Continuing on from yesterday’s post, the focus switches from Karl Rahner to Thomas Merton.
Michael Casey uses Merton to build on the themes he developed in his section on Rahner, especially the notion that the contemplative life derives from a decision to act from “a deep inner self”, and the decision (“actualised under grace by free choice”) to give a “lower priority to the promptings of the superficial self [in Jungian terms we might want to talk about the “id” and / or the “ego” and “super ego”] that is generated by our interactions with the world around us.”
Here’s a selection of quotes, some from Casey, and where indicated, some also from Merton:
“… “A central theme that weaves its way through Thomas Merton’s writings is that sanctity consists in discovering our true identity. The essence of the spiritual quest is our search for our true, or real, self…” (William H. Shannon).
…Finding the true self involves uncovering a unity beneath the multiplicity of events and experiences that constitute our biography…
“…The first thing you have to do, before you start thinking about such a thing as contemplation, is to try to recover your basic natural unity, to reintegrate your compartmentalised being into a coordinated and simple whole, and learn to live as a unified human person. This means you have to bring back together the fragments of your distracted existence so that when you say “I” there is really someone present to support the pronoun you have uttered… (Thomas Merton, Faith & Violence, p. 112) [And from the article footnote, another quote from William Shannon: “The false self is a self of changing emotions – now up, now down. It exists not at any deep level of reality, but only in our egocentric desires: the desire to manipulate, to be recognized, to be praised, to possess, [and] to accumulate… Such a false self has no voice of its own; it speaks [with] the voice of the anonymous collectivity.”
This is the first step in the spiritual process, not something reserved for the advanced. Until we discover the authentic self the door to spiritual knowledge remains firmly closed; and religion becomes one of a range of optional extra which we just happen to have chosen, or else it is slavery to the internalised parental voice which seeks of deprive us of authentic freedom.”
“Unless we discover this deep self, which is hidden with Christ in God, we will never really know ourselves as persons. Nor will we know God. For it is by the doors of this deep self that we enter into the spiritual knowledge of God. (And indeed, if we seek our true selves it is not in order to contemplate ourselves, but to pass beyond ourselves and find him). The “self” to which grace is opposed is not merely the passionate, disordered, confused self – the rambling and dishevelled “ego” – but much more the tyrannical “super ego”, the rigid and deformed conscience which is our secret god and which with an infinitely jealous resourcefulness defends its throne against the coming of Christ.” (Thomas Merton, “The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation (1),” CSQ 18.1 (1983), p. 3).
… To find the true self, however, is not without its challenges. It means renouncing the false self with all its familiarity and convenience; detaching ourselves from our comfort zone and setting out on a voyage of discovery the destination of which is unknown… the search for the true self is stamped with the pattern of the paschal mystery. For the true self to rise up, the false self must die…
“In order to become oneself, one must die. That is to say, in order to become one’s true self, the false self must die… [This involves] a deepening of new life, a continuous rebirth, in which the exterior and superficial life of the ego-self is discarded like an old snakeskin and the mysterious, invisible self of the Spirit becomes more present and more active…” (Merton, “The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation (1) CSQ 18 (1983), p. 7).
…Strangely the true self us nothing flash. Its discovery does not represent a Hollywood makeover of our life so that we appear to ourselves more worthy, more glamorous, more perfect than we need to be. It is a homecoming [In this sense, think for example about the story of the Prodigal Son]: warmly accepting ourselves as we are, warts and all, and with all the blemishes and imperfections of which we are unlikely ever to be rid…”
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