The False-Self, Healing

"This was also the point in my life when I became a master at masking my true thoughts."    --an unknown blogger

Simple Mindedly browsing though some blogs, I came upon this curious and very honest statement, "this was also the point in my life when I became a master at masking my true thoughts..."
How many of us relate to this? One guesses very many; it seems that one of our many fears is that we will not be accepted as we are, that we apparently see ourselves fearfully as a certain type of monster. While there are those rare individuals in every society who rub against the grain, some who are evil, for most of us this is a fear we face each and every day.

Recalling the words of R.D. Lang, "every man is involved whether or to the extent to which he is being true to his nature." The false-self as Lang views it is the complement of an inner, spiritual self, if you will, which is occupied with maintaining its identity and freedom by being transcendent, unembodied, and thus never grasped, pinpointed, trapped or possessed.
Its aim, writes Lang in his book, The Divided Self, "is to be a pure subject, without any objective existence. Thus except in certain safe moments, the individual seeks to regard his existence as the expression of a false-self, not himself.

 In spiritual terms, this is devastating, and it is very common. How often do we encounter the "fake" smile and the yawn which quickly follows it? How often do we feel divided, yet proceed with the response that is expected, even when it feels untrue to our deeper self?
And how often must we force ourselves to comport an attitude which we don't feel yet believe for social reasons to be obliged? In some societies these behaviors are usual and expected; societies in which the group is more valued than individuals frequently demand this behavior; one learns, 'a smile often hides a frown.' And in these groups, this behavior is normative.

Yet here in the West, often there is the sense of a dis-connect with the self and others. We are afraid to say who we are, or what matters most in our short lives; maintaining this stance may lead to a sense of grief, depression or loss over time.
As Lang expresses the situation, having an identity for the self, a private identity and another identity developed for the consumption of others is at times functional, and also may be at times non-functional leading to a sense of dis-reality, a feeling of not being real, a fake.
While living one's truth is not always easy, healing the self, gaining a perspective beyond the solution of the "false-self" is very healing to a soul; the soul seeks its original wholeness.

The false, divided self is like a child, eternally small, anxious, weak and not responsible for what happens in any given interaction. This is because a feeling arises that it wasn't truly me who did those things--it was someone else. Alternatively, there is a sense that one may do things--but only to a point-- because the truer, inner self would not go that far, or allow those thoughts or behaviors--would they? So it's not me.

The end point of many spiritual traditions is to encourage the maturity of the individual, to acknowledge the rightness of all creation, individuals included, so as to bridge the gap, with the clear knowledge, the belief in the harmony and rightness of matters to each one.
This existential dawning of both 'false' and true, undivided, self is widespread across today's societies; writers as diverse as Henry Fielding, Kierkegaard, Sartre, D.H. Lawrence and Carl Jung have acknowledged its role in the modern world. It is becoming a constant theme as societies settle into an industrialized, group identity. This leaves little room for the self, so you then must carve a whole one.

Bold Love and Evil

"If Christ, for one had practiced the love we advocate these days, he would have lived to a ripe old age."

In his classic book, Bold Love, psychologist and minister, Dan Allender writes compellingly of the face of evil in a world that is all things, not all love. He says, "We've come to view love as being nice. Forgiving and forgetting. Yielding to the desires of others. Yet the kind of love modeled by Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others has nothing to do with manners or unconditional acceptance. Rather, it is shrewd. Disruptive. Courageous. And as a result, often socially unacceptable."
Bold love is a harsh mistress, because there's nothing redeeming about a love that just blindly accepts.

What does it mean to love those who harm me? What does it mean, to love my enemy? The love of my friend is not so difficult. This story ultimately is about a forgiving love in a world side by side with the evil of the devil. Allender says that forgiveness surely does not mean forgetting the past, and ignoring the damage of harms past and present. Doing this would be erasure of one's personal history in the midst of a life. Human beings have been created lives worthy of love and forgiveness. We must first learn to forgive ourselves of the fault and failings that we have perpetrated. We must accept our humanness, our sometimes incomprehensible oddities and weaknesses.

"Bold love is a powerful agent of change that can transform both the lover and the beloved." The passion of bold love is a gift that brings a hardened heart face to face with a redemptive tenderness, and love of a Creator for his creation. We have all heard so much about God's love that his wrath and fury at our hardness and iniquity have been plowed under. There is no understanding of the Gospel message nor the centrality of the cross. Without recognition of the cross, its meaning and intersection of both, wrath and mercy are lost. It is a cross.

Mercy and its mysteries are great. Is it possible that we may be both passionately furious, and disposed to the doing of good?
Like the biblical figures Job and Jacob, we have the privilege to struggle with our failings, with God, and know that we will not be destroyed. Someone has been to the cross and shown us that. We are not to be in exile, nor a stranger to the promises of God. Not to be stripped naked and shamed, even in our darkest rage and most insolent self-justification, the face of God is there for the viewing. We may see his face and live.

The apostle Paul writes,  'For if we were God's enemies, we were reconciled with him through the death of his son.' Romans 5:8-10
"In his book, The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann expressed the loss for the Father and for the Son in this way: 'The Son suffers the dying; the Father suffers the death of the Son.
 The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father."

Allender writes, "Love is [now] before me, like a wall, like a deep cut on my hand. It is unforgettable; it is inflamed within me; it is a shrill, silent, noisy, still voice that captures my deepest and my most superficial thoughts." I am saved because he is mine and I am his. I am the deepest secret of God's heart.