self Vs. SELF

“Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness….We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality…God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.” -Thomas Merton, New Seeds Of Contemplation

“There, and you say you are dying! Lie still and get warm, that’s our way…” began Vasili Andreevich.

But to his great surprise he could say no more, for tears came to his eyes and his lower jaw began to quiver rapidly. He stopped speaking and only gulped down the risings in his throat. “Seems I was badly frightened and have gone quite weak,” he thought. But this weakness was not only not unpleasant, but gave him a peculiar joy such as he had never felt before.

“That’s our way!” he said to himself, experiencing a strange and solemn tenderness. He lay like that for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat and tucking under his knee the right skirt, which the wind kept turning up.

But he longed so passionately to tell somebody of his joyful condition that he said: “Nikita!”

“It’s comfortable, warm!” came a voice from beneath.

“There, you see, friend, I was going to perish. And you would have been frozen, and I should have…” But again his jaws began to quiver and his eyes to fill with tears, and he could say no more.

“Well, never mind,” he thought. “I know about myself what I know.” He remained silent and lay like that for a long time.” -excerpt from the shorty story, “Master And Man” by Leo Tolstoy

“We don’t have to become an entirely new person to do better; our view just has to be readjusted, our natural energy turned in the right direction. We don’t have to swear off our powers or repent of who we are or what we like to do or are good at doing. Those are our horses; we just have to hitch them to the right, uh, sled.

What kept Vasili so small all his life? (What is keeping us so small now?) He wasn’t small, actually, as proven by his end. He was infinite. He had access to as much great love as any of our beloved spiritual heroes. Why did he live out his life in that small country of selfishness? What was it that finally jolted him out of it? Well, it was truth. He saw that his idea of himself was untrue. His idea that he was himself was untrue. All of those years, he was only part of himself. He had made that part, was always making it and defending it, with his thoughts and his pride and his desire to win, which continually separated him, Vasili, from everything else. As that entity, Vasili, faded away, what was left behind discerned the fallacy and joined (rejoined) the great non-Vasili of it all.

If we could reverse the process (let him come alive again, warm that body up, melt away the snow, cause him to forget all he’s learned tonight) what we would see would be a mind gradually reasserting a series of lies: “You are separate” and “You are central” and “You are correct” and “Go forth and prove that you are better, that you are the best.

And then he would be all the way himself again.”

-excerpt from the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things. -“Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

Another name we can give the “false self” which Thomas Merton and other mystics identified, is the “small self.” The self of scarcity. The self of the singular. The self that’s only concerned with one person: Me, Myself and I. It’s a woefully incomplete and inadequate version.

Instead, see you in everyone and everyone in you. When you do, the whole world opens up. The illusion is shattered. The true self or large “SELF” emerges. The SELF of abundance. The SELF of compassion. The SELF that contain multitudes. The unstoppable SELF.