No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I

Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real.

That is the rub of any conversion experience: We only realize how much we needed it when we are on the other side! That is why we need the tenacity of faith and hope to carry us across to most transformational experiences. When we can let others actually influence us and change us, our heart space is open.

The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find "the pearl of great price" that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell.

We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we?

Remember, we do not think ourselves into new ways of living, but we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Jesus moves toward lifestyle solutions and not academic ones.

Our unveiled gaze receives and reflects the brightness of God until we are gradually turned into the image that we reflect. —2 Corinthians 3:18

Francis of Assisi was a master of making room for the new and letting go of that which was tired or empty.

humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living.

you never think yourself into a new way of living. You invariably live yourself into a new way of thinking.

To finally surrender ourselves to healing, we must have three spaces opened within us—and all at the same time: our opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body. That is the work of spirituality—and it is work.

Perhaps the True Self—and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)—will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion. Some will think I am arrogantly talking about being "personally divine" and eagerly dismiss this way of talking about resurrection as heresy, arrogance, or pantheism.