Go to Your True Self
I often find Scripture to be a source of mystery and surprise, offering teachings of a deep nature. One of these is to be found in the first sentence of Genesis 12. Here, HaShem speaks to Avram with these words – Now Adonai said to Avram, Get yourself out of your country, away from your kinsmen and away from your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. (Genesis 12:1) In the Hebrew, the words generally translated for Get yourself out, are לֶךְ-לְךָ – lech l’cha, literally meaning ‘go for you’, sometimes translated as ‘go to you’. Here is found within this line a deep personal teaching for us – Go to your true self. All of us, believers or non-believers, have many layers of ‘self’. We have ‘projected self’, that image or ‘mask’ we wish others to see; then we have ‘perceived self’ – how we see ourselves, our self-perceptions, through our self-concepts and we have ‘true self’ who we really are, with our beliefs, values and biases. We all know about our ‘projected’ and our ‘perceived’ selves; however, very few of us have ever gone to our ‘true’ selves, which is buried deeply within our self-conscious minds. Oh, we all have said, from time-to-time, “I know what I believe” and “I know my values’, but that is an illusion. Both our beliefs and values are too deep within our subconscious to be freely brought to the conscious mind. What we do know are our preferences and our desires. In order to gain insight to our beliefs, values and prejudices, we need to engage in what I have called, Reflective Practice.1 For believers, the assistance of the Holy Spirit of the Living God, is essential. He will lead us to those deep, often dark places, within our subconscious minds and illuminate what is hidden there. This what King David meant, when he wrote in Psalm 139:23,24 – Examine me, God, and know my heart;
test me, and know my thoughts. See if there is in me any hurtful way,
and lead me along the eternal way. Rav Sha’ul, the Apostle Paul, alluded to the same understanding, when he penned in Romans 12:2 – In other words, do not let yourselves be conformed to the standards of the ‘olam hazeh (this world). Instead, keep letting yourselves be transformed by the renewing of your minds; so that you will know what God wants and will agree that what he wants is good, satisfying and able to succeed. And in Ephesians 4:22-24 he added explanation – then, so far as your former way of life is concerned, you must strip off your old nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires; and you must let your spirits and minds keep being renewed, and clothe yourselves with the new nature created to be godly, which expresses itself in the righteousness and holiness that flow from the truth!”
Beloved, we must be proactive about asking Yahweh Elohim to guide us in discovering that which is in the deep, dark recesses of our subconscious minds. Only He will enable us to explore, examine and decide to replace these false beliefs, ungodly values and uknown prejudices with His Truth.
Abba B’Shamayim, Father in Heaven, I pray You will guide me this day to illuminate those dark places in my heart, my subconscious mind; uncover those beliefs, values and biases which do not fit with Your Truth so I may reject them and replace them with Your Truth. B’Shem Adonai Yeshua, Amein.
1 Wodlinger, Michael. “Reflective Practice – A Manual for the Reflective Practitioner” Canadian Mentor College, Aurora, Ontario. 2002. (Unfortunately this publication is out-of-print)