Trappist Thomas Merton on the Real and False Selves

I am a spiritual being with a body, flesh, matter.

And, my true self is the real self beyond the mask, the false self.

I love this reality Merton points out.

Merton is buried in Kentucky at Gethsemane Retreat House where he lived. 

That is my special place for a time to connect again more deeply with God, and, in turn with others through reflection, perspective, and renewed aim for the abundant and full life,  Jesus invites for me.

At the center of Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton's spirituality, is his view of our real and false selves.

The work Merton did to bridge the East and West is real today even after his unfortunate date by a supposed electric fire from a floor fan on pilgrimage in Asia in 1968.

Our false selves are the identities we cultivate in order to function in society with pride and self-possession.

Our real selves, however, are a deep religious mystery, known to God in full alone.

What we inhabit, our culture, cultivates the false self and ignores the real self.

The irony of human existence rests here. 

That is, the more I make of myself, for example, the less I exist.

For Merton, sin, missing the mark, conscious alienation from God and creation, emerges from my false self.  That's the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires.

That's the life of self-absorption.  It's the Adam and Even complex.

It's when I want to be the center of the world, or, worse, think I am!

All else in life is ordered around me. 

As with Adam and Eve of Genesis.

I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I  an invisibile body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface, notes Merton.

My vulnerable self is not my true identity, acording to Merton.  That's our mask, the false self.

Let go of the ego, and, the true self shows itself.

Be.

Being one's true self matters.

Masks, the false self, is for Halloween 365 days a week.
Trick or treat?

Be your true self.

Enough of the masks and false self.