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Self-Emptying: Letting Go of the False Self

06/09/2020

Meister Eckhart, the German Dominican mystic (c. 1260-c.1328), said that spirituality has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. [1] Yet our culture, both secular and Christian, seems obsessed with addition: getting rich, becoming famous, earning more brownie points with God or our boss, attaining enlightenment, achieving moral behavior. Jesus and the mystics of other traditions tell us that the spiritual path is not about getting more or getting ahead, which

True Self and False Self: Discovering Self in Discovering God

07/08/2019

Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton. For Merton, the spiritual life is a journey in which we discover ourselves in discovering God, and discover God in discovering our true self hidden in God. Merton writes: The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God. But whatever is in God is really identical

Personal Identity

09/12/2018

As creatures we possess not only a created nature but personal identity. We think we know instantly what a person is. To judge from what philosophers and psychologists say, you would think that whatever is best in the individual determines what the person is. Whereas the theologian knows that the person is a mystery, intelligible only by the contemplation of the Trinity. The priestly prayer of Christ in St John’s Gospel puts it in a

Ego

01/22/2014

We don’t teach meditation to the young monks. They are not ready for it until they stop slamming doors. — Thich Nhat Hanh to Thomas Merton in 1966 The piercing truth of this statement struck me as a perfect way to communicate the endless disguises and devices of the false self. There is no more clever way for the false self to hide than behind the mask of spirituality. The human ego will always try

Jesus is in the World, Not of It

06/25/2013

Jesus Is in the World, Not of It The Beatitudes offer us a self-portrait of Jesus. At first it might seem to be a most unappealing portrait—who wants to be poor, mourning, and persecuted? Who can be truly gentle, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and always concerned about justice? Where is the realism here? Don’t we have to survive in this world and use the ways of the world to do so? Jesus shows

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Self-Emptying: Letting Go of the False Self

True Self and False Self: Discovering Self in Discovering God

Personal Identity

Ego

Jesus is in the World, Not of It

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