Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Lose yourself in Me
Lose yourself in Me
Lose yourself in Me
Lose yourself in Me
So it is with those
Lose yourself in Me
Lose yourself in Me
Lose yourself in Me
| First session
| Second session
A. Self as object Pg 6
B. Self as subject
| Third session
A. Guided meditation Pg 9
| First session
B. Process of identification
| Second session
First Session
A naturalist was visiting a farmer one day and was surprised to see a beautiful
eagle in the farmer’s chicken coop. "Why in the world, asked the naturalist, have
you got this eagle living in with the chickens?"
"Well, answered the farmer, I found him when he was little and raised him in there
with the chickens. He doesn’t know any better, he thinks he is a chicken." The
naturalist was dumbfounded. The eagle was pecking the grain and drinking from the
watering can. The eagle kept his eyes on the ground and strutted around in
circles, looking every inch a big, over-sized chicken. "Doesn’t he ever try to
spread his wings and fly out of there?" asked the naturalist. "No, said the
farmer, and I doubt he ever will, he doesn’t know what it means to fly."
"Well, said the naturalist, "let me take him out and do a few experiments with
him." The farmer agrees, but assured the naturalist that he was wasting his time.
The naturalist lifted the bird to the top of the chicken coop fence and said
"Fly!" He pushed the reluctant bird off the fence and it fell to the ground in a
pile of dusty feathers. Next, the undaunted researcher took the ruffled
chicken/eagle to the farmer’s hay loft and spread it’s wings before tossing it
high in the air with the command "FLY!" The frightened bird shrieked and fell
ungraciously to the barn-yard where it resumed pecking the ground in search of
it’s dinner. The naturalist again picked up the eagle and decided to give it one
more chance in a more appropriate environment, away from the bad examples of
chicken lifestyle. He set the docile bird on the front seat of his pickup truck
next to him and headed for the highest butte in the country. After a lengthy and
sweaty climb to the crest of the butte with the bird tucked under his arm, he
spoke gently to the goldenbird. "Friend, he said, you were born to soar. It is
better that you die here today on the rocks below than live the rest of your life
being a chicken in a pen, gawked at and out of your element." Having said these
final words, he lifted the eagle up and once more commanded it to "FLY!" He tossed
it out in space and this time, much to his relief, it opened it’s seven-foot
wingspan and flew gracefully into the sky. It slowly climbed in ever higher
spirals, riding unseen thermals of hot air until it disappeared into the glare of
the morning sun. The naturalist smiled and thought how happy he was with his days
work. Like the eagle, he had for many years, let other people define his worth and
direct his life for him. Like the eagle, it had taken a life and death situation
for him to realize his self worth and real calling in life.
What we are depends on what we believe to be true about ourself. That is the very
first spiritual axiom, "As a man believes, so it is for him."
There are two ways of looking at oneself, (1) through the eyes of a chicken, or
(2) through the eyes of an eagle. The way we relate to ourselves, those around us
and the world, is determined by what we accept to be true.
"Christ could be born a thousand times in Galilee - but all in vain until He is
born in me."
These words were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi,
site of the sacred Oracle.
What those words imply is this: Before you ask any other question, first ask the
most fundamental question of your life: Who am I?
Your sense of who you are determines how you see the world. It is like the lens we
wear. If we wear red lens we see everything red.
"Without first knowing yourself, how can you know what is true? Illusion is
inevitable without self-knowledge."
"We labour unceasingly to preserve an imaginary existence and neglect the real."
- Blaise Pascal
- St. Augustine
"…because of consciousness man both knows himself and knows God, and because man
knows God only in so much as he knows himself, the greater the degree of self-
knowledge, the greater the degree of divine knowledge – or rather, knowledge of
the divine."
- Thomas Merton
"Identities refer to the way we defines oneself in relation to the other, and in
the process one constructs ‘boundaries’".
| Name:
| Name:
| Race:
| Race:
| Citizenship:
| Citizenship:
| Achievements:
| Achievements:
| Religion:
| Religion:
| Profession:
| Profession:
| Title:
| Titles:
| Hobby/Interest:
| Hobby/Interest:
| Health:
| Health:
| Physique:
| Physique:
| Colour:
| Colour:
a lover of God
a bringer of light.
a Chinese.
an Indian
a Malaysian.
a Singaporean
a 12As student.
a champion.
a Christian.
a Buddhist.
a teacher.
a lawyer.
a CEO.
a President.
a stamp collector.
