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Paul refers to the mystery of the practical co-inherence in Ephesians 5. After instructing on how husbands are to love their wives, he says: "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" (v. 15, KJV). He continues by saying: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church" (vv. 16-17, KJV). The union of wife and husband is like to the union of Christ and the Church: the union is of a practical, chosen, and conscious co-inherence; this co-inherence finds its more physical sign in sexual intercourse.
Consequently, the dualism among many in popular and noncontemplative religion fails in two regards. First, it teaches a substantial separation between the Source and the Self. This is logically impossible, for a Source cannot be sole Source and form from something else a creature, when there is no other Source-Substance. Every creature by innateness participates in God. Second, popular religious dualism fails to teach the mystery of union between the I AM and the person, when the person, due to Grace, freely choices the practical co-inherence ~ which is made possible by the primary, or innate, substantial union. Indeed, without substantial union, there could not be loving, or contemplative, union.
The teaching of the abandonment of self for God, absent the teachings of union, lead to un-Christian attempts at humility. Christian humility entails full acceptance of the divinity of the self-as-Self and living the oneness with the Divine Being in loving and submissive union; in other words, living the mystery of Christ and the Church. By doing this, self-abandonment is surrender to God out of a recognition that the Good in oneself is of God, in God, and God is in It. How can a person disdain herself or himself to honor God, self-Maker, Who creates and lives in that self, as self-as-Self, and infuses self-as-Self with the divinity apportioned to all creation as offspring of Creative Spirit? We cannot logically speak of rejecting some aspect of Creation as a means to honor God the Creator.
Thus, we do not dishonor the self in true religion; rather, we are transformed in mind and heart to "see" self as fully of God, to "see" self-as-Self. We discern and feel, deeply, that God is in love with the self and wants each of us to love the self-as-Self, likewise. Talk of False Self is only a verbal construct to define a lack of understanding of the divinity of self-as-Self. The sure route to the fulfillment of the divine Purpose of a self is to understand self as what is implied in True Self. True Self is self awakened to being-in-Love with God.
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