Unmasking the False Self

Ego, Addiction, and the Journey Toward the True Self

From the earliest moments of life, we begin constructing a self—not consciously, but instinctively.

As infants and children, we learn what brings love, what gets approval, and what keeps us safe. This “constructed self” is the ego’s attempt to survive and be accepted in a world that feels, on some level, uncertain and unsafe.

According to Fr. Thomas Keating, it forms around three core emotional needs: security, affection, and control.

In his book Invitation to Love, Keating explains how this is the groundwork of what he calls the “False Self” system—an inner architecture built not on divine love, but on fear, performance, and compensation for what we lack .

Richard Rohr, whom I’ve written about many times, echoes this - naming the False Self as the persona we present to the world: our job titles, achievements, image, and roles.

It’s basically everything that people (especially young people) share on their social media accounts - from Facebook, to Instagram, and even to LinkedIn.

The side that we want people to see. The filters to make us look a certain way. The angles that make us look thinner. The job promotion that makes us look successful. The virtue we want to signal to others with our political beliefs.

In Falling Upward, Rohr goes on to explain that it’s not evil; in fact, it’s necessary for a time.

For a time.

It’s not bad to be successful. It’s not bad to be healthy or to take care of our appearance. It’s not bad to share our achievements or the achievements of our particular teams or families.

But deep down - when we start doing it, consciously or unconsciously, just to show the world what they want to see - it is not our true identity.

It is who we think we are, not who we really are. It's the mask we grow into, often so well that we forget we’re wearing one.

The False Self is fragile—constantly needing validation, terrified of failure, always comparing, striving, or defending.

In his book Immortal Diamond, Rohr puts it even more plainly:

“The false self is who you think you are; your true self is who you are in God.”

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton calls this self "the self that cannot exist," because it is a fiction. It’s constructed from layers of illusion, built on what others think, or what we desperately want them to think. Merton suggests that beneath this false identity is a point of pure truth, a “hidden wholeness” that is untouched by fear or ego—the True Self.

But to reach that center - according to Merton - one must be willing to enter solitude, silence, and a kind of spiritual poverty where everything false is stripped away.

Not quite there yet on the spiritual side?

Carl Jung approaches this from a psychological perspective.

For him, the False Self corresponds to the persona—the mask we wear to fit into society. But hidden beneath it lies the shadow: all the parts of ourselves we repress or deny to maintain the persona. As he discusses in both Modern Man in Search of a Soul and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - to discover our authentic self, we must integrate this shadow, face what we’ve hidden or feared, and move toward what he called individuation.

This is the emergence of a whole, integrated self that includes light and dark, strength and vulnerability.

This journey is not linear. It is often painful. Rohr and the others have often said that transformation usually begins with some form of suffering or failure—the moment when the False Self no longer “works.”

It’s an interesting peak into theodicy - a piece of to the uncomfortable question of “why does an all-powerful and loving God allow us to suffer?”

This might come as the loss of a job, a relationship, a loved one, status, health, or certainty. Many who have faced addiction to drugs or alcohol know this feeling all too well.

It feels like unraveling.

But it is actually grace. I know that’s not easy to hear, especially when one is in the Dark Night of the Soul.

Rohr calls it “falling upward”—a descent that becomes ascent, death that becomes life (he loves speaking in paradoxes - and it can get frustrating at times!).

Keating offers a contemplative path through this process. In Centering Prayer, a form of prayer that he espoused in the West from the 1970s until his death - the practitioner consents to God's presence and action within—letting go of thought, image, and identity. In this repeated surrender, the emotional programs of the False Self begin to dissolve. Not through willpower, but through divine presence gently undoing what no longer serves us. (I highly recommend his book Open Mind, Open Heart - a great introduction into centering prayer.)

As I alluded to earlier, this dismantling of the False Self is also deeply connected to the concept of addiction—and not just in the conventional sense of substance abuse.

Every one of us, in one form or another, clings to something that props up the False Self.

