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A reader named Dave recently sent this question to me:<\/p>\n
Hi Carl, could you please give me some suggestions on reading for the false self\/ego? Just going through early chapters of New Seeds of Contemplation<\/em><\/a> and it\u2019s really gripped me to dive deeper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He didn\u2019t specify what passage(s) in\u00a0New Seeds of Contemplation<\/em> were speaking to him, but it\u2019s pretty easy to see where this topic \u2014 the \u201cfalse self\u201d \u2014 shows up in Merton\u2019s work. Consider these quotes (page numbers are from the Kindle edition):<\/p>\n
The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. (page 27)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And,<\/p>\n
My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God\u2019s will and God\u2019s love\u2014outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion. (page 36)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, to talk about the \u201cfalse self\u201d leads to a parallel conversation about one\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d self. Here\u2019s Merton again:<\/p>\n
Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. (page 38)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
To the best of my knowledge, Merton was the first major Christian contemplative author in the English language to write about this \u201ctrue self \/ false self\u201d distinction. But he was hardly the last! His fellow Trappist monks Thomas Keating and M. Basil Pennington use this language; indeed, Pennington wrote an entire book on this concept:\u00a0True Self,\u00a0False Self: Unmasking the Spirit Within<\/i><\/a>. The concept of the true and false self show up in some of Keating\u2019s most important books, like Open Mind Open Heart<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and Invitation to Love<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0Beyond the Trappists, Richard Rohr picks up this language in his book\u00a0Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n
Although\u00a0New Seeds of Contemplation<\/em> was published in 1962, it is in fact a revision of an earlier work,\u00a0Seeds of Contemplation<\/em><\/a>, which came out in 1949 \u2014 barely a year after Merton\u2019s bestseller\u00a0The Seven Storey Mountain<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>was published. Merton uses this language of true self and false self in the earlier edition, so the idea had been part of his thinking since his first decade in the cloister.<\/p>\n
(Incidentally, if you look up \u201ctrue self and false self\u201d in Wikipedia, you\u2019ll find an assertion that the language only dates back to about 1960, in the writing of a British psychiatrist named Donald Winnicott. Apparently the editor of that particular page on Wikipedia is ignorant of, or uninterested in, the religious\/contemplative use of these concepts!)<\/p>\n
Merton\u2019s description of the false self carries a kind of theological harshness that might be expected from a pre-Vatican II Trappist monk. The false self is a \u201cprison\u201d and is linked to sin; in Merton\u2019s dour assessment, \u201cTo say I was born in sin is to say I came into the world with a false self.\u201d (page 35). Thankfully, he goes out of his way to insist that the false self should not be equated to the flesh (the body) \u2014 but this disclaimer only appeared in the \u201cNew Seeds\u201d edition of the book, not in the original 1949 edition. It makes me wonder if Merton had to deal with readers jumping to that kind of dualist conclusion after reading the original text.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, later writers (like Keating) have tended to shy away from equating the false self with sin. In Invitation to Love<\/em>, Keating uses therapeutic rather than juridical language to describe the false self:<\/p>\n
The false self is the syndrome of our emotional programs for happiness grown into sources of motivation and made much more complex by the socialization process, and reinforced by our overidentification with our cultural conditioning. Our ordinary thoughts, reactions, and feelings manifest the false self on every level of our conduct. (page 12).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In other words, the false self is not a sinner who needs to be disciplined, but the symptom of an illness that needs to be healed.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s certainly an improvement. But I think it\u2019s still just putting lipstick on a pig. In other words, whether we see the \u201cfalse self\u201d as either symptomatic of sin or sickness, either way I think it\u2019s language that creates more problems than it solves.<\/p>\n
We Have Enough Dichotomies; We Don\u2019t Need to Create New Ones<\/h3>\n
Recently I had an email exchange with another person about the notion of the true and false self. Here (edited slightly for brevity) is what I wrote:<\/p>\n
\n\nI, personally, am very<\/i> uncomfortable with the language of \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d self. I know it\u2019s widely used \u2014 from Merton to Pennington to Keating to Rohr, etc. \u2014 but I also know this distinction is very much a product of our time, and isn\u2019t found earlier in the mystical tradition\u2026 it seems to me that the language of true\/false self is inherently dualistic and sets up a dynamic of judgment (either good or bad, but judgment either way) toward the self. If splits the self off into accuser and defendant.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nMy correspondent had linked the concept of the false self to the Biblical concept of dying to the old self, as seen in Romans 6:6-8, where St. Paul says, \u201cWe know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.\u00a0But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Paul never uses language of \u201cfalse\u201d and \u201ctrue\u201d self, although he does talk about the \u201cold\u201d and the \u201cnew\u201d self. Still, I\u2019m uncomfortable reading this contemporary concept back into the ancient text of scripture. So I went on to say:<\/p>\n
\n\nI also think it\u2019s anachronistic to project true\/false self language back onto biblical teachings: when we are invited to \u201cdie to self\u201d it\u2019s a much more radical call when we refuse to refract the self into the \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d bits. It all<\/i> has to die. We are called to surrender without condition or limitation into the boundarylessness of Divine Mercy and Love.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cA Modern Expression of a Very Old Mistake\u201d<\/h3>\n
Well, the language of the false self makes me uneasy, but let me give credit where it is due: the British solitary Maggie Ross was the first person I encountered whose dislike for this language actually helped me to realize that I, too, am uncomfortable with it. Here\u2019s what Maggie had to say in her book\u00a0Silence: A User\u2019s Guide Volume I<\/em><\/a>:<\/div>\nFalse self\/true self are commonly-used phrases suggesting that there is part of the person that needs to be excised, suppressed, or destroyed; the assumption behind them is that the self is static and linear. This is a procrustean notion of the self. It is a modern expression of a very old mistake. Its modern use in the discussion of old texts is anachronistic. It is antithetical to notions of incarnation, and alien to pre-Reformation Christianity\u2026 it is a self-judgement that takes place entirely from the very limited and skewed perspective of the \u2026 virtual\/conceptual self-conscious mind; this alone makes its claims untenable. \u2026 The paradox of intention\u2014and witnesses through the ages\u2014suggest that we can never know who we are, much less make such a judgment.
