Was there something deeper at the very core of me that was purely and truly my “I”? In time, I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play.

It transcends the individual ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic “I” within — an “I Am,” or divine spark within the soul.

Here is where our real selfhood is rooted, in the divine spark or seed, in the image of God imprinted on each and every human soul. The True Self is not our creation, but God’s. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

Unravelling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work. I remember a time in my life when I actually thought the term “soul work” referred to the evangelistic effort of winning souls. That hints at how little attention I had paid to the soul as the seedbed of the divine life. I was wrong.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity for us to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

A few years ago, struggling with my inner false selves, wearing masks as if life were a masquerade party, I began to feel the suffocation and desperation that happens when we cut ourselves off from the True Self.

I went away to a retreat centre nestled among live oaks in the low country of South Carolina. I went to try and remember who I really was. — Beliefnet.com