Charles Brandt would often offer a teaching at the beginning of his monthly meditations. The following teaching by Richard Rohr closely reflects one of these offerings where the focus was on discerning the false self from true self as described by Thomas Merton.
The following is quoted directly from Richard Rohr’s Aug 6th, 2023 daily meditation:
The “separate” self is the major problem, not the shadow self which only takes deeper forms of disguise. [1]
Father Richard Rohr believes that growth in spirituality involves detaching from our separate or false self and living from our True Self. Richard explains:
I learned the terms “True Self” and “false self” from Thomas Merton (1915–1968)—words he used to clarify what Jesus surely meant when he said that we must die to ourselves or we must “lose ourselves to find ourselves” (Mark 8:35). Merton rightly recognized that it was not the body self that had to “die” (which much of Christian history seemed to believe), but the “false self.” Our attachment to our small, separate, false self must die to allow our True Self—our basic and unchangeable identity in God—to live fully and freely. [2]
Thomas Merton memorably describes his mystical experience of the True Self:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut [now Fourth and Muhammad Ali Boulevard], in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.… The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream….
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift….
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. [3]