
...Have you ever felt baffled by your internal resistance to prayer? By the existential dread of silence, solitude, and being alone with God? By the way you drag yourself out of bed for morning praise, shuffle off to worship with the sacramental slump of the terminally ill, endure nightly prayer with stoic resignation, knowing that 'this too shall pass'?
Beware the imposter!
The flase self specializes in treacherous disguise. He is the lazy part of self, resisting the effort, asceticism, and discipline that intimacy with God requires. He inspires rationalizations, such as, "My work is my prayer; I'm too busy; prayer should be spontaneous so I just pray when I am moved by the Spirit." The flase self's lame excuses allow us to maintain the status quo.
The flase self dreads being alone, knowing 'that if he would become silent within and without he would discover himself to be nothing. He would be left with nothing but his own nothingness, and to the false self which claims to be everything, such a discovery would be his undoing.'
Oviously, the impostor is antsy in prayer. He hungers for excitement, craves some mood-altering experience. He is depressed when deprieved of the spotlight. The false self is frustrated because he never hears God's voice. He cannot, since God sees no one there. Prayer is death to every identity that does not come from God. The false self flees silence and solitude because they remind him of death...
The impostor's frenetic lifestyle cannot bear the inspection of death because it confronts him with the unbearable truth: "There is no substance under the things with which you are clothed. You are hollow and your structure of pleasure and ambitions has no foundation. You are objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of you but your own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell you that you are your own mistake."
The vivisection of the impostor's anatomy appears to be a masochistic exercise in self-flagellation. Isn't such morbid introspection self-defeating? Is this really necessary?
I maintain that is is not only necessary but indispensable for spiritual growth. The impostor must be called out of hiding, accepted, and embraced. He is an integral part of my total self. Whatever is denied cannot be healed. To acknowledge humbly that I often inhabit an unreal world, that I have trivilized my relationship with God, and that I am driven by vain ambition is the first blow in dismantling my glittering image. The honesty and willingness to stare down the false self dynamites the steel trapdoor of self-deception.
Peace lies in acceptance of truth. Any facet of the shadow self that we refuse to embrace becomes the enemy and forces us into defensive postures...
As we come to grips with our own selfishness and studity we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads us to being gentle with others - and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.
Hatred of the impostor is actually self-hatred. The impostor and I constitute one person. Contempt for the false self gives vent to hositility, which manifests itself as general irritability - an irritation at the same faults in others that we hate in ourselves. Self-hatred always results in some form of self-destructive behaviour.
Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him.
Another excerpt from The Impostor in Brennan Manning's book ABBA'S CHILD