The Real Me

As I have grown older and experienced life more fully I have found that the real me is my spirit. It is the only part of me truly connected to God. It is the real world in which I live. Several years ago I was driving home from a Faces of Christ retreat I had attended and was reflecting on the final session. In that session we were told we were returning to the "real world." As I reflected I came to the conclusion that while I understand the intent of the statement, I disagreed. What we experienced at the retreat was in fact the "real world." We're just blind and don't see it that way.

When one finally gets it that we are spirit and it is our spirit to which God's Spirit communicates, and it is our spirit that will live forever, and it is our spirit that is connected to God, and that God is eternal, we begin to understand that our spirit is really the only thing alive in us and the only thing that really matters.

In Thomas Merton's book, No Man Is An Island he nails it. This is what he says:

"I consider that the spiritual life is the life of man's real self, the life of that interior self whose flame is so often allowed to be smothered under the ashes of anxiety and futile concern. The spiritual life is oriented toward God, rather than toward the immediate satisfaction of the material needs of life, but it is not, for all that, a life of unreality or a life of dreams. On the contrary, without a life of the spirit, our whole existence becomes unsubstantial and illusory. The life of the spirit, by integrating us in the real order established by God, puts us in the fullest possible contact with reality--not as we imagine it, but as it really is. It does so by making us aware of our own real selves, and placing them in the presence of God."