Coffee talk and the True Self.

People affect us. Just the other day, I was having coffee with a friend. The conversation was normal nothing deep or convoluted, no self-examination or interpersonal analysis going on. It was just an easy conversation and an easy-going chat, as comfortable as an old beloved T-shirt. In it I had a little revelation. The revelation was, “I enjoyed the conversation.” But it was not a conversation that would normally raise one to enjoyment, nothing romantic or deeply emotional, nothing to cheery or festive. If I could compare the enjoyment to anything, it would be like the feeling of a fresh cool breeze after being in the sun one moment too long. It was a little life in my life. There are those people that bring us back to life in little ways. Somewhere in there words you hear the echo of hope once forgotten. And you remember, breathe deep the air of hope and live again.

Thomas Merton in an essay from “Love and Living” writes, "the world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: that is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living and fruitful relationship with each other in it." Merton writes of those people that are fully alive. What he means by that is those people that are fearless to communicate without trying to control the conversation in any particular direction. In this way they open the door to a perceived realness and authenticity that is refreshing. My friend is one of those people.

The church is to be a place of such conversations. And a society filled with such people. But sadly many people never make it to such a place of such personal development. Often they are stunted at the point of social integration, closing there hearts off by closing there circle of friends to a fixed number. This often results in what I call a round shaped social group. Often the only way into such a group is to find the key person that has influence over the group and make them your friend. What results from that friendship is a wider acceptance by the group. They let you in for you come in through the person of influence (the key master). Such groups are not just always a little bit polarizing to the larger community and I think a bit pretentious and personally inconvenient. They also are a large hindrance to the moral development of all in the group.

Lawrence Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory of moral reasoning informs us of this fact. In brief, Kohlberg suggests that the journey towards moral maturity progresses from an egocentric, "preconventional" moral orientation (based on punishment and reward), through a "conventional" orientation of interpersonal approval and maintenance of the social order, and ultimately to a Personal "postconventional" orientation of universal ethical principles. In Christian terms, I like to say we grow from “Ego” to “WE” to “For His Glory”. As you can see such circle shaped groups often stop the development of its members at the level of the “We”.

Many end up living from a faults self, a person that is not truly who God remade them to be. The faults self is a mask or better like being an actor. It is mostly based on learned behaviors of conformity to our social group and constructed based on the perceived expectation and taboos of the group. This can be good or bad depending on how close the group’s perceptions come to the biblical ethic. Yet it never goes far enough. All we learn is a procedural morality. So you could say, it is fear of man at its moral best! A person can do all the right things based on external control and never follow from the heart. The heart or true self is left untouched and under cared for. Further in such groups we learn that we can fake it. We learn that people don’t really know us and we should not risk social shame. This is because there is no grace when such groups do accountability. It just becomes sin management. We can hide behind the faults self, the mask of what they think we are. Many learn manipulative techniques and are confined to living from manipulation. Whole ideas of discipleship have been formulated about such manipulation covered over by and sanctified with words like intentional conversations and purposed interaction.[1] Such group dynamics amount to a social jail of sad lifeless people of little vision and much less care for those outside the group. A people that hate the unknown and often define themselves in negative terms, that is I’m not like you. Our want to appear as a certain type person biblically ends at Jesus yet more is legally added and that confines many to a lifeless life of acting out the desires of trying to attain a particular group’s approval.

The alternative is God’s plan of a U shaped group that is open to new people and welcoming towards others, seeing them as interesting as an undiscovered country-side. Simple curiosity and understanding of the universal human condition are all one needs. Theologically put it is a living from the love of God by people that have embraced God’s love on a real lived level. It is practical and honest: the foundation for humility, humor, and hope. Such real people can pick on one another without malice intent, make silly jokes and act 12 years old without loosing a touch of their maturity. They can enjoy conversation about silly things like coffee and TV shows. Such conversations become spiritual, life and real by the fact that they are talked about by a real person made real in the lived security of God’s love. All this can be unconscious, Love under the radar, unknown even to the person and in my friends’ case it was unknown and it was Beautiful!

