of life" (p.28). By living this lie, we make our false self the center around which everything is ordered, and the assumption that our egocentric desires constitute the reality of our life is the fountain of our sin (cf. p.28).

The true self is regained when God the Father comes to dwell in us in His Word and Spirit at baptism, according to Merton (Seeds, p.33). From that point, "our life becomes a series of choices between the fiction of our false-self, whom we feed with the illusions of passion and selfish appetite, and our true identity in the peace of God" (p.33-34). All of life on earth will have this struggle between falsehood and truth, selfish passions and the peace of God, because we tend to concentrate our faculties and actions on our false self--on our selfish ambitions, even when they involve the desire for virtue, sanctity, and contemplation. Good spiritual ends are tarnished by competing, fleshly ends. Yet, Merton believed the Holy Spirit always draws us to the true self (Shannon 1981). More hopeful still, the true self already abides in us, even if we are not able to fully discover it, for Christ lives in us. The true self is already revived in those who undergo the waters of New Birth at baptism. As for consciously experiencing the new self in Christ, Merton believed, studied, and taught that this blessing is pursued (humanly speaking) through contemplation.

¹Merton explicitly based this truth on Paul's famous saying about himself: I live, indeed not I, for truly Christ lives in me / Vivo, iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus (cf. Seeds, p.33).

 

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