Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Tag: identity (Page 1 of 3)

The Freedom of Finding Your True Self

May 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

One of the main reasons I started this blog in 2017 was to map my own journey toward finding my true identity. The real me. My deep self. Who I am apart from the various fleeting hats I wear. Teacher and author Richard Rohr has been an important part of that journey. In his recent Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, he spoke so compellingly on that topic that I wanted to share it with you. I hope it helps you on your own journey toward Becoming Yourself.

We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, four quartets

In the Everything Belongs podcast, Father Richard speaks about the spiritual path that winds both away from and toward one’s true home:  

The first going out from home we can say is the creation of the ego. While this is a necessary creating, it is also the creating of a separation. It’s taking myself as central. We probably need to do that, at least until we reach middle age. But then we need to allow what we’ve created to be uncreated. Maybe I was a great basketball player, but that’s gone now. Or maybe I was good-looking, but that’s gone now.  

When we can say “yes” to that uncreation and still be happy, we’ve done our work. My True Self is in God and not in what I’ve created. My self-created self gave me a nice trail to walk on, and something to do each day, but it isn’t really me. It might be my career or my vocation; yet as good as it is, it isn’t my True Self.  

In the metaphor of life as a journey, I think it’s finally about coming back home to where we started. As I approach death, I’m thinking about that a lot, because I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not “I’m dying,” but “I’m finally going home.” I don’t know what it’s like yet, but in my older age I can really trust that it is home. I don’t know where that trust comes from or even what home is like, but I know I’m not going to someplace new. I’m going to all the places I’ve known deeply. They’re pointing me to the big deep, the Big Real. I do think homecoming is what it’s all about. [1] 

Father Richard continues to reflect upon finding his home in God in this season of his life:  

Well first, I have to say, I don’t fully know how to live there. I’m used to living for 80 years out of building an education, a persona, a reputation, a career. When we’ve worked at those things for so long, on a very real level we don’t know how to live without them. But thank God, they’re taken away from us. God slows us down, I think necessarily, or we won’t fall into the True Self.  

My understanding of the second half of life is mostly homesickness for the True Self. I want to learn to be who God really created me to be. And I think all God wants me to be is who I really am. [2]  

As shared in the May 6, 2024 Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org) [1] Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Richard Rohr, “Tips for the Road,” Everything Belongs, season introduction, ep. 5 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2023), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.  [2] Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Richard Rohr, “The Two Halves of Life with Brené Brown,” Everything Belongs, season 1, ep. 1 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2024), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.

Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

Find Peace by Recognizing Your False Self

August 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

The goal of this blog is to share my journey to find my True Self in hopes that it helps you do the same.

The writings of Richard Rohr have been instrumental on that journey. In the following, he cuts to the heart of some common delusions and shines a light on our True Selves with warmth and compassion. While he writes from a spiritual worldview, I believe there’s much to be gained from his insights regardless of where you’re at on the spiritual belief spectrum. My sincere hope is that these words will help you take another step toward Becoming Yourself. 

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Father Richard describes the false self in the CAC’s online course Immortal Diamond: 

The false self is all the things we pretend to be and think we are. It is the pride, arrogance, title, costume, role, and degree we take to be ourselves. It’s almost entirely created by our minds, our cultures, and our families. It is what’s passing and what’s going to die, and it is not who we are. For many people this is all they have—but all of it is going to die when we die.  

When we buy into the false self and overidentify with it, we have to keep overidentifying with it, defending it, and promoting it as “the best.” The false self is overidentified on a social level, a corporate level, a national level, an ethnic level. There is the Catholic false self, the Protestant false self, the American false self—we can pick on whatever group we want. 

Many people in the United States really think that God has shed unique grace on our country—but have they ever walked outside our borders? There’s plenty of grace to the North and the South, in Europe and Africa. Grace is everywhere! When I was growing up as a Catholic boy in Kansas, we viewed all Protestants as heretics who were going to hell, but then I grew up and met a few nice Methodists, and I found out they thought I was going to hell too! It’s just laughable.  

