The Resolution of the Self

The Resolution of the Self takes place throughout the process of spiritual development as a gradual shift within the individual towards greater alignment with, experience of, and identification with Spirit, attained through successive levels of “higher consciousness”. In general terms this is what spiritual development and Resolution of the Self are. From a subjective perspective this shift takes place as a conscious reorientation of what we place our attention upon, the quality of our thoughts and emotions, and the nature of our actions away from lower level behavior, thinking, and feeling towards a higher conception of what we can become as individuals.

In practice this process is a gradual loosening of our identification with Ego (the erroneous ideas we maintain about our identity and self-image, limiting and incongruous patterns of thought, emotion, and habit which are not in alignment with who we truly are) towards the highest expression of ourselves, which I call the True Self. Both of these are distinct levels of awareness or experiences of being that we can attain and differentiate between with increasing clarity with the right practices in time. A key concept in the understanding of the resolution of the self is that it is a practice of letting go of the modes of thinking, feeling, and acting that are incongruous with who we really are (meaning that they are of the Ego) while at the same time cultivating the person that we discover ourselves to be, the True Self, by learning to act in greater accord with this part of our identity.

In this article we shall cover an overview of the Resolution of the Self, as well as lay a conceptual foundation for both the process and the primary aspects of a human being: the Ego, the True Self, and Spirit. Everyone is already engaging in this path in their own ways, at their own stages, because this process is fundamental to the development of individual consciousness through lifetimes. However, here I will give you some of the tools and understanding to do so consciously.

People embark upon this path not necessarily because they intentionally choose to, but because they have to. Perhaps because they have reached a phase in their life when they realize they have no choice but to change and grow, or have come to the realization that they want to change and grow. Or because they have begun to grow dissatisfied with their lives, themselves, society, their worldview, and the way things are, a state compounded by an experience of a new awareness of Self, Reality and Spirit emerging within which essentially compels them into a new way of living and level of being. This process is called spiritual awakening.

It is people who have reached these stages who will be able to use and understand this information. All I can say is that the path of the Resolution of the Self, once engaged in consciously, will bring more out of you, will enable you to discover power, ability, potential, intelligence, creativity, strength, depth, substance, a level of emotion, experiences (and perceptions) of a reality and level of being an order of magnitude above the one we are conditioned into from birth. And that by this process, you will also learn to resolve and let go of the parts of you that were holding you back and inciting havoc and disorder within your life, relationships, work, obstructing your connection to Spirit and the cultivation of increasingly higher states of spiritual awareness.

Anatomy of the Self

The Self is a fairly challenging concept. As in all things, there are layers of understanding penetrated to sequentially along the path that leads to mastery. Thus an understanding of literally the words and sentences I use to describe the Self, even if my description makes sense to you, does not mean that you understand the Self. In 10 years time if you engage in a continual process of personal and spiritual development towards mastery, you’ll look back at this period in your life and will recognize that you knew almost nothing at this stage relative to where you will be 10 years from now. Take this to heart, because this patience, restraint, humility, and long-term perspective are necessary fundamental qualities along the path described by the Resolution of the Self out of which deep understanding and change shall flourish.

The Self generally speaking is individual consciousness, though from a more higher integrated perspective it is all consciousness at once, One Consciousness. Within it is contained the entire range of all that you are, both known to you and unknown. However, not everything within the individual is genuine, and generally the most important parts of ourselves are those that we do not yet realize, which are to be found at greater depths within us beneath the superficial.

The Self can then be subdivided into two polarized aspects. On the one hand what I refer to as the Ego which is the epitome of the individual identity with unique individual problems and limitations, whose counterpoint is Spirit, singular One Consciousness or what I like to call the Infinite Self. Thus you can see already that the understanding of the Self ranges from the individual to the infinite, or rather from entirely differentiated consciousness (perceptually speaking) to entirely integrated consciousness.

