True Self and the Wounded Warrior Part I

Luke 24: 46-53

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. (John 6: 62, 63)

I added that second little bit of scripture from the Gospel of John because it clarifies something about the wondrous significance of the Ascension. Before Christ could send the Holy Spirit he had to ascend to God to re-assume his place as the Lord of all and the all in all. Up until the moment the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples after the Ascension, Jesus had been teaching limited minds. “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…” For three years his followers had listened to his words, receiving them through the lenses of their flesh and limited understanding, and Jesus was fine with that even though they had a very difficult time knowing exactly what it was he was talking about. He was building a foundation within them for the future. 

What he really loved about them was not their intellectual grasp but their devotion to him and their willingness to stay with him even though his words didn’t always make sense. All along he could see what they couldn’t even begin to conceive; he could see their True Selves and he could see them receiving the gift of his own awesome, all pervading Spirit at Pentecost. He knew that when that happened they would ‘get it’. They would comprehend who they really were on levels higher and deeper than what their flesh and finite minds could ever begin to comprehend.

“It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.”  Flesh: False Self, Ego. Maybe a better term that doesn’t have such negative connotations is “Wounded Warrior”. For most people, the Wounded Warrior is less this selfish controlling monster than it is an entity that has tried from birth to protect one from wounds and keep one safe. Wounded Warrior has tried to be strong and protective but it is absolutely and utterly useless when it comes to living out the fullness of the spiritual life. Yet it is what is most often turned to, listened to and heeded when it comes to trying to live the spiritual life.

Even very spiritually oriented people, people who desire with all their hearts to live lives pleasing to God, are often unknowingly caught up in the Wounded Warrior’s interpretation of how best to achieve that life. There can be this great desire to clean up one’s faults and be the kind of Christian one feels one should be but Wounded Warrior is still ends up in charge.

Wounded Warrior sees those faults. Your Wounded Warrior, in its need to be in full control, acts out the roles of accuser, arresting officer, jury, judge and jailer. It feels that if it judges itself, sentences itself and carries out the discipline it has decided upon, it will be safe. Your Wounded Warrior hopes God will see that it is trying to be in control of all the sin and brokenness and he will be pleased.

So…how’s that working out for you?

Not well, I would guess. However, the voice of the ego’s Wounded Warrior is a loud and insistent one and it has been voraciously active all your life. It’s the product of original sin. I have a theory that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden with its forbidden fruit could have been called “The Ego Tree’. And we have become completely used to living with our Wounded Warriors. Life with it seems normal and true.

A good friend of mine wrote this to me: “All too often I listen to voices of guilt or condemnation without even asking "Is this my Shepherd's voice?”  Seems like a no brainer but the more I listen to such a "voice" the more it becomes familiar and the less I even question it - almost as though I've given it authority.”  

Would you recognize your True Self if it stood in front of you and smiled compassionately at you? Maybe not, unless you have become very comfortable with the idea of a separate and whole True Self. The thing is, the Wounded Warrior is completely convinced it is the true self – the total reality of who you are.

Jesus said, “The flesh is useless. It is the Spirit that gives life.”

Through baptism your True Self is deeply connected with the Spirit. It just is. Your True Self is a gift that is always within you and will never be taken away but neither will it ever intrude upon you. Just like everything in the authentic spiritual life, seeking True Self is a risk because it means not believing everything the Wounded Warrior tells you about yourself. Tell me honestly – does it not feel safer and less risky to believe what Wounded Warrior tells you about all your faults and sins (the knowledge of good and evil?) than to believe that there is a self within you that looks like Jesus, a self that sees the best, is compassionate, full of love, pure, dignified in its inherent authority, knows it is deeply approved of and is delighted in its own reality because it’s a reality created by God? Does that sound almost ‘new agey’?

The eternal Father said, “And if anyone should ask me what this soul is, I would say: She is another me, made so by the union of love."

Does that sound a little like a new age perspective? It’s from St. Catherine of Sienna, a doctor of the Church.

Let see what else she said:

"God was made human and human was made God."

"The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish."

"We've been deceived by the thought that we would be more pleasing to God in our own way than in the way God has given us."

Perhaps St. Francis might convince you.

“We are all in mourning for the experience of our essence we knew and now miss. Light is the cure, all else a placebo. Yes, I will console any creature before me that is not laughing or full of passion for their art or life; for laughing and passion— beauty and joy—is our heart’s truth, all else is labor and foreign to the soul.” (Our Need For Thee. St. Francis of Assisi.)

St. Francis seems to imply that somewhere in our eternal history we knew our True Selves. “…our essence we knew and now miss.” Ancient and modern mystics are ones who have met their True Selves. That’s what gives them the capacity to be all that they are. Their actions, devotions and convictions flow out of knowing the real truth about themselves and knowing God through that truth. Not the other way around.

As familiar as we are with our Wounded Warrior’s ways and perceptions, listening to it is “labor and foreign to the soul”.

Wouldn’t you rather be at home?

I try to write only a certain amount in each reflection because if it gets too long, people find it hard to take the time to read. So I’m going to do something a little different. I’m going to post Part II in a few days.

It’s that important.