In
June this year, Girl Guides dropped their traditional vow "to love my
God", replacing it with a more contemporary promise to "be true to myself and develop my
beliefs." The problem with being true to 'myself' is that its meaning is
just as open to interpretation and ambiguity as the word 'God'. The latter at
least has the virtue of setting an absolute standard, symbolizing a purpose and
value that transcends the narrowly personal. In a society where personal
inclination and 'feelings' are venerated, to the point where personality is the
new religion, we seem to consider it 'honest' to be unkind or irritable if we
are feeling grouchy, and 'truthful' to attack what we do not like about someone.
It is easy to read 'to be true to myself' as 'to do it my way', and 'to develop my beliefs' as 'to develop my own version
of the truth.'
The Course, too, would have us drop our superstitious
and furtive lip-service to any form of external God. It turns our attention
back to what exactly we mean by 'myself', for this is where we need to
distinguish between truth and illusions. And it is here that we will come
closest to realizing what God is.
The self-concept I hold of myself is a construction in
my mind. I perceive it as a body moving in a world of assorted other bodies, which
are also a manifestation of my ideas projected outwards. This image of myself
is an illusion, ever fluctuating in appearance and character, unified only because
I have clapped them all into a mental category labelled 'me.' The Course refers to
this as the ego, the "self-concept," or the tendency
of the self to make an image of itself...You can perceive yourself as
self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it. You cannot make it true (T3 VII 4.)
A person who has accepted under hypnosis to believe
for the moment that he is Elvis Presley will act completely out of character
and according to his conception of Elvis Presley instead. In his own mind, for
that time he really is Elvis (just as
the original Elvis believed and behaved according to his concept of himself for
the duration of his earthly life). But even while in trance, there is a part of
the mind that remembers who you really are, which returns you to full awareness
and back in character at the click of the hypnotist's fingers, or sooner or
later at will.
This is something like the
way our minds make up the world we live in and the personalities we think we
inhabit. On a level that we have shut out of conscious awareness, we know that we
are acting a part. We frequently feel alienated, conflicted, sometimes do not
know what to do or what to wear or what our priorities are, because we hardly
know what we are or what matters. For you
have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth (W139 5).
You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no
compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is
real denies its opposite...Salvation is undoing (T31 VI 2). To remember what we are in truth means
undoing, or letting go of, our misplaced trust in 'the flesh', that is, our perception of an
alternative, apparently substantial, physical reality, and becoming aware of a
constant, infinite, spiritual reality that is in us and all around us, or
rather that we are in and inextricably part of. It is invisible to our physical
eyes and brains, because they belong to the self-concept; but its presence can
sometimes be intimated, felt, perceived through an experience of revelation, or
just in an instant of perfect peace.
So there are two voices in
our minds, that claim to be 'myself.' One is loud, insistent, self-important,
self-critical, self-conscious, self-is-everything. This aspect is intent on its
own survival and advantage, and yet does not know or care about what is really
best for us or for anyone else. The other, which the Course distinguishes with
capital letters to express its immensity, completeness and integrity, is the
Self; which however has no sense of self, and does not see itself as separate
from others. This is the part of us that the Course calls the 'One who knows.' Trust
in this part of yourself, for it remains real when everything else is in flux. This is the Self to be true to, because it will still be there when all the beliefs and illusions you have developed fall away.
You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes with
you (W155 10).
I will not lead my life alone today. I do not
understand the world, and so to try to lead my life alone must be but
foolishness. But there is One Who knows all that is best for me (W242)
The truth is
true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is
not there (T14 II 3)
