In Abba's Child (Brennan Manning), Manning happened to be talking about just exactly what I have been thinking through lately. Of course, in his words, with quotes from many people he's read, which is helpful as I think it best to read a topic from a lot of sources. It's possible that I should actually just go through all that I read so far and make a list of the things that stuck out to me, but it would probably be so long that I'm a bit scared to do it. I also keep thinking, in my self-doubting way, 'What's the point? Nobody will care. It'll just be me and my thoughts, alone, forever, though what I'm thinking seems to be God's Truth, nobody else will agree. They never do. I am not someone to agree with.'
And that last piece to some extent illustrates how my life is right now: I shape it around what I think others will or won't want. I capitulate constantly. I let go of myself for others. I don't even know who I am, though I have been for years desperately trying to grab at some shred of who I am. Trying to find yourself, from what I see, is not the way to find yourself. Any time we try to find or create ourselves, we inadvertently begin building up a mask and image of what we think our Self should be. It's when we stop minding our Self and accept what is obvious in front of us (how we behave, how we feel, etc.) that we'll have ourselves, but not in looking at ourselves, but in looking, in a sense, simply at Reality (which complicatedly does include ourselves, but also God and others and the physical world, and of course it's ourselves not in a lying, deceitful way).
(I'm scared at this point that what I said wasn't coherently written. I wish it were, somehow.)
In light of all this, more quotes!
The false self was born when as children we were not loved well or were rejected or abandoned. John Bradshaw defines codependency as a disease "characterized by a loss of identity. To be codependent is to be out of touch with one's feelings, needs and desires." The impostor is the classic codependent. To gain acceptance and approval, the false self suppresses or camouflages feelings, making emotional honesty impossible. Living out of the false self creates a compulsive desire to present a perfect image to the public so that everybody will admire us and nobody will know us. The impostor's life becomes a perpetual roller coaster ride of elation and depression.
This image here is what I sense in my own life. The perfect self I create is different from what he describes himself creating, but that's to be expected. I don't care quite so much as he does about particularly modern success- I have my own idea of success; my own perfect, somewhat shaped by my family life, but also by my own wants and desires. I want to be knowledgeable, wise, accomplished (at what I want to be accomplished at); I do not want to be seen as foolish or not being able to understand things. I dread that. I hate the shame associated with it, so I hide as much as I can that I am ignorant. There are many ways I do this... some last-resort methods when there's a strong possibility someone will ask a direct question of whether I know something. I have learned some arts of manipulation to keep out of myself being Revealed. But if my ignorance is revealed, what shame I feel. This is partly because my family made ignorance such a big deal, and refused to acknowledge that not knowing something is not so bad. My sinful heart says, especially if it's easy to understand the thing once it's explained properly- I always want to validate that I am smart after all and I just didn't know some of the facts. This may be true, but I don't need to justify my ignorance. It's a stupid slippery slope that needs to die.
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