Merton doesn’t question the reality and importance of the empirical self we call our personality. We must deeply respect our whole person, including the day-by-day realities of life and the self that is formed by them. What Merton does say, however, is that when the relative identity of the ego is taken to be my deepest and only identity, when I am thought to be nothing but the sum total of all my relationships, when I cling to this self and make it the center around which and for which I live, I then make my empirical identity into the false self. My own self then becomes the obstacle to realizing my true self.
The true self is our whole self before God, the self we were created to become, our self in Christ.