Embracing Your "True Self"

Various writers of spirituality and psychology have often explored the concepts of the "True Self" and the "false self." Follows is some information to help you understand these concepts:

The "True Self" represents a person's authentic identity, free from external influences and societal pressures. It is the core of who you truly are in the sight of God. It is a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. At the depth of your being, "your True Self is love. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming."¹ Your True Self is understood as the authentic identity that God has created and intended for you. It is discovered through desiring and seeking a deep, personal relationship with God. As Saint Augustine wrote, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This involves recognizing that your true identity and inherent dignity is in being a beloved child of God, created in God's image and likeness. The journey to your True Self is a spiritual path that ultimately leads towards union with God.

Contrariwise, the "false self," sometimes called the "small self" or "separate self," is a persona² we create. It is a protective, defense mechanism to help us navigate social interactions with others. It becomes the roles we play for others. It includes the thoughts and behaviors we create to conform to our perceived expectations, societal and cultural norms, and the demands of others. It seeks to gain the acceptance, approval, and validation of others for our dignity and self-worth. We suffer when others fail to meet our expectations. Moreover, this can lead to a disconnection from or misalignment with our authentic or True Self.

Discoverying your True Self involves humility and recognizing your finiteness in the presence of God. It calls upon you to peel away the layers of your false self ordinarily created by your ego, pride, distorted self-interests and inordinate attachments to worldly desires, and to embrace your authentic identity in God. For in God, "we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28). It is a process of ongoing conversion and transformation through trusting in God's unconditional love, surrendering to God's will and truth, and relying on God's mercy, forgiveness, guidance and grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to become more Christlike.

Thomas Merton, a well-renowned Catholic monk and writer, extensively explored the concept of the True self. He described the True Self as the person God created us to be, living in love, joy, and peace. Merton emphasized that the spiritual journey involves shedding the false self and embracing the True Self through a deepening relationship with God. As Merton wrote,

There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of [God] become an obstacle to our union with [God]. The obstacle is in our ‘self,’ that is to say, in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistic will. It is when we refer all things to this outward and false ‘self’ that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this self.”³

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Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the [person] that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him....My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love—outside of reality and outside of life. And such a life cannot help but be an illusion....All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real....The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God....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 [God] I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find [God]....The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, [Godself] Alone.⁴

The True Self is our authentic identity that is discovered and nurtured through an ongoing peronsal, deep, and transformative relationship with God. We continually die to our false self in order to arise to new life with Christ in our True Self. It means embodying the virtues of love, compassion, forgiveness, and humility. It involves living a life of prayer and contemplation, in the context of relationships with others, ourselves and creation, serving others, and seeking justice and peace, all for the glory of God.

1 Center for Action and Contemplation, "True Self and False Self: Week 1 Summary, August 12, 2017, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/true-self-and-false-self-week-1-summary-2017-08-12/
2 The term "persona" arises from the various masks that ancient Greek actors wore in a play or drama to express the character they were portraying.
3 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1961), 21.
4 Id.at 34-36.