The false self – the ego, the proprium – is the tiny, petty, unconnected self. And yet for most of us, we identify that as our true self.
The true self is far deeper. It is our inmost, the place where God stores much of that Divine Spark that is His gift to us.
The journey to that place I read of many times growing up in the New Church. It was a journey encapsulated in the admittedly awkward wording from Emanuel Swedenborg’s theological works – good from truth, then truth from good. Later, the great wisdom in what is almost undecipherable words became apparent.
When young, we live largely in that false self. We learn “stuff” and that “stuff” teaches us to care. But do we actually “care”? Usually not. Usually here it remains at the pure theoretical. When we do care, that care is very much driven by the false self for its own purposes. Not that that is bad – it is a start.
But time wears on and God, in ways largely hidden from our view slowly flips the perspective. Eventually our locus of control moves from our head to our heart. At that point – truth from good – caring, loving kindness move our conscious mind, not vice versa. We move from knowing to care to caring and the knowing that comes from it. (Note, it is “knowing” that is far more intuitive, perceptive, far more even maybe mystical than what we previously experienced.)
That is where we fall through our life situation to our life to borrow the words of Eckhart Tolle. The life situation holding the false self becomes just that. We fall through the drama and frenentic pace of the false self attached to our life situation and fall into the solid ground of the true self – a place where God’s truth gives us the solid ground to stand upon regardless of external circumstances. Here, no boundary needs “defended not abdicated.”