Toward the end of his writings, the Catholic monk Thomas Merton seems to have come to a position which admitted the uselessness of us seeking a “true self” as a strategy, rather than just working with where we are in each moment at any given time. A lot of self-help books and even some psychology approaches set up this distinction between “me here” and “a better me there”, with a gap in-between and an emphasis on changing ourselves in order to get to that desired, truer place. Although ongoing reflection is a good thing, often all this urge for improvement reflects a type of aggression  towards ourselves, rather than helping us with our fundamental task – befriending ourselves and life as it is. It paradoxically can even reduce any capacity for growth, which starts with self-acceptance.

The time has probably come to go back on all that I have said about one’s “true self”, etc., etc. And show that there is after all no hidden mysterious “real self” other than or hiding behind the self that one is, but what all the thinking does is to observe what is there or objectify it and thus falsify it. The “real self” is not an object, but I have betrayed it by seeming to promise a possibility of knowing it somewhere, sometimes as a reward for astuteness, fidelity and a quick-witted ability to stay one jump ahead of reality.

Thomas Merton