\n<\/span>The deep mind, where the person\u2019s truth continually unfolds out of sight, is not directly accessible, although it receives, discerns, and incorporates the decisions and attitudes categorized by self-consciousness. \u2026engaging and entering our wounds and what we most despise about our selves are fundamental to trans-figuration, to wisdom, practice, and compassion. The message of the Incarnation is that nothing is wasted<\/em>. (Kindle location 1532ff.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nTo put it more simply and concisely: whenever we label part of ourselves as \u201cfalse,\u201d we are disobeying Matthew 7:1, where Jesus instructs us to refrain from judgment. Even when we sin, we need to keep our focus primarily on God\u2019s redeeming and forgiving love, which is always greater than our disobedience or our harmful actions.<\/p>\n
Trying to split ourselves into a \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d dimension \u2014 even in the interest of understanding the difference between sin and grace, or sickness and health, at work in our lives \u2014 just creates a bigger problem than it solves. Maggie Ross\u2019s concept of the \u201cdeep mind\u201d is a reminder that there are dimensions to human life and experience that remain inaccessible to our wills or even to our understanding.<\/p>\n
Merton wrote about this, in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander<\/em><\/a>, talking about what he called\u00a0le point\u00a0<\/em>vierge<\/i>: \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Deep Mind and Le Point Vierge<\/em>: Where Survival Mind and Playful Mind Remember That They Are One<\/h3>\n
I believe Maggie Ross\u2019s concept of the \u201cdeep mind\u201d may be equivalent to Merton\u2019s concept of\u00a0le point vierge<\/em>: it\u2019s a place at the center of our being where the dichotomy between \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d self simply no longer matters: for it is a place of pure love and compassion, mercy and forgiveness, continually inviting us into reconciliation and renewal. At the surface level,\u00a0the so-called false\u00a0self \u201csins\u201d and the so-called true self \u201cjudges the sin.\u201d <\/i>Unfortunately, both of these positions miss the mark. But at the level of\u00a0le point vierge<\/em>, the deep mind, we recognize that both false and true self stand in need of mercy and forgiveness, both are renewed in the light of grace and love, and both are made one in Christ: one with Christ, and even\u00a0one with each other<\/em>.<\/p>\n
In my very first book,\u00a0Spirituality<\/em><\/a>, published in 1997 (that long ago?!?), I came up with an alternative to the language of \u201cfalse\u201d and \u201ctrue\u201d self: I talked about two dimensions of consciousness, which I called\u00a0survival-mind<\/em> and\u00a0playful-mind<\/em>. As you can imagine, survival-mind is really good at filing income tax returns, managing one\u2019s financial portfolio, keeping the oil changed and the air ducts clean, and so forth and so on. Playful-mind, meanwhile, tends to be better at writing poetry, engaging in contemplative prayer, falling in love, and embracing the encounter with mystery. Like Mary and Martha of Bethany, they are siblings, and they need each other. No judgment!<\/p>\n
There are things that survival-mind does really well, and other things where it falls flat. The same holds true for playful-mind, but in different dimensions.\u00a0Each can be judgmental of the other<\/em>. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a lot of the rhetoric that we see written about the problems of the \u201cfalse self\u201d sounds like the playful-mind expressing its criticism of the survival-mind! Imagine the parable of Mary and Martha if it had been Mary complaining about Martha rather than the other way around, and you might get a sense of what I\u2019m trying to say here.<\/p>\n
Another approach to this distinction between our everyday awareness and the deep mind \u2014 that\u2019s much more academically rigorous than my old book \u2014 can be found in a book called\u00a0The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Ian McGilchrist. Read it along with Ross\u2019s book to get an in-depth sense of what she means by \u201cthe deep mind\u201d and how it is distinct from, and yet intimately related to, our more ordinary rational consciousness, which is analogous to my concept of the \u201csurvival-mind\u201d \u2014 or, I believe, what many people may be referring to when they talk about the \u201cfalse self.\u201d<\/p>\n
I know that I have no business daring to criticize the many great contemplative writers of our time who talk about the distinction between the true and false self. But like Maggie Ross, I\u2019m just not very comfortable with the language. I worry that it\u2019s too easy to misunderstand it and lapse into dualistic thinking around these notions. Maybe the playful\/survival model could be a more helpful way of thinking about how we sometimes embrace and sometimes reject dimensions of ourselves. Maybe the notions of the deep mind and\u00a0le point vierge<\/em> can help us to remember that there is something bigger and deeper at work than just rejecting a part of ourself that we\u2019ve labeled \u201cthe false self\u201d (or \u201cthe ego\u201d or \u201cthe older brother\u201d or \u201cself-righteousness\u201d or whatever).<\/p>\n
So\u2026 this is a very\u00a0<\/em>long-winded reply to my friend Dave, who just asked for a few book recommendations! Obviously, I\u2019d suggest you check out all the books I\u2019ve mentioned in this post (the highlighted titles will take you to Amazon if you want to purchase any copies; please do follow the links because then I get a small commission off of your purchase, at no extra cost to you). But I hope that you\u2019ll take Maggie Ross\u2019s critique to heart. Contemplation is all about rediscovering the unity that is always already there. So it\u2019s a bit of a detour to get caught up in language that just introduces new types of dichotomies into our thinking.<\/p>\n
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