We have to undercut the illusion right at the beginning, and when we do that, we discover the True Self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Our True Self in God becomes our touchstone and absolutely levels the playing field. It gives us a new set of eyes.  

We each have different faces and different colors of skin; some of us have hair, some of us don’t; some are tall, some are a little shorter. If we are living out of the false self, all we can do is measure, compare, evaluate, and label. That’s what I call dualistic thinking, and it’s where our world lives. Many people think that all they have are these external costumes—but when we put on the eyes and mind of Christ, we have a new pair of glasses. We can look around and know that the world is filled with infinite images of God. Isn’t that a nicer world to live in? It’s the ultimate political-social critique.  

I hope we’re all moving in the direction of knowing who we really are, letting go of our preoccupation with how we look or measure up. As we come to a deeper acceptance of our True Self, we know our identity comes from God’s love, not from what other people think or say about us. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to present our best face; in fact, my mother would be disappointed if she thought I were saying otherwise. We just can’t take any of it too seriously.

As published in the Aug 8, 2023 Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org). Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond(Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2020–), online course.  

The Three Lies of Identity

February 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

As a blogger, I often have no idea of the impact of something I write. While that can be emotionally challenging at times, putting thoughts I hope may be helpful to someone out into the universe and letting them have a life of their own is just part of this endeavor. Every so often, I get a glimpse of a post’s reach. Earlier this week, a post I published six months ago (July 9, 2022) suddenly took off. Someone apparently found it, shared it, and a lot of people (for me) read it. I decided to take that as a sign and share it again here in hopes that it helps you take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

I’m a sucker for a good lie.

I fall for them more often than I should. Not for phishing scams trying to get my money, but for deeper, more subtle, more devious lies. Lies about who I am, about my True Self, about my identity.

The late author and Harvard professor Henri Nouwen defined Three Identity Lies that most of us fall for:

1. I am what I have 

Billions of marketing dollars are spent every year to reinforce this lie. If you have more, bigger, and better stuff, that means you’re successful, important, and worthwhile. If we’re honest and live long enough, most of us will concede that no amount of material things will be enough to truly define us in a lasting, fulfilling way.

2.  I am what I do 

This is perhaps the most accepted of the identity lies. When asked who we are, we often refer to a job, career, or position—I am a doctor / parent / sanitation worker / author / athlete / factory worker / homemaker / fill in the blank. But what happens when you loose your job? Get injured? Retire? Your children move out? Who are you then? This applies to hobbies and volunteer activities as well. When the role we use to define ourselves is no longer there, the reality of this lie comes crashing down on us.

3.  I am what others think of me 

If I’m praised and respected, I’m a good person. If I’m chastised and mocked, I’m a bad person. When put so blatantly, most of us would reject this lie intellectually, but that doesn’t stop us from buying into it emotionally and subconsciously. From a young age, we learn to change how we present ourselves in order to gain affirmation from others. It becomes so ingrained that we’re hardly aware that we’re placing our identity in others’ hands, allowing them to define who we think we are.

What then is an appropriate basis of our identity, a solid foundation for our True Self? Something deep. Something unshakeable. Something lasting. For me, it is this: I am God’s child. No matter what happens in my life, that identity is secure. Relationships can come and go, my career can change, money can be lost, my health can plummet, people can cheer me or jeer me, tragedy can strike, but none of that can disrupt my foundational identity.

My particular choice of identity may not work for you. You may have different spiritual beliefs or no spiritual beliefs at all. I completely respect that. My encouragement to you is to find the deepest anchor point you can for your identity, one that is not subject to the Three Lies.

What beliefs truly define you? Which of the Three Identity Lies trip you up? Remind yourself of them often. See yourself with clear eyes. Choose an unshakeable identity worthy of the incredible person you are. If you do, you’ll find peace and security, and you’ll take a giant leap toward Becoming Yourself.

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