Louisville Process Theology Network

How the Inner-Self Finds Oneness

Jan 20, 2010

From Page 121:



?“The true self in a person is his or her own subjectivity. It is the interior ?‘I?’, which has no projects. It seeks to accomplish nothing, not even contemplation. It is in touch with its own being, aware that its being is one with God.

Therefore, in what it does, it is led not by any egotistical desires, but by promptings of God?’s own Spirit. It is this inner self, present in all of us but lying dormant in most of us, that must be awakened if we are to experience a life of contemplation. This awakening is not so much something that we acquire and therefore ?‘have?’, but something that we are.

This is to say that we do not really become contemplatives. We always are contemplative in the depths of our being. But we have to become aware of what we are. We have to become who we are.

What can we know about our inner self? Not very much, actually, in the form of conceptual knowledge. For the inner self is not something that we can define and then deduce its characteristics from that definition. Why? Because it is not an object or a thing. It is ?‘not part of our being like a motor in a car.?’

?‘It is our entire substantial being itself on its highest, most personal, most existential level. It is like life and it is life; it is our spiritual life when it is most alive.?’

What this means is that the inner self can only be known as God is known: that is, (not communicable in words alone). For it is as secret as God himself and evades every concept by which we try to seize hold of it. It is satisfied to be. It just is.

?… This is pure subjectivity beyond all duality. The awakening of the inner self and the awareness of God, that it involves, demand a strict spiritual discipline in the life of the would-be contemplative. It is not possible to find one?’s inmost center and know God there, as long as we are preoccupied with the desires of the outward, false self. In Merton?’s words:

?‘Freedom to enter the inner sanctuary of our being is denied
to those who are held back by dependence on self-gratification
and sense satisfaction, whether it be a matter of pleasure-seeking,
love of comfort, or proneness to anger, self-assertion, pride,
vanity, greed, and all the rest.?’

There is a price to be paid if one wants to be a contemplative. The cost is demanding, yet at the same time freeing.?”