Becoming a True Self

In circle shaped groups the true self is stifled and often fearfully repressed. But what do I mean by the true self. I do not mean self knowledge for that is cut through with deceptions confusions and all kinds of problems brought on by being people of sinful selfish natures. Nor is it the sum of ones experiences, the treasure of one who has undertaken a journey of self exploration. That is nothing more than self-indulgence for what is kept and what is forgotten is decided by a self centered in itself living out of either pride or insecurity.

The true self is the heart in faith hope and love. Our heart is our passion; that is our purposes and visions, our hopes and dreams. The part of us that calls us to better aspirations than lust and deeper commitments than social conformity, that center of the soul eternally standing in God’s presence, before God’s eye and the place humanity stands alone has to report only to God.[2]

It is the hard learned facts of who you are before God, with God, In God, on a journey back to God. Our knowledge of our true self is always in process. It is learning through repentance and through learning God illuminated by the Spirit. We learn in repentance that I am something and then we give what we know of ourselves to what we know of him. In short, the true self is a self in God’s love. Samuel told David’s Dad that “Man looks on the outer appearance (faults self) but God looks at the heart (true self).” God sees our true self. We are never unknown to God, we can not hide. And yet God in the full knowledge of who we are still loves us, For God so loves the world that he gave his son so we may have life. It is in this Face to face Love that we experience intimacy. Intimacy is being fully known and still fully loved. God’s Love when embraced can make you open in little ways to be daring, open and risky in how you live towards others. People that God has made to experience, embrace, and express his love are people that can diminish the faults self, thinning out the faults, transparent as possible. It takes the security of a great love to do this. Living from your true self begins with truly letting God Love as I explained above. This will look different for different people because we all have different wounds and different experiences. What is common is our desire to be known and to be loved. Thus a significant element I have found is living from a security brought on by embracing God’s love.

People of the true self are real. They are also a bit prophetic. They are one’s that can effortlessly break the conventions of closed groups and call them beyond cycles that do not encircle God. This will often mean dealing with a bit of rejection but who cares “if God be for you – who cares what man may think!”

Being your true self [3]

If you are in Raleigh you don’t need to take a train to get you their. The same is true when it comes to the true self and the faults self. To be me I don’t need to become anything. Being my true self means me being what God has already made me to be. My identity is not made as much as it is given; it is a engrafting, remaking and revisioning of who I am by God. I am who he has made me to be. A saint, a free man, a bondservant, a Temple of The Holy spirit, The New Testament pictures abound. Some times for people caught in the sick cycles of circle groups it is best to see freeing grace. Just be and leave the becoming to God. The Spirit will convict when needed. Even conviction is a part of your being. God has already made you to be one that hears his voice. You are already made to Be one that is sensitive to the Spirit’s promptings and touches of conscience.

Think about it - If you are in Raleigh you don’t need to take a train to get you their.

Sometimes I'm aware that being fully who I am is the most spiritual thing I can be.

But this is only true if I'm aware of that false part of me, that pretend part of me, that not-real-me part of me and if I move away from that and toward the truest me.

Sin separates me from my true inner heart and my true inner life. I separate myself from these things as I put on my mask, cover my real feelings with stuff, wear my personnas, and otherwise try to be more or different than I who truly am.

Jesus reconciles me and brings me back into full relationship with Himself; and He also brings me back into full and right relationship with who I truly am: my made-in-the-image-of-Christ self. Me. Just me. Raw me. Wholly me. Alive me. Passionate me. No-pretense me. Full-of-all-kinds-of-feelings me. Simple me. True me.

I don't leave myself to become spiritual. yet it is important to note the spiritual discipline is this process is of action of denying to the self. I do die to the false parts of myself but this brings me into the freedom to live out of and be my true self. Fully myself in daily dieing to myself.

Brennan Manning puts it this way:

"Sanctity lies in discovering my true self, moving toward it, and living out of it... While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements, and the adulation of others, the true self claims its identity in its belovedness. We give glory to God simply by being ourselves."

I get so weary when I try to live out of the "impostor." Even worse than the "imposter" is the "spiritual imposter." How draining and hypocritical such mortal acting can be. How foolish to think that I have to be more than I am in order to be alive, free, or precious to God. How I need to remind myself that God gave His life so that I would live-- and simply be the true person that He created. It is my truest self that is His beloved, not the other false parts of me that I put on. It is the "real me" being "fully me" that is the object of God's infinite affections. He longs for me as I really -- add nothing.

