""I promise you that the discovery of your True Self will feel like a thousand pounds of weight have fallen from your back. You will no longer have to build, protect, or promote any idealized self image. Living in the True Self is quite simply a much happier existence ..."
"--From Chapter One

In his bestselling book "Falling Upward" (and in many of his other teachings), Franciscan priest Father Richard Rohr talked at length about ego (part of the False Self) and how it gets in the way of spiritual maturity, especially if its preoccupations continue into the second half of life.

But if there's a False Self, is there also a True Self? What is it? How is it found? Why does it matter? And what does it have to do with the spiritual journey?

In "Immortal Diamond," Father Rohr likens True Self to a diamond, buried deep within us, formed under the intense pressure of our lives, that must be searched for, uncovered, and separated from all the debris of ego that surrounds it. In a sense True Self must, like Jesus, be resurrected, and that process is not resuscitation but transformation.