False Selves

Sue Monk Kidd gives a chapter to false and true selves, Chapter 3, early on: "In March my thoughts turned more and more to the transformation that takes place within the waiting heart. What are the changes and growth I am being asked to undergo? What is the movement that is happening inside of me, and where do I begin?"

It's just started being March, and I wondered about false selves while I put off writing to my blog--I thought that blogs were false selves because I cannot really write what is in my thoughts, I must be public with something not boring and whiny. Then, I thought that this blog was made to help fashion the true selves that are hidden under the clinging to the false, because the false ones are so familiar and it is so comfortable to wear them. That they create misery is just part of the package, misery is the Order of Things. But, when a day's gift is that I say, at the end of it, 'today I felt like --me-- again,' I see the true vs. false selves. What Kidd doesn't go into, is why we need false selves under certain circumstances. And that is where Byron Katie (thank you, Maurice Leconte) comes in. False selves must exist because of what Katie calls 'being in other people's business.' It is being reactive.

True selves must be when we hew to nothing but the voice within, when what others do or say does not change how we see ourselves, and then, the other learning curve, since last November 16th (borrowing of first of audio tapes from library), is controlling that voice, i.e., thoughts. But the controlling of the thoughts comes before hewing to the true self's voice. And controlling the familiar misery-making thoughts is hard because it takes us as actor on center stage off somewhere dimmer.

March comes in like a lion in the inner world, roaring at all the false selves. Will it go out like a lamb, with a more precious true self?