Posted April 22, 2013 Book: Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self Author: Richard Rohr Jossey-Bass - A Wiley Imprint. San Francisco, CA. 2013. pp. 253 An Excerpt from the Jacket: 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. Immortal Diamond (whose title is taken from a line in a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem) explores the deepest questions of identity, spirituality, and meaning. In Richard Rohr's inimitable style, the book brings to light the mysteries of grace, death, and resurrection. An Excerpt from the Book: The confusion about our True Self and False Self is much of the illusion of the first half of life, although most of us do not experience the problem the. Only later in life can we perhaps join with Thomas Merton, who penned one of my favorite lines, "If I had a message to my contempories it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shpae and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . .If you are obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted." Success is hardly ever your True Self, only your early window dressing. It gives you some momentum for the journey, but it is never the real goal. You do not know that, however. In the moment, it just feels right and good and necessary --- and it is. For a short while. Table of Contents: 1. What is "The True Self?" 2. What is "The False Self?" 3. What dies and who lives? 4. The knife edge of experience 5. Thou art that 6. If it is true, it is true everywhere 7. Enlightenment at gunpoint 8. Intimate with everything 9. Love is stronger than death Appendix A The True Self and the False Self Appendix B A mosaic of metaphors Appendix C Watching at the tomb: Attitudes of prayer Appendix D Head into heart: "The Sacred Heart" Appendix E Adam's breathing: praying from the clay Appendix F Twelve ways to practice resurrection now