# personality, self, and God



## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

below are a couple of paragraphs that i have always found helpful when suffering from dp/dr. obviously, they are from a Christian and will probably be most helpful to those who adhere to Christianity. but i post them for the benefit of any who can find help, hope, and inspiration in these words.

i welcome ANYONE's thoughts or questions regarding it, but especially thoughts or questions people have about how you actually put this into practice.

"At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ?natural? men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ?blindly? so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you re not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ?s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of you whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." --C.S. Lewis


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

I agree with the theme, though not in quite the same way since I'm not Christian.



californian said:


> How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.


I disagree in that I think everyone is unique, event the Tyrants >_< Like it or not, Love is the motivation for every human action - love of something - be it war, power, control or fluffy bunny rabbits 



> But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that...The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.


I agree to an extent, though I feel some semantics are in order when talking about "Self". The self he is talking about giving away is the ego self - the one focussed purely on the physical, on what you want to physically aquire and what you are afraid of. On the other hand, this "Christ self" refers to the already immortal centre of YOU, which is undefinable. It exists beyond the physical, is infinite, immortal and wise.

However it should be noted that trying to "Crucify the ego", as I once strived to do, ultimately only ends in suffering (since the motivation is actually born of ego to begin with, so you only end up fighting yourself  ). I think a balance is what's needed - allow your ego self to feel comfortable accepting itself and your "christ self" (Or Higher Self in spiritual terms). Allow both to express themselves. Remain wary that you are in a physical body in a physical world yet this does not define you or control you.



> The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.


Can't agree more with that. I spent so many years worrying about what other people thought of me (and still do sometimes, unfortunately). It leads to anxiety and if you worry enough, it seems there's not really much of YOU to make any sort of impression (Enter DP).



> Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of you whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.


Agree with this, though its a really big challenge to be able to fully do this without, you know, actually dying.



> Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.


Sort of agree with this, but in a different way. I believe most of our energy IS already dead (because we've blocked it off from being accessed). Each time you heal yourself, you are unlocking more of your energy. Each time a piece of you is resurrected, in a way.



> Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in


Again, semantics issues. Follow the path of ego and be only concerned with physical gain, power and control and you are sure to find hatred, loneliness and despair. Listen to you inner/higher self and discover a vast (read: infiinite) well of love energy.


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

i appreciate you thoughts on this, CECIL. again i see many points of contact in our respective views, although there are indeed semantic differences.

i appreciate your distinction between an ego self and a "christ self." i think it is a good one, and one that is found in St Paul's Romans chapter 7-8 internal battle. (i think Paul here is outlining the same principles as id, ego, superego, to a great degree.)

i do not agree that "crucifying the ego" only ends in suffering. i think trying to KILL one's ego does indeed produce a great deal of suffering, anxiety, guilt, etc. but to understand the metaphor of crucifying we must consider that Christ did not commit suicide, but rather gave himself up, yielded, handed himself over in love. if the ego is crucified, it means a yielding of the "ego" to Christ...to Christ (whom it cannot be overemphasized) is in us. so i see this as rather a yielding that brings the "ego" into union with Christ, rather than a murdering, repressing, etc. of the ego that is both impossible and self-destructive.

eastern (and some western) monks have practiced "hesychasm" for well over a millennium as part of a way of creating this union. semantically, they speak of uniting the mind with the heart, or having the mind descend into the heart. the heart is understood as the place where Christ dwells in us. salvation consists of this union of mind and heart and is what allows us to experience God as illuminating rather than condemning (as heaven rather than hell).


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

> eastern (and some western) monks have practiced "hesychasm" for well over a millennium as part of a way of creating this union. semantically, they speak of uniting the mind with the heart, or having the mind descend into the heart. the heart is understood as the place where Christ dwells in us. salvation consists of this union of mind and heart and is what allows us to experience God as illuminating rather than condemning (as heaven rather than hell).


The "mystical" way of prayer of which you speak was first propagated by St. Antony of the Desert. It is very difficult to reach the stillness needed for it - but I cannot recommend it highly enough. Some mystics have said that if you do not learn it sooner you will have to learn it later, because it is how one sees the beatific vision - the sight of God. I find that people who are depressed or alone are the most receptive to it. When one emerges from it, I'm always reminded that God's thoughts are far above my own - our view of God is so far from how he truly is. Lewis wrote about this several times, but I am always reminded of his analogy of God from the children's book _The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe_ that Aslan "is not a tame lion" and that he is "everything you ever hoped he would be, but better."

Peace
Homeskooled


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

i'm very glad you brought up st. anthony the great. he and the other desert fathers (and mothers) are earliest exponents of this method and are still one of the very best sources to turn to. i recommend "the sayings of the desert fathers" (ed. benedicta ward) as a great place to find their sayings. reading a book like that can really open up deeper understandings of God for us all, especially Christians. i think CECIL and Pablo in particular would find the desert fathers and mothers quite interesting indeed.


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Yes, I've read that. The priest at my monastery really loves it, especially for homilies. If you can, read the life of St. Antony by St. Athanasius. I'll eventually try to put it up for Meditations III, but I think I'll stop there, unless I quote St. Paul. The way is incredibly simple, and including too much reading material just mucks up the waters.

Peace
Homeskooled


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

californian said:


> semantically, they speak of uniting the mind with the heart, or having the mind descend into the heart. the heart is understood as the place where Christ dwells in us. salvation consists of this union of mind and heart and is what allows us to experience God as illuminating rather than condemning (as heaven rather than hell).


That's beautiful and very well put 

In my past I supressed the heart and favoured the mind. Doing so leads to all sorts of mental/emotional problems. But then favouring the heart over the mind also leaves half of your total self untapped. Union, balance and harmony are what its all about


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