The Higher Self

Give up defining yourself-to yourself and others.
Eckhart Tolle

What the heck is this higher Self you are talking about crazy lady?

I know, I know...it gets confusing.  Terminology often gets in the way of "knowing" and my use of the "higher Self" may be tripping a lot of people up.  It would have tripped me up less than a decade or so ago. 

Just words

The thing to remember before I begin any grand definition...is that it is just a term, words, that are so limited in their ability to accurately describe something to the point that you know that something. Words  are also very much attached to memory and pre-established mental associations.  So every term, every name, every label and every word will resonate differently in every person.  Be mindful of that.  I don't want you to cling to the words or the labels I use, nor do I want you to resist them.  They are just harmless little symbols that point in a certain direction, okay?

Not the ego

Higher Self to me then is the opposite of what the ego is.  By now, I am assuming you have an idea of what I mean by the ego.  My use of the term "ego" is so far from Freud's definition it isn't funny. 

Just to recap: ego is that part of us that isn't real...the part of us the mind creates to make sense of the world.  The conditioned mind sees the world as a dangerous place where there is a very limited amount of the "good" stuff ( the mind is really big on making things into good or bad categories).  And it tells us  we are separate entities, separated by our bodily forms, personalities and belief systems, needing to defend and attack our way through life. It wraps us in "me, my, and mine"...understanding.

The ego is our identification then with the physical world: body, thought, stuff and circumstance. Therefore it is very "busy" and often stressed and intense...constantly battling against something or resisting what is. It exists on the surface layers of our so called "life".  The ego is the "little self or the little me".

Get that?

Beyond the ego

On the other hand, the higher Self exists at the deeper level, below body identification, below our personalities, our thinking and our feeling. Unlike the ego...it is not lost or identified with the tings on the surface layers.  It recognizes them, is aware of them but does not get lost in them.  It is the part of us that is wise...seeing the truth of our existence.  Because of that it is peaceful and calm. 

It is also the part of us that is closer to God ( God is another thing ( no-thing)  that really can not be expressed in words).   It takes us away from little self's entrapment in "me, my, and mine" to "all", "One" and "Thine".

Some of us might prefer the term : Soul, spirit, essence, higher consciousness).  I believe all of those are defining what I am defining when I say the higher Self .

We access It (whatever term you prefer to use to loosely point to this higher Self)  through stillness and silence. We need to get beneath the noisy, busy chatter of the conditioned mind to realize It.

Okay, okay...so what is it...how do I recognize this higher Self, point to it, see it, feel it etc?

The part of you that is asking that question will never recognize the higher Self...will never be able to point to It directly, see It, feel It. See...what is happening is that the conceptual thinking mind which is a part of ego and dependent on the five senses and physicality  is asking that question.  The conceptual mind will never be able to know the higher Self...because it is beneath it. The conceptual mind is such a tiny, tiny part of who you are.  The higher Self is everything you are and you just can't understand that when you attempt to see it  through ego's eyes.

WTF(ront door)? So what is it if it is invisible?

Just because you cannot understand it or sense it with the five senses you have been given does not mean it isn't real.  In fact that makes it even more real.

 If you need to understand it with your conceptual mind...think of it as a layer of consciousness.  You cannot see or touch consciousness but you have a sense of being conscious, right? Most of us operate on the superficial layer using only a small portion of our mind. We are content leaving it at that level and settle there.  But beneath that layer is a whole new world to access...a greater, more vast consciousness that would expand and beautify our existence if we could tap into it.  We will all definitely tap into it when we leave our bodies but we can do so before hand too.

Eckhart Tolle explains our ego experience in a New Earth.  He says it is like a beggar sitting on a box of gold. We are begging just so we can survive, not realizing that beneath us...inside the box we have never looked in...is so much gold.

We do not have to just survive and fight our way to survival...we can realize our full potential ...and the abundance that is ours  ( not necessarily material)  if we look inside. So many of us do not even bother to go deeper.  We do not realize that the higher Self is that gold we seek.  While we are stuck in  thinking that  begging is the only choice we have, we don't see it. We need to get beneath that thinking.  We need to go deeper.

So seeking the higher Self makes us selfish  gold diggers?


No...the gold is not of a material nature.  It is actually peace, joy and Love we seek. That Gold of the higher Self is meant for everybody...belongs to everybody...is everybody.  .

Huh?

So we can think of it in terms of accessing a deeper level of consciousness that brings 'happiness to all' and that goes beyond what we have come to believe is real, simply because our ego and our five senses tell us so.  We can all access this higher Self ( or whatever you wish to call it) by being willing to look beyond what ego deems as real. We will find peace there.

You get that?

I hope so...cuz I don't think I could explain it again.  :)

All is well in my world.

Eckhart Tolle (2005 ) The New Earth. Penguin