It is being fully me that God thoroughly delights in! Who I am is thoroughly enough for Christ fills in the rest! And it is in that rest that I am to find my soul's comfort.

I want to give glory to God by adding nothing to who I am. Be a simple person with a simple desire to be a lover of God and a lover of others: Loving freely regardless of rank, status, position, or role, Loving other from being an alive-to-the-world person and, by His grace, an alive-to-God person. Nobodies are homebodies or hard bodies or weird-bodies but they all are somebody to God. All nobodies are magnificent (in His image). I'm nothing, yet I'm the beloved of the Creator. I'm unique, and it's just, simply, plainly, open to the world: A who I am that brings glory to God.

Anyone familiar with Merton's story is aware of how no Significant Other had been dependable: Merton had lost both parents at a young age, and a dear brother, all in tragic circumstances. The pattern of his early life was, in the words of Ann Hawkins, "a series of failed relationships - relationships that are either inadequate or incomplete in some way." He had to be a true self in the face of deep suffering, and become a real person in finding security in the Love of God. On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, almost twenty years after most of his pain, Merton recalls how his early experience had affected other significant relationships:

"I suppose I regret most of all my lack of love, my selfishness, my glibness, which covered a profound shyness and an urgent need for love. My glibness with girls who after all did love me, I think, for a time. My fault was my inability to believe it and my efforts to get complete assurance and perfect fulfillment."

I understand his words and I too fight the tendency to live from the lies and inability of my soul. I too work to overcome such lack of complete assurance and waning fulfillment. Suffering has a way of thinning ones vision of Love as it deepens ones capacity to experience that same Love. In such times just being with God is good thought the pain may cloud you. Yet in all my inner lack of complete assurance and perfect fulfillment, a little conversation reminded me,"people can be real. real people do exist." I went on to experience God's Love in silly uncontrolled and meandering conversation about trivial things made spiritual by the real person talking with me. It is so true, People can help us, even when they don’t know it or just think you’re hitting on them.

Thanks friend and thanks for the coffee talk.

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[1] Such conversation work well to change the unaware masses. The more self-aware someone is and the more perceptive their gaze, the more such talk is seen not as transformative but subversive. People are reduce to means to the ends the subversive “disipler” has in mind. Again not all bad for some people cant handle plain truth but that danger is in making sure your leading someone in a biblical direction and not to become something YOU think is good right and beautiful. Also it reduces people to a means to whatever end the other person in the conversation is moving to. I have said many a time, “So what are you getting at!” The direction of such group dynamics is based on influencer of the group, a person that has the social acceptance and trust to use the group’s expectations and mold the group’s vision of what constitutes a good person. But all that is for another blog.

[2] For me, My true self is a paradox. I am a nerd and a warrior, a sinner and a saint, a messenger and a watcher, Fearful and fearless, A screw-up and one who has a charmed life.

[3] My change in tense reflects the personal nature of being and the way one must always place the “I” we live from in view to understand who God has made us to be.

Ship of fools: the autonomous individual on a journey of self discovery.

Years ago I watched a movie that told the story of a man who grew up physically but mentally and emotionally he remained a child. Because he was very large and powerfully built he caused a lot of harm to others and himself in his awkward attempts at interaction. Lenny came to an early death at the hand of his best friend when his mistakes threatened to cause major trouble for both of them. This portrayal of failing to grow up is found in John Steinbeck's, Of Mice and Men, (later I read the book, well most of the Book). Such a theme plays on again and again in movies and books. This is because, I believe it says something about a human situation and directly speaks to a common circumstance many find themselves entangled in, to a greater or lesser degree.

We usually all grow up physically, but all of us fail to some extent in the growth of our minds, wills, and emotions. Many think that there is one more type of growth, spiritual growth. They are wrong. Truth is, mental, volitional, and emotional, growth is to be directed towards the spiritual. The Spiritual is the form that we fit all our human function’s into (metal, emotional volitional functions). When it comes to such soul growth many are lacking. Some have such growth stunted at a very early age, or tragically never even begin the process. Whether it is out of personality twisting hurts or just plan stubbornness, defiant arrogance or blind ignorance, many live under grown and they are not the only ones that get hurt. Oddly, many get good jobs, and have “apparently” normal lives but they never develop beyond the inner infant.

