Sam Rahberg

08/08/03

Merton #3

Articulating the False Self

New Seeds of Contemplation is Thomas Merton's invitation to the contemplative life. The first question in response is either, "What is contemplation?" or "Why me?". Perhaps the second question is of primary importance. The definition of contemplation follows its relevance. Merton conscientiously approaches the personal "why" with fresh, non-churchy language that shocks assumptions and preconceptions. He painstakingly presses every reader to recognize the false self through which she has created an inaccurate system of interpreting the world. The inaccuracy of this system is only compounded when the illusions of the false self are interconnected with the false selves of others. The evidence is found in our own personal and societal dysfunction. No reader can claim to have escaped the snares of the false self, and so each reader can begin to understand "why me." Contemplation offers no gentle transition from the false self to a true awareness. Merton describes it as a "sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real" (Merton 1991, 3: emphasis mine). He works to soften the "sudden" impact by helping the reader recognize in advance the presence of her own false self. The progressive lessening of the false self makes room for the swelling presence of Christ, "the awareness and realization, even in some sense experience, of what each Christian obscurely believes: 'It is now no longer I that live but Christ lives in me.'" The false self takes back stage to the presence and purity of Christ within. The grace of contemplation dismantles the false self. Merton escorts the reader into this growing experience by penetrating the false self with clear, piercing language and confronting the behaviors and consequences of living according to the false self.

Merton's clear and piercing language about the false self helps cut through the masks and murky clichés for any reader. The audience of this text, whether versed in religious jargon or not, approaches deep and personal issues in a liberating and challenging way that awakens vulnerability. The reader cannot side step the direct, purifying lens of words and pictures that capture the unpleasant meaning of the false, external self. Consider from only one page the handles that Merton uses to grip the concept: "superficial…first person singular… individuality... empirical self…vesture, mask, disguise…not eternal…not spiritual…utterly frail… evanescent…not I" (7). With these and like words he penetrates deep to the core of a person and offers her permission to engage her often hidden disappointment. Deep down she is tired of not being her potential person. If only for a moment, Merton releases the pressure of conforming to the expectations of others or maintaining desperately a front for the world to see. In an unnatural and arduous effort to prop up the empirical, individual self, a person is too self-deluded to be honest about the utter frailty inside. At any moment this mock-reality can collapse, leaving her without meaning since the false self is neither eternal nor spiritual. True self-engagement is disorienting, but Merton pursues the relief that comes with honesty. Honesty recognizes how much energy and concern is misdirected in an individualized, me-centered reality. Disturbing the me-centered reality, Merton distinguishes between a sense of "mine" and "myself" (8). "Mine" orients all things under the possession of the individual while "myself" allows for an identity and purpose within the greater mystery. "Mine" is nothing but a "futile assertion of our own individuality" while "myself" is the "humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells, with infinite sweetness and inalienable power" (9). "Myself" is the true, clear, and freeing self in whom God dwells. Merton's language opens the reader's eyes to the false self that she has been trying to ignore. Having made a distinction between "mine" and "myself, he cuts a little deeper into the façade, describing the behavior patterns and consequences bred by the false self.

Merton shows that the behaviors of the false self with the "mine" attitude are of no lasting or meaningful value. These behaviors are like great flags locating and calling attention to the illusory false self that is at work. "The 'I' that works in the world, thinks about itself, observes its own reactions and talks about itself is not the true 'I' that has been united to God in Christ" (7). This 'I' drips with self-centeredness. Merton describes the false self here as the self that works within the world and its system of values to accomplish ends of wealth, privilege, and reputation. This 'I' is an all-consuming idolatry of the self that spares no attention or compassion for others and forbids the "humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells." Capitalism and mass culture accelerates frantic competitiveness in many ways, but this is not a value of contemplation: "Contemplation can never be the object of calculated ambition. It is not something we plan to obtain with our practical reason, but the living water of the spirit that we thirst for, like a hunted deer thirsting after a river in the wilderness" (11). Contemplation is a release and rest in a world that desperately grasps. The false self clings to ambition and scheming as sources of comfort and control. It smugly absorbs conventional and prejudiced opinion (12-13), if for no other reason than to be an element of a Mass Society. The consequences of a Mass Society of individuals living according to the false self are disturbing: "The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates men who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience" (11-12). Humanity stands numbed by a collective epidemic of alienation. Alienated people follow the loudest voice for their meaning and morality. These voices contribute to their alienation by "deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician." The consequences of acting according to the false self leave a person weary from attempting to impose her own desires on the world around her or catches her up as a pawn in someone else's plan. The false self is stagnant in the status quo, avoiding contemplation's call for transformation. The sickness of alienation must be healed. According to Merton authentic identity and true quality of life are at stake both for the person and for the broader community. The process of dropping the mask and resting in one's identity in Christ is beyond a person's ability and power. To keep forcing the process is only to prop up the false self again.

The false self is dismantled by the graces of contemplation. The labor of God's love detaches the masks that have become fused to our faces by years of adhering only to those patterns that would preserve our personal comfort. Contemplation, cultivating a deep sense of God's presence, reshapes the face that has been held captive to a mask. Merton describes the false self as being "cast aside like a soiled garment in the genuine awakening" (7), but elsewhere describes a more intense process: "It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty" (13). Genuine awakening is not without pain and discomfort. After all, one is being called away from the behaviors and attitudes of a lifetime--behaviors and attitudes that have been conformed to the world. Contemplation helps create a distance between the true self and the improperly forged attitudes. As a gap is wedged between the old and the new self one suffers a moment of healing and experiences a pulse of clarity. It is God's grace "suspend[s] the ordinary awareness and control exercised by our empirical self" (11). This new awareness is also a challenge "to examine, doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas" (12). In that graced moment there is freedom from the oppression of the false self and there is submission to God in Christ as the source of stability. Again and again the awareness of this stability is experienced and begins to percolate into one's Christian life and being. A kindred grace of this transformation is the impact that contemplation has on those around the renewed person. The dismantling of the false self is, in a sense, contagious. It testifies to a higher reality and offers hope and permission for others to anticipate such grace.

Contemplation is itself beyond explanation: "It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words or even in clear concepts" (1). The fact is, however, that contemplation clearly benefits every person who is captured and drained by a false self. Merton challenges the reader to ignore these illusions no longer. He uses clear and accessible language to unveil the false self and confront its consequences. The false self is our most common enemy and it must be dismantled by the grace of contemplation. One by one, actualization of the true human person results in global transformation.

Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1962, 1972, 1991), 1-13. (page citations are to the 1991 edition).