a bird-watcher.
a diabetic.
a fitness freak
handsome.
pretty.
black.
white.
| Age:
| Age:
| Metaphor:
| Metaphor:
| Past:
| Past:
| Perception:
| Perception:
| Emotion:
| Emotion:
| Emotion:
| Emotion:
| Possessions:
| Possessions:
| Roles:
| Roles:
| Gender:
| Gender:
a teenager.
an adult.
a failure.
an ex-convict unworthy.
a conservative.
angry
happy.
depressed.
peaceful.
a millionaire
a house owner.
a brother.
a sister.
not my past.
a male
a female
I am …
Name
Race
Citizenship
Achievements
Possessions
Roles
Religion
Profession
Titles
Hobby/interests
a lover of God.
a Chinese.
a Malaysian.
a champion.
a car-owner.
a son.
a Christian.
a lawyer.
a CEO.
a fitness freak.
a Black.
a consumer.
Write down whatever comes to your mind as many "I am this" or "I am that" as
possible without much thinking.
Then based on the list write a short autobiography of yourself that you can be
really proud of in not less than two hundred words.
After this go into silence and solitude and thank God for the gift of self. Use
Psalm 103 or 1 John 4: 7-16 for prayer. Ask God for the grace: Give me O Lord a
deep experience of being loved by you.
Exercise: points for reflection and prayer b4 next session
For next morning. Use text Philippians 2:5-11 "…but he emptied himself taking the
form of a slave…" to prepare for next morning prayer before they retire for the
night. Ask God for the grace: Help me to know myself that I might know you better.
Second Session
I am special
I am beautiful
I am wonderful
I'm powerful
Unstoppable
Sometimes I'm miserable
Sometimes I'm pitiful
But that's so typical of all the things I am
I am special
I am beautiful
I am wonderful
I'm powerful
Unstoppable
Sometimes I'm miserable
Sometimes I'm pitiful
But that's so typical of all the things I am
I am special
I am beautiful
I am wonderful
And powerful
Unstoppable
Sometimes I'm miserable
Sometimes I'm pitiful
But that's so typical of all the things I am
I am special
I am beautiful
I am wonderful
I'm powerful
Unstoppable
Sometimes I'm miserable
Sometimes I'm pitiful
But that's so typical of all the things I am
Of all the things I am
Sometimes I'm miserable
Sometimes I'm pitiful
But that's so typical of all the things I am
Of all the things I am
A. Self as object
What role has memory or selective memory played in the construction of your
identity? What have you conveniently left out?
How many of you believe that what you have written is the totality of who you
really are?
The self is a fascinating topic. Looks like we all know ourselves, do we not?
Yet, we are often strangers to ourselves. The truth is we think we know ourselves.
We may know something about ourselves but that is not the same as knowing
ourselves.
When we know something about ourselves, we become the object known (self as
object), which is a complex of (objective) ideas, feelings, identities, valuations
and so on.
But when we know ourselves as we are without labels, ideas, etc, we become the
knowing subject (self as subject).
The self as object is a mental construct which is subject to change any moment.
Because we can see and know it objectively this "subject’ is often mistaken as our
true self.
"You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your ideas
about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment…It is utterly
vulnerable, at the mercy of a passerby. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an
insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply."
"Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that
image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually
are."
B. Self as subject
"The great tragedy for many of us is that in growing up, we become self-made,
independent successes who are weighed down with thoughts of the past and worries
about the future. We lose touch with our true self, the person God created us to
be. We live off-center and alienated from who we really are."
"We need to return to being who God created us to be and stop being who we are
not. We need to come home to the true self."
Or can we "get to zero" so that at zero we can just be and thus allows us to
connect from being to being at the now moment?
What does it mean to "empty" ourselves, stand "naked" or "get to zero?" It means
to:
Begin to understand yourself for the first time as you really are.
Get a volunteer to come forward and write his/her list of "I ams" on the white
board.
After that ask him/her to strike of one by one from the last to the first if the
sense of self is
Or ask "Who are you prior to your labels, ideas, images, concepts, information
about you?"
I am…
a bird-watcher.
a smiling tiger.
troubled.
great.
"To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. And
to know what you are not…"
"...you much watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go
with the basic fact: ‘I am’".
"The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I
am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not
inherent in the sense of ‘I am’".
"But whatever can be described cannot be yourself, and what you are cannot be
described. You can only know yourself by being yourself without any attempt at
self-definition and self-description."
