Discovering the Self Behind the Self: When Spiritual Formation Reveals Another Layer

For nearly a decade, I have worked to surrender the old me — the worldly me — and take on the version of self God designed.

I came to call the old version the “false self”: the self created by exposure to evil and sin, shaped by immersion in culture, motivated by pride and selfishness. The “true self” — the only self worth being — is the one God designed before I was born. At 62, I am late to the game. But I am here.

The past decade has been spent learning to obey and surrender. Learning to mourn the loss of the false self and adjust to the discomfort and disorientation of the true one. Piece by piece, I’ve had to learn to live this new life. It has not been easy. It has cost much in relationships and, well, ego.

The cycle of being called to surrender and trust, arguing, stalling, and finally surrendering has compressed from once every couple of months to nearly once a week. Some surrenders cut deep and left me numb. Some came easier. All carried a sense of mourning for what had been, for it was all I had known. I came to call it “good mourning” — painful, but good in result. Like having a gangrenous leg amputated. Mourn the loss of the leg. Be grateful it will not kill you.

That is not much of an overstatement. My sin, my false self, leads to eternal death. Only through the new self can I attach myself to hope.

A decade into this process, I have found comfort in the stories of the mystics: St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila — comforting words from those who suffered and went before me, leaving a guidebook of surrender and formation, giving body to the sensations I had been experiencing.

But this past week dropped me to my knees.

A series of events led me to a startling conclusion: the false self I have been surrendering was, in fact, false in a way I had not anticipated. A self constructed over decades to fit into society — to appear normal. I hid many of my true attributes, masked them, because those around me demanded it, implicitly and explicitly. No one took the time to see what was hidden beneath the mask.

Let me call it the “original self.”

The nature of the original self I will save for another post. What matters this morning is this: the false self I have been surrendering for a decade is nearly gone — and suddenly another self has been revealed. Not the true self from God, but the self I was born into. The self I concealed from everyone, including myself, for six decades.

A decade of tearing down the false self, only to find the original self hiding behind it.

I just found another gangrenous leg. Time for another amputation.

I am beyond disoriented. I still trust the Holy Spirit to guide me. I still trust the process of surrender and formation. The cost is worth the proximity to God, and for salvation itself.

But the “me” that remains is caught between three versions: original, false, and true. Not fully in any one. Not free of any one either. Now, instead of being pulled in two directions, I am pulled in three. Discernment becomes exponentially harder: is this desire from the original self? The false self? The true self? Or is it from the enemy, who will gladly exploit any confusion I offer him?

In the past, when I have reached a point of saturation — of genuine disorientation — I’ve learned to sit. Wait. Pray. Action in the middle of this kind of fog is as likely to send me over a cliff as to lead me somewhere worth going.

I tried sitting yesterday. It was restless. Life continues. Deadlines close in. And God is telling me that sitting now is not the answer.

Movement. Trust. Blind obedience, even when He cannot be heard clearly.

On to the next self. The next house.

Time to tear it down.