True Self & False Self

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 -- Week of Proper 8

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this link -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 973)
Psalms 119:145-176 (morning) // 128, 129, 130 (evening)
Numbers 22:41 - 23:12
Romans 7:13-25
Matthew 21:33-46


"I'll never do that again." And then I do. It seems like I find myself confessing the same stupid sins now at age 54 that I can remember struggling with during my fits of self-consciousness as a teen. It is as though I have some life-long tendencies planted deep within me. They don't sleep. They feel almost instinctual. When I am stressed or anxious or fearful... When I am complacent or prideful... they pounce.

Paul says today, "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." Gerald May has an insightful study on how we get conditioned to certain behaviors and thought patterns. After we have repeated them enough, they create a neurological eight-lane highway that smoothly channels energy into our accustomed and destructive patterns. It is the pathology of addiction, and Gerald May uses it as a study of sin.

Sin's addictive power creates the experience of feeling that we are at war with something within that feels nonetheless external to ourselves. Paul describes the condition well: "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ....For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members."

Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating and other spiritual masters have used the language True Self / False Self to describe this universal human condition. At the center of our being ("my inmost self") we are always one with God. Our True Self lives in union with the Divine Life. This is who we most truly are. But our fears and hurts have led us to create compensating behaviors, defense mechanisms that take on a life of their own. Keating calls them the energy centers of our False Self. Gerald May calls them our addictions. Whatever you call them, they are powerful motivators, largely unconscious, and they never sleep.

"Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Our surrender into the grace of Christ is the step toward freedom. Twelve step spirituality knows how that works. Contemplative prayer practice opens up some space between the impulse and the response. Intentional dismantling of the energy centers helps, as does a regular practice of entrusting ourselves to grace. With God's help, and only with God's help, we can be free, and freely responsible. The willingness to live that way comes as a gift to be accepted, though, not a power to be grasped.

I've been most helped along that path by Thomas Keating ("Open Mind, Open Spirit") and by Gerald May ("Simply Sane" and "Addiction and Grace"). For me, they make my experience of Paul's dilemma a path of hope.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas