When we talk about discovering who we are, it's crucial to add
that in speaking of finding and being our true self, we're not talking
the language of pop culture.Expressions such as "true self," "be yourself," and "be who you are" have nothing in common with the code words of the "me" generation-you know, "I gotta be me."
To be true to ourselves is an act of self-affirmation. This is not only very different from selfishness, it's the opposite of selfishness.
The twentieth century thinker Paul Tillich, countering the individualism of the "me" generation, says that "self-affirmation is not only distinguished from but precisely the opposite of 'selfishness' in the sense of a negative moral quality."
In the fullest meaning of self-affirmation-in the way that, for instance, the philosopher Spinoza, who lived from 1632 until 1677, meant it-self-affirmation isn't something we try to talk ourselves into, think ourselves into, or in any other way affirm ourselves into.
Rather, self-affirmation is a reality we participate in. It's a given and we join in the enjoyment of it.
In fact Spinoza used the term self-affirmation to mean participation in the divine self-affirmation.
What Spinoza was talking about is that all of reality is a oneness of which we are all expressions-a view that was considered heresy in his day by both his Jewish community and the Roman Catholic Church. This oneness encompasses everything.
As Shug saw in the movie The Color Purple, it's a matter of God expressing God's own being in the form of us.
Or if you prefer non-God language, it's the essence of the cosmos-pure being before it takes on form-becoming self-aware through us.
Since ultimate being is self-affirming, in that it's the creative source of everything, and since we participate in this being, how can we be anything but self-affirming?
All ideas to the contrary-all attempts to use thought, self-talk, and affirmations to persuade ourselves-are simply a failure to yet realize the truth of our state.
But if the oneness of which we are all a part is self-affirming by nature, then for us to evolve into the full state of this self-affirmed state is also to affirm each other, since we are all part and parcel of one reality.
Hence for each of us to be true to ourselves in the real sense of this statement is for us to be true to each other.
To relax into our self-affirming state is therefore the end of all selfishness.
David Robert Ord is author of Your Forgotten Self Mirrored in
Jesus the Christ and the audio book Lessons in Loving--A Journey into
the Heart, both from Namaste Publishing, publishers of Eckhart Tolle and
other transformational authors. He writes The Compassionate Eye daily,
together with his daily author blog Consciousness Rising, at http://www.namastepublishing.com
To go deeper into topics like this, we invite you to read the daily blog Consciousness Rising - - http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/author/david-robert-ord.
To go deeper into topics like this, we invite you to read the daily blog Consciousness Rising - - http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/author/david-robert-ord.
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