I love to read Ian Cron, a leading teacher on the Enneagram. He’s smart, brilliant, and has a plethora of good communication skills to bring things down to an understandable level. He has fed my soul in recent years and I still have to read and re-read to absorb all the “richness” he is delivering. He has a great statement regarding what worked in your childhood story of life doesn’t work in your adult story, and it goes like this, “what helped you in the morning of life constricts and kills you in the afternoon of life.” In other words, those things taught to you were often good boundaries, helped you survive and thrive for that season, hopefully spiritual teachings, and foundational learning to form “some” of you, but much of it won’t translate over into the real adult world of relationships and there is so much more of “you” to discover. We have a “false self” and we have a “true self.” How do we find the “true” one?
1 Cor. 13:11 confirms, “The time comes when you have to let go of childish things.”
Ian states it this way, “your personality is basically your cover story, covering over your TRUE SELF (defending it, protecting it). When you live asleep to that reality you identify with your personality as being WHO you are. But your personality is NOT who you are. It’s the seed of the FALSE SELF. We get people to do what we want with this personality. We do all kinds of things with it. Consider this verse, ‘I no longer live but Christ lives in me.’ ‘I’ is the false self in that text. It’s actually what we are like when we are living in the belief or identity with our personality. This false self is actually obscuring your TRUE SELF. And, your TRUE SELF, in the Christian tradition, is “hidden in Christ.” It’s your ‘given-ness’ in the world. So, the most important journey is, for you, in the course of a lifetime, to move from the FALSE SELF to the TRUE SELF because it’s the TRUE SELF that will MOST be able to give GLORY TO GOD.
Human beings are the only creatures in creation that can actually mask their own identity. Animals can’t do it. Trees can’t do it. They give glory to God like they are. So, to live in the TRUE SELF, is what it means to become a “saint.” THAT, is a beautiful goal for our faith. In Ian’s words, “when you find yourself living in the wrong story, LEAVE.”
Some people live their entire adult life inside a childhood story that worked ok as a child, but now it doesn’t exist, and, they live their entire adult life living and making decisions in such ways as to subconsciously please their up-bringers, caretakers, and their original family. And, if they don’t let go of this, they will always be a child in their thinking. Now, as a child of God, they have a new family; the family of God. You have to come to the understanding that these childhood stories are relics from the past.
Yes, as you discover your true self, over a lifetime of pursuit, most of your personality will remain intact, at least the good parts of it. But, much of the “cover story” will disappear over time and you will find yourself becoming more authentic, more true to reality, slower to speak, quicker to listen, wiser, you stop judging yourself and others, no longer “trying too hard,” you push back on man-made rules, you find new freedoms (married or unmarried), simply saying “thank you,” enjoying delicacies you never dreamed possible, discovering new sensualities, increasing intimacy, not filling in the gaps when there is silence, feeling all of your senses, creating fresh margin in your life, simplifying, concentrating on what’s important, and making some dreams come true for you and others.
We should be on a never-ending quest to know ourselves and become a better self, and then become our best selves, in the end. In my opinion, there is a window of adult life for you to become your best self and if you don’t do it before you arrive at too old an age, you may miss it, simply because the older we get the more our minds become, once again, like children.
Ah, sounds like discipleship to me…that never-ending quest to become more and more like Christ as we journey hard and fast back to that “garden of Eden” beauty and peace as we look forward to seeing “Him,” face to face! Get started!