"I can say: ‘I am’, but what I am I cannot say. I know I exist, but I do not know
what exists. Whichever way I put it, I face the unknown."
"All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say
‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as ‘this’ or
‘that’ cannot be yourself."
"If you ask me: ‘Who are you?’ My answer would be: ‘Nothing in particular. Yet, I
am.’"
"His presence is present in my own presence. If I am, then He is. And in knowing
that I am, …the indefinable ‘am’ that is myself in the deepest roots, then through
this deep centre I pass into the infinite ‘I AM’ which is the very Name of the
Almighty."
"Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness and
void…And this is why the way to reality is the way of humility which brings us to
reject the illusory self and accept the "empty" self that is "nothing" in our own
eyes and in the eyes of men, but is our true reality in the eyes of God.
"In experience, the true self in its oneness with the divine is felt to be a
continuous burning inner flame, whereas the phenomenal self is ever changing,
moving, coming and going…Where the true self is unknown, the phenomenal self
consists of all the experiences we usually think as self—various energies,
feelings, emotions, thinking and all mental functioning."
"While the true self is known to exist and be one with the divine, its true
nature, essence or ‘what’ it is, is unknown. Merely to label this aspect of
consciousness as the ‘unconscious self’ or the ‘true self’ does not tell us ‘what’
it is; all it tells us is ‘that’ it is."
"In this unitive state we identity with Christ in the words of St. Paul, ‘No
longer I, but Christ lives in me.’ Thus our true self is hidden with Christ in
God, inseparably one with God through Christ."
"It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." - Galatians 2:20
Ask God for the grace: That I shall always remain in your love.
Mystic – simply means authentic mature person.
Third Session
"Christ set us free, so that we should remain free. Stand firm, then, and do not
let yourselves be fastened again to the yoke of slavery."
- Galatians 5:1
"After all, brothers, you were called to be free; do not use your freedom as an
opening for self-indulgence, but be servants to one another in love."
- Galatians 5:13
"…you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." - John 8:32
"But if the truth is to make me free, I must also let go of my hold upon myself,
and not retain a semblance of self which is an object of a ‘thing.’ I, too, must
be no-thing. And when I am no-thing, I am in the All, and Christ lives in me."
(motionless)
here
me I AM now you
past
See saw
A. Guided meditation
Imagine yourself watching a movie in a cinema. You are the watcher or observer of
the movie. The movie is your thoughts and feelings and desires. Watch them come
and go, come and go. Then change your focus in the opposite direction and pay
attention to the watcher or observer. What do you feel or experience?
I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be
seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or
healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a
body, but I am not my body.
I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be
known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness,
but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires but I am not my desires.
I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and
what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but
they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions but I am not my emotions.
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, but
what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave
me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts.
So who are you? You are not objects out there, you are not feelings, you are not
thoughts —you are effortlessly aware of all those, so you are not those. Who or
what are you?
You cannot be seen. No part of you can be seen because you are not an object. Your
body can be seen. Your thoughts can been seen but you are not any of those
objects. You are the observing presence or witnessing awareness right now.
Reading Materials
Thomas Keating
Deepak Chopra
Story – Zen master about reputation.
B. Characteristics of the true self
10 characteristics of the true self: (cf Fr. Albert Haase, OFM, Coming Home to
Your True Self , p 24)
Relational
Self-giving
Trustful surrender
Compassionate
The true self experience is an experience of abiding oneness with the divine
(unitive state).
1. "‘By doing it,’…Doing the truth means living out of the reality which He who is
the truth, making His being the being of ourselves."
3. "The truth that liberates is the power of love, for God is love…Love liberates
from the father of the lie because it liberates us from our false self to our true
self- to that self which is grounded in true reality. Therefore, distrust every
claim for truth where you do not see truth united with love."
See 2 John 1-6: on living a "life of truth" and "life of love", which for John the
truth is "walking in love".
4. "The knowledge of the Son, and belief in his name, in the Gospel means a
participation in the being of Christ; this is conveyed completely, concretely,…by
an invitation to eat his flesh and to drink his blood, so that the disciples will
become of one substance with him."
"We are not human beings with spiritual experience, but spiritual beings with
human experience."
- Teilhard de Chardin
Personal Prayer
Text 2 John 1-6: The truth as "walking in love" - living a life of truth and
living a life of love.
Ask God for the grace that you will always remain in his truth and love.
Next morning prayer. 2nd Samuel 11:1-27, 12:1-6. Ask God for a deep knowledge of
my own sinfulness.