Perhaps you do not see the need to grow up further in these ways. You may be, possibly, probably, passively, in denial like much of the world where we live. It is often thought with a blinding naïveté, that it’s not just “Ok” but a “right” to “Do it my way”. “It” being “life” and all things crammed into that small landscape of the soul.

Think of it this way, life is to sail on a ship, and “my way” is being the one in control of the ship –at the helm– drunk with self-directed pleasure. To sail on a ship of one, in adventures driven by desires. Desires that are sometimes common like lust or greed, sometimes deeper like insecurity or questions of adequacy. Always ending in ports of emptiness for this is a ship of one. So ultimate the concern, so consuming is the quest that in one’s wake is the scattered ravages of those left for dead, mowed over and used. The remains of half eaten souls adrift but pointing the “way” as evidence of the direction some people travel. Found in the frothy, foamy, stirring of the waters is the product of one self-directed life. So such ships sail on in using people and loving things. Yet, no fault or blame is to rests on any head. It just happened that way is all that is said. Or quick to assume blame before blame can be given is the way many keep themselves from personal knowledge of wrong’s unforgiven.

When there is something more powerful than knowing and being known, a power, a need to prove to the self that sufficiency can be wed to one who is alone. Then life takes on a whole new color, for one is the friend, shipmate and brother. Such people know distance in wide open spaces. They feel a cold distance in people and faces. So Spaces like the open sea are all they know. A life empty yet filled up yet ever on the go. For them, Friendships are fleeting, connections are few, for one is the captain and one is the crew. Does such a person appear noble to you? Does such a life really ring as true?

If that is your opinion take a hard look around. Open wide -past the blinders- see life falling down. Open your eyes to life as it is, once again, for the first time, see life in the wake. How many broken marriages and bad relationships do you see? In the ones you know about, how many of the problems are caused by childishly selfish attitudes Count them one two three? And what of those that are winsome yet defiant of God's laws? Subversive, forgetful, they pile up excusive that amount to a lie, and that’s all!

So Ask yourself:

Why do we keep trying so hard to make self-sufficiency the mark of maturity? Carol Gilliagan put it best when he wrote:

“To see self-sufficiency as the hallmark of maturity conveys a view of adult life that is at odds with the human condition, a view that cannot sustain the kinds of long-term commitments and involvements with other people that are necessary for raising and educating a child or for citizenship in a democratic society.” [1]

It's called the Peter Pan Principle, We do not grow up till we choose to do so. Growth does not happen until we do the role to grow. This is spiritual and practical all in one. One can be 80 and on the inside still a child, but not in a way of joyful energy, that is to be celebrated and is a result of one that grew up well! No when this child is still inside the way is always theirs and selfish is the heart. Sadly the older a person gets the more complex the desires become. No longer is it I want a cookie but I want validation like evidence that “I AM STRONG”! It is glory? It is honor? It is all wrong! Further still, the older they are the more adapted they are at justifying there actions.

Questions to consider

As a generation of broken “this”, and dysfunctional “that”, ask yourself do I sail on smiling but alone.

How deep do my relationships go?

Am I honest with how I present information or always giving it with a little spin?

Do I tell those friends in my daily space the truth, or do they get a snips version of the fact so I can steer them to motivate me in the way I want them to motivate me? (That’s called social manipulation, by the way).

Do I lock people out of my life, stop informing them of my life because, they could cause me to have to change?

Do people drift in and out of my life and never stay? Are my longest friendships shorter than 1/4^th my age?

Am I still in contact with people that I knew 10-15 years ago?

If I look back at my past have I hurt more people then been hurt by people?

Do I often resort to indifference as a way to deal with guilt?

If other people of both genders where to ask me about my level of consideration and care for people what number for 1-10 would most people rate me? What would males rate me? What would females rate me?

Do I walk away when things get hard, unwilling to face truth and try change?

Do I love things more than people? Do I love importance more than people? Do I love my life more than people?

Why is it that we are determined not to grow up! We don't want to grow up!
Could it be we confuse childlikeness with childishness and so sail on!
Inside little children, outside Hurting people, a life that reduces our souls to a dry leathery nothing.

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[1] Carol Gilligan from Mapping the Moral, prologue (1988).

