Colossians 3:2-3: “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
There are times we Christians forget this, both in our pilgrimage life and in our other life.
Read morefalse self
“Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real.”
Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, p. 85
first steps in spirituality
“The stage of purgation is characterized by the struggle of two selves: the self that is not yet all it has been created to be in God’s will for our wholeness, and the wholeness of self that God holds out before us. The old, anxious, egocentric self is called to increasing mortification in order that the new, peace-filled, God-centered self may come more and more into being.”
Mulholland, M. Robert, Jr. Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation. Foreword, Practices and Study Guide by Ruth Haley Barton. Expanded edition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016, p.108.
the false self
"Our basic style is often built around the things that were reinforced for us as children. It usually starts with things that we do well. …
"The problem is not that we do certain things well and have competencies and qualities that make us special. The problem lies in the inordinate investment that we place in this image and way of being.
"At the core of the false self is a desire to preserve an image of our self and a way of relating to the world. This is our personal style–how we think of ourselves and how we want others to see us and think of us. … Typically the trait that we prize is in fact part of who we are. But the truth always is that this trait is simply one among many. We live a lie when we make it the sum of our being.
“Our false self is built on an inordinate attachment to an image of our self that we think makes us special. The problem is the attachment, not having qualities that make us unique. Richard Rohr suggests that the basic question we must ask is whether we are prepared to be other than our image of our self. If not, we will live in bondage to our false self.”
Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself. Expanded ed. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2015, p. 70.
true self – false self
“The self that appears to be weighed down by its love and carried away to material things is, in fact, an unreal thing. Yet it retains an empirical existence of its own; it is what we think of ourselves. And this empirical existence is strengthened by every act of selfish desire or fear. It is not the true self, the Christian person, the image of God stamped with the likeness of Christ. It is the false self, the disfigured image, the caricature, the emptiness that has swelled up and become full of itself, so as to create a kind of fictional substantiality for itself. Such is Augustine’s commentary on the phrase of St. Paul: scientia inflat. ‘Knowledge puffs up’.” (pp. 60-61)
Merton, Thomas. “The Recovery of Paradise.” (1959) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 