Men as Mentors - Richard Rohr and Sergio Milandri - Part 7

Start with three minutes of stillness. In the silence imagine stepping out of your false self.

Part 7 Death of the False Self

Our Western Culture seems fixated on avoiding death and most of us have not escaped the game. Despite all we assert about wanting to live honestly and authentically, our daily drivers, our security concerns and our acceptance anxieties are mostly about not facing who we really are. We insist on seeing ourselves as we would like to be seen and seem unable to look at ourselves without our masks and pretenses or to allow our illusions to die. Look at yourself now, without your put-on smile. What do you see?

It seems a contradiction that our life is in our death. As Rohr says, “Initiation is always a training in dying.” (Rohr p.39) Where we have been initiated we have died and our new self has come to life, but in most areas of our lives we resist that invitation to let go. As Rohr says so well in chapter 7, there is no real life without death, no real meaning unless the petty and meaningless external self is shed. Unless the small self dies the new self is not enabled to come alive.

This is not a death many of us are aware of or would choose and so we hang on for dear life to what we know. However, with life come failure, loss and pain, all of which are a gift that happens despite our greatest efforts to avoid them. They draw us in despite our deepest fears and bring us to a new life and reality despite our reluctance. Death is being aware and open to what is passing, to what needs to die and to what needs to come alive. It is allowing life to happen to us. It is trusting God enough to say with Mary, “Let it be done to me as you have said.”

For us the invitation is to allow life to happen and not to fight it. Events occur that want to take us away from our usual place of comfort where we’d rather stay. We are going to places in ourselves we would rather not go to and to trials we would rather not face. If we allow them to, the same events that would vex and offend us are the very ones that will transform us to new life if we allow them to. As Jesus said to Peter, “You will be taken where you do not want to go.”

Each day we are invited to respond to events differently and not out of our habits and attitudes. The movement we must undertake is away from our addictions to our small world and petty concerns, from our limited world view and small self image, from our crippling fears and enraging anger. It is leaving an empty self and facing our demons as we are transformed and then it is a coming home to our renewed self. We move from powerlessness to profound empowerment. This is not about losing oneself but rather about finding the renewed self; the original self that God saw as he created us, the self he sees and has been calling into being since before our time began. Our real self is our share of the bigger truth, our piece of eternal reality, our inheritance as a child and heir of our eternal father. It is our contribution to a new world of which we are co-creators.

Reflection and Journal (10 minutes in silence, journals closed)
What life events are stripping you right now and what are you hanging onto?

Reflect on your feeling in these areas.

Journal. (10 minutes.)

Record some of what you are experiencing. What feelings are the most difficult to accept?

Connecting with each other in the group.

Share around the circle some of the feelings you are experiencing.

This week. Reflect on your struggle to let go of old ways of being.
Read chapter 8 of Richard Rohr’s “From Wild Man to Wise Man”