Becoming Yourself

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Tag: Richard Rohr (Page 3 of 8)

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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 Freedom of Facing Your Shadow Side

July 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’m a master at lying to myself.

Even after decades of work on personal development, I often try to hide my shadow side—the things I don’t want to see about myself, the things I certainly don’t want you to see about me. Anger, hurt, self-pity, fear, arrogance, apathy, the list goes on.

But learning to recognize and accept my shadow side is necessary in order to become who I want to be. And I don’t mean just so I can eliminate those things, though decreasing their control over me is part of it. I also need to embrace those very human aspects of my character as a part of who I am.

The following recent daily mediation from the Center for Action and Contemplation explored this dichotomy. I hope you’ll find it helpful on your journey toward Becoming Yourself:

Father Richard (Rohr) stresses both the challenge and great gifts that come from working with our shadow self:  

I am afraid that the closer we get to the Light, the more of our shadow we see. Thus, truly holy people are always humble people. Invariably when something upsets us, and we have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, our shadow self has just been exposed. So, watch for any overreactions or over denials. The reason that a mature or saintly person can be so peaceful, so accepting of self and others, is that there is not much left of the hidden shadow self. [1] 

Buddhist teacher Tara Brach shares a well-known and instructive myth about the Buddha and his compassionate interactions with the shadow god Mara:  

You may be familiar with images of the Buddha [Siddhartha] meditating all night long under the Bodhi tree until he experienced full liberation. The shadow god Mara (who represents the universal energies of greed, hatred, and delusion) tried everything he knew to make him fail—sending violent storms, beautiful temptresses, raging demons, and massive armies to distract him. Siddhartha met them all with an awake and compassionate presence, and as the morning star appeared in the sky, he became a Buddha, a fully realized being.  

But this was not the end of his relationship with Mara!  

In the five decades following his enlightenment, the Buddha traveled throughout northern India teaching all who were interested the path of presence, compassion, and freedom.…  

And as the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story, Mara sometimes appeared as well…. [The Buddha would] stroll over to Mara and with a firm yet gentle voice say, “I see you, Mara…. Come, let’s have tea.” And the Buddha himself would serve Mara as an honored guest.  

This is what’s possible for us. Just imagine that Mara appears in your life as a surge of fear about failure, or hurt about another’s neglect or disrespect. Now, what if your response were to pause and say, “I see you, Mara”—Recognizing. And “Let’s have tea”—Allowing. Instead of avoiding your feelings, instead of lashing out in anger or turning on yourself with self-judgment, you are responding to life with more clarity and graciousness, kindness and ease. [2] 

Richard continues:  

The gift of shadowboxing is in the seeing of the shadow and its games in ourselves, which takes away much of the shadow’s hidden power. No wonder Teresa of Ávila said that the mansion of true self-knowledge was the necessary first mansion on the spiritual journey. [3] Once we have faced our own hidden or denied self, there is not much to be anxious about anymore, because there is no fear of exposure. We are no longer afraid to be seen—by ourselves or others. The game is over—and we are free. We finally are who we are, and can be who we are, without disguise or fear. [4] 

From the June 23, 2023 Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation cac.org 

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 132–133. 

[2] Tara Brach, Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN (New York: Viking Life, 2019), 18–19. 

[3] Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle, First Mansion, chapter 2, part 8. 

[4] Rohr, Falling Upward, 134. 

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The Illusion that Causes Violence in Ourselves and Our World

May 21, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I love street magic.

Seeing someone turn everyday objects into mind-bending illusions is fascinating.

That’s partly why I resonated with the following post. Reading that a widespread, deeply-ingrained illusion is behind the baffling level of hatred, division, and violence in our world made sense to me. It helped me understand both large-scale violence, like Russia’s oppression of Ukraine, and the small-scale conflicts I encounter in my own life.

The following perspective on the root of violence is from author and teacher Richard Rohr. I hope his words give you a better understanding of the state of our world and help you do your small part to make it a more peaceful one. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

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The Root of Violence

In a conference with Trappist monk Thomas Keating, Father Richard Rohr considered how contemplation is an antidote to violence:

The root of violence is the illusion of separation—from God, from Being itself, and from being one with everyone and everything. When we don’t know we are connected, we will invariably resort to some form of violence to get the dignity and power we lack. Contemplation of the gospel message gradually trains us not to make so much of differences, but to return to who we are—our True Selves in God—which is always beyond any nationality, religion, skin color, gender, sexuality, or any other possible labels. In fact, we finally can see that those are always and only commercial labels, covering the rich product underneath.

When we can become little enough, naked enough, and honest enough, then we will ironically find that we are more than enough. At this place of poverty and freedom, we have nothing to prove and nothing to protect. Here we can connect with everything and everyone. Everything belongs. This cuts violence at its very roots, before there is even a basis for fear or greed—the things that usually cause us to be angry, suspicious, and violent.

To be clear, it is inconceivable that a true Christian would be racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, homophobic, or bigoted toward any group or individual, especially toward the poor and vulnerable, which seems to be an acceptable American prejudice. To end the cycle of violence, our actions must flow from our authentic identity as Love.

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One of the reasons I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation was to give activists some grounding in spirituality so they could continue working for social change, but from a stance much different than vengeance, ideology, or willpower pressing against willpower. Most activists I knew loved Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s teachings on nonviolence. But it became clear to me that many of them had only an intellectual appreciation rather than a participation in the much deeper mystery. The ego was still in charge, and I often saw people creating victims of others who were not like them. It was still a power game, not the science of love that Jesus taught us.

When we begin by connecting with our inner experience of communion rather than separation, our actions can become pure, clear, and firm. This kind of action, rooted in one’s True Self, comes from a deeper knowing of what is real, good, true, and beautiful, beyond labels and dualistic judgments of right or wrong. From this place, our energy is positive and has the most potential to create change for the good. This stance is precisely what we mean by “being in prayer.” We must pray “unceasingly” to maintain this posture. It is a lifelong process.

We wait in prayer, but we don’t wait for absolutely perfect motivation or we will never act. Radical union with God and neighbor should be our starting place, not private perfection.

From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation, May 1, 2022. Adapted from Richard Rohr and Thomas Keating, Healing Our Violence through the Journey of Centering Prayer (Cincinnati, OH: Saint Anthony Messenger Press, 2002), CD. 

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