The False, Shadow and True Self & the spiritual path

At the moment the Blackfriars Community are reading chapters of Thomas Merton’s ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’ which is an incredible book written well ahead of its time and speaks to us directly in 2023! The community have been discussing some of its core themes, and in this book Merton seems very focused on making connections between the brokenness of the world and the false self. We are reading the chapter focused on the false self next, and it seems to be a fantasy and egoic form of self, informed by the deadly sins of greed, power, anger and the rest. Interestingly, the shadow self are those parts of ourselves that we find it difficult to accept or face, and the true self, is the self that is really us, that we can only discover through the contemplative path of discovery. This is the path that we as the Blackfriars Community seek to follow.