St. Ambrose of Milan on the Holy Spirit

In this quote from Ambrose's work on the Holy spirit, two things need to be noted.

1.) Ambrose explain the metaphor of the river as it related to the Spirit's existencal interaction with man. This Flowing work is cleansing and transformative like the smoothing of a stone by running water. By this, man experiences his Sanctification as Now and not yet.

2.) Ambrose's theme is one of the inner work of Holy Spirit. This context is important so one does not see His admonition as an activity of works righteousness but a operative cooperation with grace. He is teaching the inner work of Holy Spirit to make one character true and noble.
This is the inner sanctifying graces(gifts) of the Spirit. As we surrender to his flow in our life and die to self, he gives, to the measure of our faith , the graces that develop our will and intellect. We gain new holy affections that move us to God and Godly things. John of the cross speaks of mature believers as those that follow the flow effortlessly.

"God alone moves the powers of these souls . . . to those deeds which are suitable, according to the will and plan of God, and they cannot be moved to others. . . .(1)"

Not to say that sin can not crouch at the door for even Cain after God himself gave him verbal counsel did willfully move against the waters of God's Spirit and sinned in a most hideous way. Yet till end of time it will be true, Mature is measured not in how long we have been a Christian but in how quickly and consistently we respond to God's activity in our life. Enjoy Ambrose on the Holy Spirit.

St. Ambrose of Milan

On the Holy Spirit, I.177-82

So, then, the Holy Spirit is the River, and the abundant River, which according to the Hebrews flowed from Jesus in the lands, as we have received it prophesied by the mouth of Isaiah.[2] This is the great River which flows always and never fails. And not only a river, but also one of copious stream and overflowing greatness, as also David said: "The stream of the river makes glad the city of God."[3]

For neither is that city, the heavenly Jerusalem, watered by the channel of any earthly river, but that Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Fount of Life, by a short draught of Whom we are satiated, seems to flow more abundantly among those celestial Thrones, Dominions and Powers, Angels and Archangels, rushing in the full course of the seven virtues of the Spirit. For if a river rising above its banks overflows, how much more does the Spirit, rising above every creature, when He touches the as it were low-lying fields of our minds, make glad that heavenly nature of the creatures with the larger fertility of His sanctification.

And let it not trouble you that either here it is said "rivers,"[4] or elsewhere "seven Spirits,"[5] for by the sanctification of these seven gifts of the Spirit, as Isaiah said,[6] is signified the fullness of all virtue; the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, and the Spirit of the fear of God. One, then, is the River, but many the channels of the gifts of the Spirit. This River, then, goes forth from the Fount of Life.

And here, again, you must not turn aside your thoughts to lower things, because there seems to be some difference between a Fount and a River, and yet the divine Scripture has provided that the weakness of human understanding should not be injured by the lowliness of the language. Set before yourself any river, it springs from its fount, but is of one nature, of one brightness and beauty. And do you assert rightly that the Holy Spirit is of one substance, brightness, and glory with the Son of God and with God the Father. I will sum up all in the oneness of the qualities, and shall not be afraid of any question as to difference of greatness. For in this point also Scripture has provided for us; for the Son of God says: "He that shall drink of the water which I will give him, it shall become in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life."[7] This well is clearly the grace of the Spirit, a stream proceeding from the living Fount. The Holy Spirit, then, is also the Fount of eternal life. . . .

Good, then, is this water, even the grace of the Spirit. Who will give this Fount to my breast? Let it spring up in me, let that which gives eternal life flow upon me. Let that Fount overflow upon us, and not flow away. For Wisdom says: "Drink water out of thine own vessels, and from the founts of thine own wells, and let thy waters flow abroad in thy streets."[8] How shall I keep this water that it flow not forth, that it glide not away? How shall I preserve my vessel, lest any crack of sin penetrating it, should let the water of eternal life exude? Teach us, Lord Jesus, teach us as Thou didst teach Thine apostles, saying: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where rust and moth destroy, and where thieves break through and steal."[9]

Footnotes

1. Jonh of the cross Ascent 3.2.10; also see, Living Flame 1.4; 1.9 and 2.34

2. isa lxvi 12

3. Ps xlvi 4

4. john vii 38

5. Rev v. 6

6 Isa xi 2

7. John iv 14

8. Proverbs v 15, 16

9. Matt vi 19