Thoughts Upon My Vocation vs My True Self and Other Things As Well In Tandem
Recently, I have been faced with quite a lot in my life. It is the beginning of 3rd Year in the Year of 2020, or 2020 Part Two it seems (I wrote this around the 13th of Januuary). I suppose, to some degree some of my issues with things might not make sense or seem important. However, based on how I have developed as a person (not to delve too deeply into that haha…) they do matter to me. I presently am living the vocation of being single (I do think I would like that to change and I would say I am open to it) and being a Manufacturing Engineer. I am not sure what to think about being a Manufacturing Engineer. This essay was sparked by a friend asking me a question about his job but I have been mulling over this muddled collection of thoughts for weeks so a long winded essay was apparently in order to preface my friend’s question.
I was listening to Fr. Richard Rohr’s “True Self, False Self” and within it he discusses many things that I found interesting. I will now try to explain this as best I can with my fragmented understanding of what he discussed. There are two selves within all of us: the Self that is fabricated by the world and your perceptions of it as a reaction to it known as the False Self and the Self that could be or perhaps the True Essence of your being known as the True Self. Both parts of this are you and both have to exist in our existence, however they function differently and serve different purposes. This is not an “either or” it is a non-dualistic “both and”.
Neither are evil and having a False Self as a human being is unavoidable. I cannot recall the specific examples that Fr. Rohr used to describe the False Self and its uses but (again poorly) I choose say that it can act as a shield for your Soul. I say that out of the understanding that it is important to be vulnerable but if you are attempting to be 100% vulnerable and hold nothing back, you will most likely be unable to exist well in this world that is a hostile to authenticity. Much pain and suffering will enter into your life. The Mind seeks to protect itself from that. More on this later as I untangle my thoughts.
At least, my experiences as one that was born and raised in America would lead me to say that authenticity leads to suffering. I would say though, that the False Self is not simply a one way shield; it is a double-edged shield. It can shield you from the things you are supposed to experience as well. The True Self is the Self that was to be, I will say. It is the Self that sees beyond the horrors and nightmares of life and perceives the existence of Creation, other Souls, and God. The True Self is the Self that lives for Life and the Self that lives to Love. The False Self if the Self that analyzes and filters reality. From my experience, the False Self can perceive the world as very… not good. My Mind see the patterns and extrapolates the end results of the things I observe. The paintings my Mind has painted these past few years are very dour, sad, and self-destructive. Because of this, I withdrew from things and I lost Hope, which is a terrible thing to lose. I retained Hope for some of the people in my life and for myself, but lost it for the world at large. Apocalyptic thoughts were present in much of my daily life and I was very sad and unhappy. I waited for Death.
In my retreat to this dark place, there were only a few things that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed Dancing and I enjoyed going to my new Catholic Church as the old one was no longer useful to me. The connection with friends and family, the human connection with a Dance Partner(s), and my connection with the Eucharist kept me from slipping further but far I slipped. This is the issue with the False Self; it can be offended, hurt, and can bleed. I suppose from the shield analogy I made, it makes sense that it would be battered in the defense of me and the slog of trying to exist. I have felt much of the time that I am trying to stand in the current of a river and I cannot find solid ground for things to make sense; I cannot rationalize the things that I was perceiving. My amazing and incredible therapist once referred to me as a “Truthseeker” and my Heart was happy with her description of me. I feel that it is a good description of me and the whole Self that I am that desires the Ultimate Truth. An unsolvable puzzle for my ant-like mortal brain compared to the infinite, uncreated, and incomprehensible God that created all but still I try to grasp the impossible. I perceive what is true and I run it against my filing cabinets in my Mind and I create a new idea from my old ideas from all of my life and all I know. If I am needing to change, I draw a line in my life and say that I must move forward as falteringly and as best I can from the old. In opposition to this, the political events of the past six years have left me aghast; the wounds created in the unity of this country might never heal. Fact became fiction and fiction became fact. Alternate realities exist from the one reality; how can people live and love each other if the very ground upon which we walk is not the same ground? An unreachable gap in the human connection was what I mourned. A day came where something that could be described as pane of glass shattered into shining pieces in my head a year or two ago and I am unsure entirely what broke but I am fixing it still today.
A point in Fr. Richard Rohr’s talks saved me from my inability to exist in the reality that I was experiencing; my perception of the destruction of what is real and what is not.
“The first forgiveness is not towards this sin or that action, our first forgiveness it seems to me is towards Reality itself. To forgive it for being so screwed up. To forgive it for being so broken and for being such a mixed metaphor and such a mixed message.”