First Session
"We labour unceasingly to preserve an imaginary existence and neglect the real."
- Blaise Pascal
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating
itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was.
"Am I one or two?" If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: The ‘I’
and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them
is real."
Often suffer from the "poor me" syndrome and wallow in self-pity. Why me? What’s
wrong with me?
Are experts at playing the "victim" - for them blame is the name of the game? Good
at fixing the blame!
Like to justify oneself at the expense of others by resorting to lies and deceits?
Believe they are the best and measure everything according to their own standards
and demand that others should treat them with respect?
Insist that they are always right and must win at all cost because they cannot
afford to lose face? Result: hot/cold wars.
Are easily insulted, offended, or hurt when they perceive their self-importance or
self-image is under attacked? I am so hurt or you have hurt me…blah, blah, blah.
Have an obsession for popularity, hunger for approval and like to show-off?
Use guilt trips, emotional blackmail, threats, deceptions, lies, and ultimatums to
get what they want?
Are weighed down by the past, fearful of the future, but resist the eternal now?
These are a few glimpses of how the false self comes alive.
Ego is the totality of our self-experience that is centred solely on and around
itself .
The false self is often referred to as the ego (acronym meaning Edging God Out)
and on it we stake our whole life.
"The term ‘ego’ articulates a specific experience. Its best articulation might be
this: the ego is what we feel when self-will is crossed, blocked or otherwise
thwarted. It is the psychological pain that underlies all tantrum behaviours—
anger, hitting back, revenge, anxiety and much more…the ego is first and foremost
the feeling-self—it is not, primarily at least, the knowing self."
"In the egoic state we regard our self-image or self-reflection as not true to our
deepest self."
"Thus if our self-image is unclear or false we can hardly expect to have a true
image of God."
This definition is close to what Rene Descartes (who unwittingly discovers the
root of the ego) says, "I think, therefore I am,"
"The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks."
"Our false self is who we think we are. It is our mental self-image and social
agreement, which most people spend their whole lives living up to – or down to."
- Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return, quoted in James Martin, SJ, Becoming Who You Are, p
20
"You do not know what you are and therefore you imagine yourself to be what you
are not."
The false self or ego grows out of our capacity and tendency to see the self as a
thing or object separate from other things.
Because there’s "I," therefore there has to be "other" and that immediately sees a
physical world of separation or duality
"From Meister Eckhart to Mary Daly, the sin behind all sin is seen as dualism.
Separation. Subject/object relationships…take any sin…every action is treating
another as an object outside oneself. This is dualism. This is behind all sin."
- Matthew Fox
B. Process of identification
Process of identification:
The word "identification" is derived from the Latin word idem, meaning "same" and
facere, which means "to make".
One of the most basic level of identification is with things when we say my car,
my house, etc.
However, we are never really attached to a thing but a thought that has "I" "me"
or "mine" in it.
"The ‘me’ exists only through identification with property, with a name, with a
family, with failures and successes, with all the things you have been and want to
be. You are that with which you have identified yourself; you are made up of all
that, and without it, you are not."
Establish himself by what people think of him so that others would recognize
himself as the Messiah.
Establish himself by having all the power and kingdoms in the world.
"Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself. As you think
yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate
from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience
desire and fear."
"The symbolism in the story of the Fall implies that, prior to Eve eating the
fruit, Adam and Eve were unified. They were part of each other, as symbolized by
Eve having been created from Adam’s ribs. They had no awareness of each other as
separate beings.
…The curse of Eden, if we want to call it such, was that once Adam and Eve saw
themselves as separate, mistrust, doubt, and division entered the world. From that
time onwards, we would always be struggling to be reunited with ourselves, with
each other, and with God."
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in
time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest us."
- Albert Einstein
"It is the idea of who we are that separates us from who we are."
On healing separateness:
"As you did it to one of the least of these my brethen, you did it to me…As you
did not do to one of the lease of these, you did it not to me." - Matthew 25:40,45
"…your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the
new self …" or
Second Session
Pleasure Popularity
Praise People
Power Productivity
Prestige Possessions
Position Perfection - cf Albert Haase, OFM, Coming Home to Your True Self, p 39
"We no longer identify with the concocted false self made up of what I do, what I
have, and what others think of me. I know that I am, existing within and ever
flowing forth from the Divine Creative Energy of the I AM."
