> MIKE: True. But would it be fair to say 99% of auto mechanics
don't
> think of their work as a gift from God and pray during the day?
They
> are focused on getting parts, and learning about the computerized
> engines, and installing parts properly, etc. All of those are
> important considerations for the customer, but they do take us away
> from God. I've never experienced a "spiritual" auto mechanic,
> although in theory they do exist.
>

We can agree that if a field is inherently hurtful or ugly or
fraudulent then it does not support the spiritual life. Otherwise,
we must "bloom where we are planted" as the Benedictines say. The
monk is no closer to God than the householder performing his/her
duties in accordance with the will of God. They are simply called
differently. For some, the world of finance, for example, is simply
a path for greed. But that is only true where it is true. Google up
the books on love and gratitude and spirituality by John Templeton,
for example. This is, by the way, the same Sir John Templeton
(Franklin Templeton Fund) who is the the first or second most
successful/richest fund manager in history.


> However, many people have never heard of the "true self." Those
who
> do are either admirers of Thomas Merton and embrace the concept, or
> they reject the notion as having any substantive content.

Merton is/was a good teacher and knower of the concept of the false
self and wove it deeply into his mystical views of Christianity in a
way that has been very helpful. However, the idea of the false self
and its barrier to realizing God did not start with him. It is the
essence of Buddhism, Hinduism, mystical Islam (Sufism), and many
native religions. One of the reasons that Merton's work drew him to
these religions was that they simply had developed a better
understanding of what he was trying to articulate. The other reason,
of course, was that he had dug his own well so deep that he was
drinking out of the same source as the others.


Souls
> exist, whether we choose to believe they do or not. Is the "true
> self" another word for our souls: the part of us that remains
after
> earthly death and is born to eternal life?


The short answer is: I don't know.

My thoughts are that the true self is that part of ourselves which
is fully merged and guided by the Holy Spirit and which fully
integrates our will with the will of God and where we know our true
identity to be an expression of divine creation. The language may
vary according to the relgion. We might call this enlightenment,
cosmic consciousness, or say that the point has been reached
where "it is no longer I who live but Christ who liveth in me".
Whatever. Even if we are not fully realized, there is still that
true self within us that gives us inklings, interludes, etc of
something beyond the false ego-contructed self. After all, the
spiritual life does not cause us to go in search of God. We are
drawn because at some level we have already found God or God has
found us and we are trying to express it more and more.

I don't know where the soul begins and ends (obviously). Eastern
religions are more concerned with taking all of the broken
disjointed pieces of life and reality and integrating them into
unified spirit. However, the western mind loves to go in the
opposite direction and so do our religions. We like to break
everything down into pieces, beat it to death with critical
thinking, and see if we can figure out how to put back together that
which was always one. Merton was a good bridge between these worlds.

Buddhism uses the images of the lake and the moon to speak of the
mind and the universe/God. When the water is made still and calm, it
reflects qualities that are far beyond the limited capacity of the
water itself. Yet, these reflections are part of the quality of
water so we cannot say where one begins and the other ends. It is
both false and real to say that the water has the light of the moon.
This drives the western mind nuts because we want to be able to lay
the parts out on the table and see what is the true self, what is
the false self, what is the soul, what is the ego, etc. when in they
are more likely on a continuum with qualities varying according to
the degree of reflection, and depending on which facet of the
diamond is being viewed. Merton did not say that the false self was
bad or evil or needed to be eliminated. Just that it needed to be
understood as a lesser self that may also do the work of God where
balanced by the light of God.

There is a very, very powerful writing in Merton's writing somewhere
(it has been 35 years since I read it, so I cannot remember) where
Merton talks about people being broken down by life to the point
where they are almost completely destroyed and then finding God. He
says that this process is similar to wax being heated and softened
so that it becomes prepared to take the imprint of something larger
than itself. Water and moon.


More than likely, quite a few things above are wrong.

Dennis