I could not have put it better. Reality is messy and Reality is filtered through our Lens of Perception that the False Self makes. The True Self is unconcerned with the dark topics I mentioned above. The True Self is only after the Divinity that God has and experiencing it and experiencing His connection of everything. I came to the conclusion a few weeks ago that the only way to live Life is to live it. There is no other way. One must live and transcend above the normal, whatever that even is. Such a preposterous term.
I would hypothesize that the reason that we are afraid of the pain and suffering that exists from Daring Greatly (as Brené Brown has said) is that the True Self while being the Self that is the True Essence has not been exercised enough. If there were a gym for the True Self I believe that Richard Rohr would say that it is contemplation. I find this to be easier said than done. To sit and do nothing is truly a challenge in this age. In contemplation and stillness we can experience the Divine in us and the Divinity of God and we can meet there.
As a Biblical example of the True Self, Fr. Richard Rohr brought up the story of Jesus in the desert and being tempted by the Devil. I was always a bit confused by the story. Obviously the 3rd part of the story of Jesus worshiping Satan made sense because why would good worship evil and etc. I didn’t see anything wrong with Jesus for example, turning stone to bread. There was nothing evil about that and as he was fasting and unless he was breaking his fast before he intended, creating sustenance seemed pretty practical to me. Though nothing wrong with throwing oneself off a parapet is obviously dangerous, if truly God is with you and has said that you will be kept from harm… sure? Why not? Jesus mentioned rightly that one shouldn’t tempt the Lord but otherwise, not overly evil as well. I elected to focus here on the first “challenge” by Satan the request of Jesus to turn stone to bread. Jesus did not, and I finally heard in Father’s talk an explanation that actually fit in the puzzle. Jesus did not need to prove to anyone who he was. He is the pinnacle of living as your True Self and Jesus was indomitable because of that.
So, what if our True Self was strong enough to exist without much intervention of the False Self? Unshielded in the battleground of life and walking through the push of the devouring river current of existence? I think that this is where St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s concepts of Divine Mercy came so sharply into focus for me. If you fall at the feet of the Divine and wholly throw yourself of a cliff (metaphorically in this case, lol) into the loving arms of God you can experience what it means to be alive, to live and to love without end. Great love means that you are exposed to much suffering if you can feel it all and for all. I was thinking recently upon this as I looked at the Crucifix in my new Church.
Another facet of Jesus’s suffering on the cross that came to me is not that he suffered for us, but in the words of taking up the Cross and following Him. Life is full of suffering and He showed us an analogy of that, that we, if we are truly alive and truly exist in His Existence will feel it all. Everything. The True Self can perceive that and will stand in the devouring fire of it all. It can be indomitable. What could possibly disturb us if we are LIVING.
Which finally after much derailing leads me to my original purpose in writing this. One of my friends asked me this philosophical question that I have paraphrased:
“So in setting work goals for the New Year and for work in general, I do it to give my bosses the illusion that I actually care about work. However, at what point does my fake concern/care/effort, turn into real concern/care/effort? I remember reading a Reddit story where this kid was super sad in High School, and he forced himself to do things that would make other people happy. Eventually he realized he was happy, just because he faked it till he made it.”
When we are growing up, there is a phrase you hear all the time: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” To do is to be, in this instance of this question. In College, vocation was talked about in the Catholic Groups that I was around, most of which ultimately I fell away from but I digress. Vocation was like this magic word that was supposed to solve all of your problems. Find your place as a piece in the puzzle and do the things that you were Created to do and all will be well. I took this Magic with me when I graduated.
For a long time, I said that I am an Engineer. I take my job seriously and due to this “to do is to be” mindset, I attached it to the core of me. I had the perception that it was a part of my True Self. It is not. It is tied to my False Self. When things are happening at my job that I find particularly distressing, it causes me to suffer. I have nailed my Soul to this job as I thought it was my place in the puzzle. My place as a puzzle piece is not to be an Engineer. It is to be a Human Being. I am a Human Being that is doing a Manufacturing Engineering job. Nothing more, and nothing less. The better and more advanced Magic that I have discovered is hard to describe but it transcends the mortal realm. The Magic is the Creator of All and I must live to continue to find Him in all. That is my vocation. Simply that. Easy to say, obvious to see, and hard to do.
I know not how the world will go but my True Self continues to grow stronger. Strong enough to write this and strong enough to continue to do the job that I have as an Engineer at my company. To answer my friend’s question, I do not think it is really a function of caring. It is a function of simply doing it and doing it as well as you can. That is something worth caring about; how a person conducts themselves in the true reality. There is a lot to be said about the corporate world but the corporate world is the penultimate construct of the False Self. It is easily offended and cannot suffer authenticity. We can be better than that and we can transcend the ridiculousness of the corporate lifestyle and its lie that it matters. What matters is BEING and LIVING at your job and in your life.
