Category: Our True Selves (Page 2 of 2)

As an extension of the “practicing resurrection” theme of Circle of Hope this Eastertide season, we’re using this week in Daily Prayer: Water to reflect together on the Christian path of finding our true selves in God alone.  We’re using a marvelous children’s story by Mercer Mayer to illustrate the path.  Welcome to Herbert the Timid Dragon. 

Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know Thee.   —  Augustine    

Today’s Bible reading 

I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. — Galatians 2:20-21  (The Message)

More thoughts for meditation from Mercer Mayer’s Herbert the Timid Dragon

The princess is mad! Herbert first tries an old trick: he invites her to leave.  He’s hoping to avoid more trouble. He tries to be kind, but she’s not having it!  Even though he meant to be helpful and meant to be kind, he’s disrupted by her anger. He could blame her for her bad behavior, but instead he suffers her outburst, loses sleep, and stays in the conflict. He’s trying.

Suggestions for action

The reckoning with the False Self that we all have to face, is a process.  Some people who are very irritating to us can be helpful guides to seeing more accurately who we are in our day to day lives and the ways we are trapped in our False Selves.  We try to help these irritating people to leave, but often they stay, just like the princess and we learn to face their anger, perhaps even to notice our own discomfort and disappointment.  We suffer even while we may attempt to be nice.

Go back to your journal. As you’ve been remembering moments of failure/disappointment in your life, ask God to show you where you’ve tried to reckon with others’ anger in ways that don’t work.  What can you learn? See what surfaces in your mind and write a bit about your responses.

This week’s breath prayer (carry it with you today):

 (inhale) Show me You; (exhale) show me me.

As an extension of the “practicing resurrection” theme of Circle of Hope this Eastertide season, we’re using this week in Daily Prayer: Water to reflect together on the Christian path of finding our true selves in God alone.  We’re using a marvelous children’s story by Mercer Mayer to illustrate the path.  Welcome to Herbert the Timid Dragon. 

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 [God] I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find [God].  — Thomas Merton    

Today’s Bible reading 

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. — Galatians 2:20-21 (NKJV)

More thoughts for meditation from Mercer Mayer’s Herbert the Timid Dragon

Herbert doesn’t know himself very well yet. He doesn’t really understand the depth of his fear. But he still decides to take action, to go out and discover who he might become. Herbert decides to face down his fears and sets out to explore his longing to grow into who he longs to be.  He bumps immediately into an opportunity to learn more about himself. He tries hard to act brave. He learns right away how misunderstood he can be and how scared he is. In fear, he grabs the princess, hoping to save her, and then jumps right back into his old patterns. He runs home and has to face the reality that he has a False Self, a way of being in the world that doesn’t match who he wants to be.  Herbert asks himself:  What have I done?

Suggestions for action

To discover our true selves and to draw close to God (intertwined actions) we, too, need to learn through taking new action, meeting failure and fear, and starting to identify our patterns of living (like running to hide) that may need to change. It’s a conflict.  What have I done? is the inevitable question we all ask as we seek to know God and ourselves. On this journey within, we first discover how we are not who we think we are, and we are surprised in the process. Many spiritual seekers have called this, the discovery the False Self: the habits of thoughts, feelings, and choices we make unconsciously, trying to make ourselves safe and happy. (For more on this, see Invitation to Love by Thomas Keating).

Pause now and ask God to help you see beyond your current understanding of yourself. Let yourself remember failures you’ve known or times you have felt misunderstood by those around you. Instead of dwelling on the pain/guilt/shame of these memories, see if you can catch any patterns that those failures or conflicts might reveal about how you “do” life or how you pursue happiness. Jot down whatever floats into your awareness.  

This week’s breath prayer (carry it with you today):

 (inhale) Show me You; (exhale) show me me.

As an extension of the “practicing resurrection” theme of Circle of Hope this Eastertide season, we’re using this week in Daily Prayer: Water to reflect together on the Christian path of finding our true selves in God alone.  We’re using a marvelous children’s story by Mercer Mayer to illustrate the path.  Welcome to Herbert the Timid Dragon. 

First a bit from C.S. Lewis about the self from Mere Christianity:

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let [God] take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of [God] that millions and millions of ‘little Christs,’ all different, will still be too few to express [God] fully. [God] made them all. [God] invented— as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different [people] that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in [God].

It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without [God]. The more I resist [God] and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact, what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other [people’s] thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night’s sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas.

I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to [Christ’s] Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Today’s Bible reading

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die. — Galatians 2:20-21 (NLT)

More Thoughts for Meditation from Mercer Mayer’s Herbert the Timid Dragon

As we start the journey, Herbert has lots of dreams about himself. He can say out loud, this is what I want. He reads about it. He imagines himself as the person he longs to be.

Suggestions for Action

What do you wish to be?

To know God and know our true selves, we can make a good start by listening deeply to our hidden wishes. What do you wish you could be?  The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are important. The longings we often turn away from, perhaps because they seem childish, are important.  Pause and invite your wishes for yourself to come into your mind. Maybe you’ll remember a childhood memory of what you wanted to be and do.  Don’t dismiss these. Welcome them. Look within them to see what they might tell you about yourself that you have forgotten. Write a brief summary in your journal.

This week’s breath prayer (carry it with you today):

           (inhale) Show me You; (exhale) show me me.