“The one who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”  Psalm 91

“We each have a false self that we live in and out of most of our life.  It is only a shadow of the True Self whom God created us to be.”

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow last Sunday.  Back into his den he fled. Six more weeks of winter.

Like that little groundhog, we likely live in fear of our shadow as well.  We each have one.  It is what Jung called “The False Self”.  It is the person we imagine ourselves to be.  The person we try to be.  The person we think others want us to be.  It is the person that we use to protect ourselves, and garner praise. We spend our lives living in and out of this shadow self.  And some never outgrow it.

The shadow self is “birthed” in childhood, when we learn that acting a certain way will either result in a reward or avoiding punishment.  We learn to be inauthentic, and to “be” the person that others want us to be.  It is a false persona that we feed and grows, so that by the time we reach adulthood it is “fully developed.”  It is this persona that dictates what we do, what we say, and determines how we function in the world, how we relate to others, and how we see ourselves. Unfortunately, we mistake it for our real identity.

Religious people are acutely adapt at living out of their shadow self.  I used to play the part of a pastor.  Very early on in life I discovered that it would really please my parents if I did so.  As a result, I went to the seminary and got ordained and in the process pretended to be someone I wasn’t.  I dressed like a pastor.  Talked like a pastor.  Behaved like a pastor—or like I thought a pastor should behave.  It was all a disguise, which prevented me from discovering who I really was and am.

What role have you assumed in your life, dictated in large part by your shadow self?  What has been the result?  Perhaps it has worked for you—or you think it has. Maybe you think it still is. Or more likely, if you’re older than forty, you’ve reached a place where you recognize the pressure of play-acting and posing to try to ensure that you’ll be accepted, welcomed, revered, respected, or at least loved.  But in fact, it’s a charade.  As Richard Rohr writes in “Falling Upward”: 

Usually, sometime around midlife, we come to a point where we’ve seen enough of our own tricks and we come to feel that my shadow self is who I am. We face ourselves in our raw, unvarnished, and uncivilized state. This is the shadowland where we are led by our own stupidity, our own sin, our own selfishness, by living out of our false self. We have to work our way through this with brutal honesty, confessions and surrenders, some forgiveness, and often by some necessary restitution or apology. The old language would have called it repentance, penance, or stripping.

If we are fortunate, something will happen in life that forces us to step out of the shadow of the false self and begin living as the authentic person that God created us to be.  The True Self is the person we were from the time of our conception, before anyone—parents, teachers, friends, lovers, or countless others in society—told us how we “ought” to be. 

The True Self does not try to be someone else, someone different, someone better.  It accepts who we really are as human beings, warts and all. 

The True Self is defined not by social norms or cultural fads, fancies, and fairytales, but by the Divine Spirit that lives within each of us, planted more deeply than any of the superficial and supercilious silliness that assaults us on a daily basis. 

The True Self is fed not on a smorgasbord of surface appearances, on whatever we believe to be pleasing to the eye of others, but on the solid, sustainable, Living Bread from Heaven that has shown us what it means to live—and die—authentically, and indwells us so that we can do the same. 

This is The One who invites us to stop posing and pretending, to drop the false persona, and reassures us that we are accepted and loved just as we are, without any need to put on false pretenses.  This is the One who tenderly invites us to step out of the shadows that we’ve been living in and live a new life, a real life, a resurrected life, not someday in the distant future, but in the fullness of the pregnant now.  This is The One who assures us that as we step away from being driven by that false self, we will be the person we are created to be. 

As fearful as it is to step away from that false idea of who we have believed ourselves to be, we will find comfort and safety in the assurance that living in the light of His radiant reflection is so much better than living in the shadows.