Posted on by Kurt Bodling

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.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

deep presence

“Just as all sane men instinctively seek, in some way or other, the awakening of their true inner self, so all valid social forms of religion attempt, in some manner, to provide a situation in which each member of the worshiping group can rise above the group and above himself, to find himself and all the rest on a higher level. This implies that all truly serious and spiritual forms of religion aspire at least implicitly to a contemplative awakening both of the individual and of the group. But those forms of religious and liturgical worship which have lost their initial impulse of fervor tend more and more to forget their contemplative purpose, and to attach exclusive importance to rites and forms for their own sake, or for the sake of the effect which they are believed to exercise on the One Who is worshiped.” (Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, pp 25-26)

Both the hermit and the Church should be seeking and allowing the inner true self. But, as Merton says, some ways of being/doing church have forgotten this central purpose. Those congregations, denominations, and individuals tend more towards legalistic re-creation of stale, static forms, towards the parroting of formulae. That is, they tend away from contemplation.