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" Your False Self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true. Your False Self is almost entirely a social construct to get you started on your life journey. It is a set of agreements between your childhood and your parents, your family, your neighbors, your school chums, your partner or spouse, and your religion. It is your “container” for your separate self. 4 Jesus would call it your “wineskin,” which he points out usually cannot hold any new wine (Mark 2: 21–22). Your ego container likes to stay “contained” and hates change. Your False Self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, or divine union. After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’t you be? It’s what you know and all you know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. Perhaps you have noticed that master teachers like Jesus and the Buddha, St. Francis, all the “Teresas” (Avila, Lisieux, and Calcutta), Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi talk about dying much more than we are comfortable with. They all know that if you do not learn the art of dying and letting go early, you will hold onto your False Self far too long, until it kills you anyway. "
― Richard Rohr , Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
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" Body Prayer We must hunker down into the “Body of Hope and Resurrection” (Philippians 3:9–11; 1 Corinthians 15:44) and pray also from below and from within, on a cellular and energetic level too—or the attitude of prayer does not last or go deep. You are not thinking your prayer as much as energetically feeling your prayer. You pay attention from the bottom up and from the inside out. Rest into the Body of Christ energy instead of trying to pull an Infinite God into your finite world. Your body itself receives and knows, and is indeed “a temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) where God dwells in the Spirit. Walking meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises are all helpful here. Body prayer actually works much more quickly and more naturally than thought prayer alone. Body prayer is what we have tried to do with inspiring music, body gestures, and all sacraments, so this is not a new idea. It is what many are seeking in tai chi, pilgrimages, prayer beads, chanting, repeating the Jesus Prayer until it prays itself in us and through us, and so on. To “pray from the clay” will also move you to the shared level of prayer. You will know that “you” are not doing the prayer, but you are falling into the unified field, and the Body of Christ is now praying through you (Romans 8:26–27) and with you. It becomes “our” prayer, and not just my prayer. Now you pray not so much to Christ as much as through Christ, and you will know experientially that you are Christ's Body too. "
― Richard Rohr , Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
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" It is sadly true that most institutions and nations admire and reward sins of the “spirit,” and various forms of arrogance and greed often lead to promotions and praise. But pride, ambition, and vanity are still pride, ambition, and vanity; they do not stop being capital sins because someone is pope or president. “Greed is good” in America, extravagant bonuses are envied and imitated, and careerism is rampant among the clergy. (This is not just my judgment but a statement of the Vatican Office for Bishops a few years ago.) Sins of the flesh, however, carry shame and guilt and can always be used to bring anybody down in church, culture, or the state. "
― Richard Rohr , Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
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" C. G. Jung, often very critical of Christianity, said that the “Archetype of the God-Man” (Christ) is a relatively adequate map of the unconscious human journey, and it should not be dismissed until and unless one has walked through it oneself. He feared that Western civilization would lose this map and that it would be quite dangerous and disastrous for us if we let this map wither in our midst. In that sense, we need an effective “Savior” who can name and guide us on the necessary path. Without a good map, Jung feared the manipulation, violation, and even “annulment” of the human personality.4 That sounds like an overstatement until you note the hugely destructive isms of our time: totalitarian communism, Nazism, consumerism itself, materialism in general, and what John Paul II called “rigid capitalism,” all of which deny many of the essentials of humanness, and often our very core. "
― Richard Rohr , Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
33
" Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery. The underlying messages that different religions and denominations use are often in strong agreement, but they use different images to communicate their own experience of union with God. That should not shock or disappoint anyone, unless they are still kids shouting, “This is my toy, and the rest of you can't touch it!” Jesus, who is always using metaphors, says, for example, “There are other sheep I have that are not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well. They too listen to my voice” (John 10:16a). He is quite obviously talking metaphorically by calling people sheep. He is also saying that sometimes the outsider to the “flock” hears as well as the insider. Furthermore, he says that he cares about and respects the “other sheep,” which means that we should too. "
― Richard Rohr , Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
