We Are Lying to Ourselves...

I received the following from Duc in Altum. I generally don't repost what others have written, but I could not have said it any better myself. I'm guilty of this. So is everyone else reading this blog.
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"WHEN I LIE TO MYSELF -- I LIE TO GOD..."



Pope John Paul II once said: «We must let ourselves be challenged by the great questions of life. These questions, which are always timely, concern man’s origins and his end. These are questions which were asked by the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Gaudium et spes. These questions constantly accompany us and, indeed, it could be said that they are always with us. Who am I? Where do I come from and where am I going? What is the meaning of my life and of my being a human creature? Why do I have this eternal “restlessness” in me, as St. Augustine liked to call it? »



We should each try to give ourselves the chance to discover more about ourselves. This is particularly significant for those who are led by their faith commitment to make this search for truth about themselves an important dimension of their lives.



The poem offered here is just an aid to let you see how one might wrongly perceive oneself. People inadvertently put on mask over mask. The reasons for doing so are multiple. There is even some kind of automated “mechanism” to avoid situations that hurt, which can move one to wear a mask. These masks fool not only others. They especially fool the person wearing them. When they are invisible soul-masks worn on the inside the self deceit, lying to oneself, is even greater. One really does not know he or she is not authentic. Maybe that is one of the reasons Saint Theresa of Avila said: «To be humble is to walk in truth». To walk in truth! That is the aim. This means: to be really humble.



The Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge,” described a young man playing to mask himself and how difficult it became for him to get rid of the masks afterwards. The risk of experiencing suffocation and that of defacement -- of losing one's face altogether -- are in many people part of their life experience because of what is called the “existential lie” or “skotosis”. It is important to take notice of the double effect of lying to oneself and living under masks. It deprives and disfigures, and the consequences are quite painful.



“Discovering a room full of costumes in his ancestral
home, young Malte soon learns the restorative powers of masquerade. "Hardly had I donned one of these suits, when I had to admit that it had me in its power;

that it prescribed my movements, the expressions

of my features, even, indeed, my ideas. My hand, over
which the lace cuff fell and fell again, was anything but my usual hand: it moved like an actor;

I might even say that it was watching
itself, exaggerated though this may seem.

These disguises never,
indeed, went so far as to make me feel a stranger to myself:

on the contrary, the more varied my transformations,

the more assured I was of my own identity".



“Completely disguised in mask, scarves, and robe, he accidentally knocks over a little table laden with
"small fragile objects" which are "shivered into a thousand tiny
fragments." To set things aright he frantically turns to the mirror to undo his costume:

But just for this the mirror had been waiting. Its moment of
revenge had come. While I strove with measurelessly increasing
anguish to tear myself somehow out of my disguise,

it forced me, by what means I know not,

to lift my eyes, and imposed on me an
image, nay, a reality, an alien, unbelievable, monstrous reality,
with which, against my will, I became permeated: for now it was the stronger, and it was I who was the mirror.

I stared at this great, terrifying, unknown personage before me, and it seemed appalling to me that I should be alone with him.

But at the very moment I thought thus, the worst befell: I lost all knowledge of myself,

I simply ceased to exist.

For one second I had an unutterable, sad, and futile longing for myself, then there was only he --
there was nothing but he.”



“I ran away from him, but now it was he that ran. He knocked
against everything, he did not know the house, he had no idea
where to go; he managed to get down a stair; he stumbled over someone in the passage who shouted in struggling free. A door opened, and several persons came out. Oh, oh, what a relief it was to recognize them! There were Sieversen, the good Sieversen, and the housemaid and the butler; now everything would be put right.



But they did not spring forward to the rescue; their
cruelty knew no bounds. They stood there and laughed; my
God, they could stand there and laugh! I wept, but the mask did not let the tears escape; they ran down inside over my cheeks and dried at once, and ran and dried again. And at last I knelt before them, as no one has ever knelt before; I knelt, and lifted up my hands, and implored them, "

Take me out, if it is still possible,
and keep hold of me!"

But they did not hear; I had no longer any voice.”



To deepen this painful reality of disguising one’s reality from oneself, of living a fictional reality of which you might not even be aware or completely conscious, is one of the tragic realities that come as a consequence of obscuring the “likeness” due of sin. Its consequences are devastating for the person involved, in relation to his own authenticity, towards God, and in relation to others. But in lying to oneself and others, one does not lie to God. He knows the truth.



To help oneself get rid of the masks and try to answer the question, “Who am I,” is not an easy quest. Even as he tries to look at himself honestly he can't recognize the mask as such because he thinks it is his true face. Self-honesty is just not enough because the fictional image somehow takes over in an automatic way.



But God has given an answer since the beginning. «And God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness.» (Gn 1:26) Let us seek our true image! Let us recover our likeness! That is the path that takes us back to discover our true identity, free ourselves from the masks, and even the invisible inner-masks worn on the inside.



Pope John Paul II taught: «Indeed, “the Word of God, by taking on our human nature in all things save sin (cf. Heb 4:15), manifests the Father's Plan by revealing to each human person the way to realize fully his or her vocation. Thus Jesus not only reconciles man with the Father, but also reconciles man with himself and thus reveals his true nature”. With these words the Synod Fathers, taking up the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, reaffirmed that Jesus is the Way which leads to full personal realization, culminating in the definitive and eternal encounter with God. “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6). God has predestined us “to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born of many brethren” (Rom 8:29). Jesus Christ is thus the definitive answer to the question of the meaning of life, and to those fundamental questions which still trouble so many men and women on the American continent.» (Ecclesia in America, 10)

«I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life», says Lord Jesus.