Quotes About False Self

Because it forgets our Oneness, it feels separate. It is our public self—who we think others and eventually even we think we should be. Most of the time, when we are in the role of our false self, we feel uncomfortable, numb, empty or in a contrived or contracted state. We do not feel real, complete, whole or sane. At one level or another, we sense that something is wrong, and that something is missing.

Denial of the Child Within and the subsequent emergence of a false self or negative ego are particularly common among children and adults who grew up in troubled families, such as those where chronic physical or mental illness, rigidity, coldness or lack of nurturing were common.

Paradoxically, we often feel like this false self is our natural state, the way we "should be." This could be our addiction or attachment to being that way. We become so accustomed to being our false self that our Real Self feels guilty, like something is wrong, that we shouldn't feel real and alive. To consider changing this problem is frightening.

It's ego – the false self – that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.

To return to the basic idea, you must see that there is a difference between your True Self and your False Self. The True Self is the essential you. It is pure, unconditioned, natural, spiritual. It has nothing to do with ego-competition, pretense, self-deception, pride, vanity, arrogance, and other negativities that keep a man afraid. All such items belong to the False Self.

Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically.

Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is.

It takes lots of energy and hard work to live a false self. This may be the symbolic meaning of the Biblical statement that after the fall the man and the woman would suffer in their natural activities: the woman in childbirth, the man in his work.

The true test of a man, the beginning of his redemption, actually starts when he can no longer rely on what he's used all his life. The real journey begins when the false self fails.

Our smaller stories are constructed along the plot lines of control and gratification. Once we begin to live by this false self, Satan and his minions sabotage the story to make sure we are exposed. Then he mocks us for our foolishness and hypocrisy for hiding behind such a facade in the first place. Other times, he simply leaves us to die in costume.

That's the biggest problem with personas. A false self can never rest. It looks like a real person, but a persona is actually just a hologram, a projected image, and it requires constant energy to keep that image up. A persona is afraid to go to sleep, because to sleep is to die.