- M. Basil Pennington
"The false self is a human construct built by selfishness and flights from
reality. Because it is not the whole truth of us, is not of God. And because it is
not of God, our false self is substantially empty and incapable of experiencing
the love and freedom of God."
"In fact, mind itself is not the problem. But our identification with it is. In
other words, ego has identified with the contents of mind believing them to be
real and therefore giving them the power to create our reality."
"To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live an imaginary world of
your own creation is the dawn of wisdom."
Eg. prisoners in self captivity. Who are the prisoners of their own thoughts ?
The guilt stricken – lonely lives, running away, regret, hiding their shame & stay
stuck in live.
Suicide bombers – very angry, bitter, resentful, highly toxic & can blow
themselves anytime.
The chicken hearted – deep seated fears, play safe, dare not take risk
Philippians 2 : 5-6
Ephesians 4 : 22-24
"After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free
of it."
"Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by
the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good
and acceptable and perfect." - Romans 12:1-2
"Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in
the form of God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself…" - Philippians 2:5-6
"You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which
gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a
spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in
God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth."
- Ephesians 4:22-24
"Jesus takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)…It is one thing which alienates
the world from God: sin, not sins. What is it that underlies the sinfulness of
men?"
"In conclusion we may say that sin, the sin from which those who listen to the
word of Jesus are absolved, is first of all a false and corroding sense of self-
sufficiency – which preclude the operation of grace – , and secondly but
consequently, a failure to love. The sin which dooms to death is persistent
refusals to examine one’s presuppositions, to continue saying ‘we see.’"
"To say I was born in sin is to say that I came into the world with a false
self...Being someone that I was never intended to be and therefore a denial of
what I am supposed to be. And thus I came into existence and non-existence at the
same time because from the very start I was something that I was not."
"Here Merton equates sin with the identity-giving structures of the false self…
For Merton, the matter of who we are always precedes what we do. Thus, sin is not
necessarily an action but rather an identity. Sin is a fundamental stance of
wanting to be what we are not."
If who we are always precedes what we do then every decision we make is not about
what we do but who we are.
If few bad deeds: "I have lied so I better stop lying," etc.
Solution: simply to stop doing that bad deed – or start doing good deeds.
So salvation becomes nothing more than doing good things and avoiding the bad.
Such a solution does not need Jesus Christ, who take away the sin of the world
(John 1, 29).
Have we watered down salvation when we don’t see that we (our false self) are the
problem?
"Is not the desire to get rid of the ego itself a manifestation of the ego?"
- Chuang Tzu
"When ego is master, there is hell, when ego is servant, there is heaven."
"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily
and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his
life for my sake, he will save it," said Jesus to all.
- Luke 9:22
"And so we must come to recognize and acknowledge our false self, but even more to
acknowledge the true self that sleeps within us like Lazarus in the tomb waiting
for the voice of Jesus to awaken us to life."
It is not a matter of how to get rid of the ego, but how to face it or better
still see through it. Unless we do so, we will always be quick to demonize others.
If the ego is what we think ourselves to be, then to face the ego is to uncover
the ways of our own thinking and to understand the process of identification.
"What we think, we are; but it is the understanding of the process of thought that
is important, and not what we think about."
"Watch your mind with great diligence for there lies bondage and the key to
liberation."
Read As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. It mirrored the same concept. A great book
and I highly recommend reading it.
Note : Talking to self loudly on the street is the same as talking silently in
one’s mind. An active mind.
"It depends on the state of your mind. And that state of mind can be understood
only by yourself, by watching it and never trying to shape it, never taking sides,
never opposing, never agreeing, never justifying, never condemning, never judging
– which means watching it without any choice."
- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p 38
"…but anything shown up by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated
is itself a light. That is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.’" - Ephesians 5: 13-14
Remember who you really are and deepen your oneness with God in Christ regularly.
Don’t dramatize, energize it and you will feel less threatened by it.
Embracing good and bad with equanimity and serenity if there is nothing we can do
to change the situation.
Be ruthlessly honest or truthful with oneself and when you are ready, share the
truth with others.
Be in the truth of the present moment NOW– all that is sensing in the body,
thinking in the mind, feeling with the emotions.
Be utterly aware of and in touch with reality exactly as it is. Don’t suppress it
and don’t support it.
How obsessed am I with what I have, what I do, and what people think of me?
How much emotional energy do I expend in chasing after the "Empty Promises"?
Ask God for the grace to follow Christ closely so as to walk in the light always.
Inner healing of the wounds and hurts received from others. END