Day 17 of Lent :: The False Self

“God is at home.
It is we who have gone out for a walk.”
Meister Eckhart

“It’s easy to lose touch with who we are and become obsessed with what we are not,” writes Albert Haase, in his book, Come Home to Your True Self, he continues, We become alienated from our very selves as we develop bad habits that verge on addictions…

We become so consumed with our careers and roles that we end up defining ourselves by what we do…

In our journey away from the God-intended true self, an interdependent person living with the awareness of the Presence in the present moment, we have constructed a false self, which makes us forget who we really are and where we truly belong. The false self is obsessed with “me.” Indeed, our stuffed lives are like the bloated stomachs of starving children. They betray our hunger, not our satisfaction. And thus begins our obsession with what we have, what we do, and what people think of us. Unfortunately, it often takes us the better part of our lives to discover that things found in shopping malls, places of honor and short-lived infatuations cannot fill the hole in the heart.

The spiritual journey is a journey back to one’s true self. Coming home is about leaving the pigpen of empty attractions and avoidances and coming back to the Presence in the present moment. It is about returning to where God placed me in the very beginning.*

Reflection: Read Luke 15:11-32. Are there ways in which you are still out for “a walk” and not yet found your place “at home” in your Father’s house?


*Albert Haase, Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions, 37, 39, 51