Some addictions are obvious: alcohol, drugs, food, gambling. But others are more socially acceptable and even rewarded: the need to be liked, to win, to be admired, to control, to stay busy, to be right, to be needed. These are often the most difficult to identify because they don’t “look” like addictions, but they serve the same purpose—feeding the ego, numbing discomfort, and keeping us from stillness where the deeper work begins.

And yet, those with the most visible addictions—like alcoholics—may paradoxically be closer to transformation.

Their suffering is undeniable. I’m not romanticizing it.

Their False Self has often crumbled publicly, painfully.

But I feel that perhaps in that collapse lies a strange kind of grace.

Programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, with their emphasis on powerlessness, surrender, self-examination, amends, and trust in a Higher Power, offer a spiritual path many never walk because they aren’t forced to.

As Rohr has written in Breathing Under Water (one of my all-time favorite books), the Twelve Steps are a modern spiritual roadmap—a scaffold for the dying of the False Self.

The alcoholic, through great suffering, is given a path toward liberation. While others may function well enough to avoid such a fall, we remain trapped by subtler forms of addiction—our hidden attachments and compulsions that keep us from the True Self.

The mystics have always taught that this is the only real way to God.

Jesus himself says, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Mark 8:35).

The “life” we lose is the False Self.

The “life” we find is the True Self, the one hidden in God. The one that sometimes feels beyond words and thoughts.

So according to these spiritual teachers - the True Self, then, is not something we create or achieve. It is something we are born with - something that already exists in each and every one of us.

It is who we have always been in God, underneath the masks, the wounds, and the striving.

It is the part of us that has never doubted, never feared, never needed to prove anything. The part that knows we are loved, no matter what we do.

As Merton writes in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth...which belongs entirely to God."

This center is where the True Self lives. And reaching it requires that we descend past every false layer we’ve built to protect ourselves— yes, even our religious ones.

Especially, in many cases, our religious ones.

Unfortunately, many of the religious institutions of our upbringing may have caused far more damage than good. That could be for a number of reasons - maybe we weren’t ready to understand, personal egos or political agendas took root, or perhaps their pastoral care or messaging was caught up in “first half of life” things, as Rohr discusses in Falling Upward.

That’s the reality of human institutions.

But we shouldn’t give up or lose heart.

I needed to write this for myself, not because I’m sharing some wisdom that comes from my own thoughts - I have no shame in admitting that I’m simply stealing the brilliant work of some of the most important spiritual leaders of the 20th Century.

And I’m not under any false impression that I’ve fully let go of this False Self and found the True - or that I fully understand any of this.

And that’s ok, I don’t mind. I’m trying to work on it - and I understand it will be a lifelong journey. As I mentioned before, it’s not linear.

And as I’m continuing on this journey, it’s incredibly helpful to have something that I can turn back to and remind myself.

I don’t have it figured out. But I hope this internal dialogue (that I’m ironically sharing externally) continues to help me shed my False Self - and I hope it sparks curiosity in whoever is reading this.

I’ve experienced great suffering (as I’m sure many of you have), I’ve hit rock bottom, and I’ve worked the 12 Steps - and I’ve experienced more transformational joy than I ever could have imagined as a result.

So I’d like think I have some “real world” experience here (not that I’m trying to compare my experiences with anyone elses).

We all know that deep down, there are things that weigh on us - things that we pretend represent our real selves. But the world is scary and we try to cling to what we think makes us comfortable, or safe, or stable.

Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.

But each teacher—Keating, Rohr, Merton, Jung, and many more—agrees on this: the path to the True Self is downward, not upward; inward, not outward.

It is the way of loss, surrender, silence, and trust.

Losing the False Self - which is not easy - and finding the True Self.

And at each stage of the descent, the False Self resists. It tries to bargain. It clings. It wants to make spirituality another performance. But grace waits in the silence, not to punish, but to gently unveil the truth.

But I’m beginning to see, by the grace of God, that perhaps only when the False Self dies, do we become truly alive.