The dynamics of Falling Upwards II : The Valley of Death, routinely

And all shall be well and 

All manner of thing shall be well 

By the purification of the motive 

In the ground of our beseeching.

  T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

The false self has no reality of its own, because it is not rooted in God, but in our fallen human condition. Yet it feels awfully, acutely, sorely real. In fact, for most of our lives we have no idea of any other self than these acquired defence mechanisms and survival strategies. They define and circumscribe our horizon, they literally form our universe; they do feel like being “me”. 

From early childhood on, we learn to walk within limits set by the false self, thinking that they are all that exists. We learn to settle on little shaky comfort that the choice of a successful strategy offers, and under pressure of fear and guilt accept to be less than ourselves – our real glorious selves designed and created by God in love. People around us also think that this is all that exists, so everybody is happy - as long as we accept their parasite patterns too. This is no more than a collective hallucination, but we have absolutely no way to know it unless a disaster, a crisis, a heavenly vision challenge us.

This is why the encounter with our real self, if it ever happens, feels first like loss and deprivation, like an impossible bid  – we are indeed being torn apart from the only guide we have ever known, the only “I” we have ever called “I”, and often alienated from "public opinion" too. Total fog all around, and only an obscure intuition, a feeling, a whisper of inner voice to orientate you... The paralytic summoned by Jesus to walk was probably feeling exactly this : a blind helplessness at being asked to do something for which he had no functional ability, something clearly impossible in his situation. No wonder it feels like an agony. St Paul often calls the false self “flesh”; and he repeats it again and again: if ever we are to live in God, “flesh must die”. 

So that's what we all do, here falling: "die to sin", as our so cheerful St Paul puts it, and there is no way it feels nice and agreeable. Dear self dies hard: it will hurt and bleed, will send upon you fogs and fears - especially fears related to the imaginary dangers, - and your inner infant will wail and cry and beg to be spared. Yet you know why you keep going through these painful metamorphoses, stumbling at every step: because authentic love is only possible between real selves, free from all compulsion; and love is in fact the only objective reality that is worthy of our heavenly souls.