The third division that I would make of an experience of consciousness is what I call the True Self, which is the intermediary between the Ego and Spirit. I personally believe that these distinctions are ultimately meaningless, in that there is only consciousness, and ultimately only One Consciousness and that all other are entangled inseparable extensions of the One. However the distinction of Ego, True Self, and Spirit is definitely relevant from a standpoint of our perception which represent Levels of Consciousness relative to one another within the individual that I believe any person can experience with training. In other words they represent aspects of ourselves along the range from ourselves as individuals, the Individual Self, through the True Self, which I believe is the identity we have the potential to grow into and become in this lifetime, our highest potential if you will, ultimately leading towards Spirit and better alignment and integration with Spirit, the undifferentiated Infinite Self. These are all differentiated with enough experience, skill, and mastery of meditation. They are distinct. Once you have experienced each clearly it is difficult to confuse them, though the deeply embedded Ego occludes the True Self and Spirit, blurring the edges somewhat which can make it difficult in some places to discern between what is genuine and what is false. This means only that we must never be too complacent, or too proud and sure of our advancement.

I would not take these aspects of the Self as in any way referring to actual “things” that are part of the mechanism of consciousness, because at present nobody ever has definitively understood the mechanisms of consciousness by describing it in a thorough framework of physics and mathematics. Make no mistake, that is the height of human understanding and comprehension because it’s the only way we can know beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore these three distinctions should be understood as mere labels for levels of consciousness that I have personally experienced and cultivated awareness of. These are revealed and distinguished to all people naturally through meditation experience as we move inwards through superficial levels of thinking and feeling into an experience of the True Self towards what I can only call an experience of God (Infinite Self) which is at the center of all individual consciousness, all part of a singular, entangled, unified whole.

The Ego :: Lower Self

Meditation is a practice of training an internal orientation to our attention. When we turn our attention inwards, we seem to cultivate some force or power of awareness that I personally call attention which enables us to cut deeper into whatever we place our attention upon than we ever could before, regardless of whether what we place our attention on is ourselves or the learning of any skill, subject, song, you name it. When we turn our attention inwards we proceed through ourselves in layers. The surface layers I call the Ego because they are the distorted fringes of our being furthest from Spirit.

The Ego, which one might also call the False Self, is not “furthest from spirit” in any literal sense necessarily, I wouldn’t know, but furthest only because it is not who we really are and is furthest in nature and qualities from Spirit. For myself personally, as I was growing up until I graduated I had no time to figure myself out, so I was conditioned by society into habits, mannerisms, a worldview, interests, and social identity that had nothing to do with who I was. As such, I was denied all of the things of utmost importance to me today which are fundamental expressions of all that I am – music, science, physics, history, spiritual teaching and psychology, spiritual training, certain physical arts for self-expression and self-development rather than competition, and even languages. Most of what I was, did, and said (and believed myself to be) was utterly erroneous to who I actually am, and to what my life purpose is. Living in that state was – and is – living in Ego, living from the False Self divorced from both the True Self and from Spirit.

Finding new things to do is not the point either, the point is to be what we are and the discovery of what we are is incredibly challenging. The much greater damage was the ingrained beliefs, attitudes, processes for doing, learning, thinking, feeling, and acting. The majority of these first had to be differentiated from an indistinguishable internal tangle where I didn’t know what within me was true and what wasn’t, long before they could eventually be gradually uninstalled and replaced in order to come to a true expression of what I am today. Therefore when I say that the Ego is the erroneous parts of ourselves, do not be offended. That just means that there is far more brilliance to you than you have any conception of. So focus on that part, realizing and claiming that brilliance, and cleansing everything in its way.

The Ego is the distortion of who we are due (in part) to the mental-emotional intensity of the trials and tribulations of our various life experiences. For example pride, humiliation, pain, anger, fear, or grief resulting from a life experience can absolutely distort a person, in that the unconscious memory of such experiences can and does dictate our behavior and what we gravitate towards subconsciously, even in our conditioned emotional responses. That distortion remains until those underlying emotions (which are often suppressed) are finally resolved in that when we think about the original event we do not feel any negativity in even the recollection of such an event, only gratitude for what it taught us because we understand that it was necessary to get us to where we are now, and we are happy and proud of where we are now. This it the resolution of the self, in this case the Lower Self, or the Ego.

Anything less than this and resolution has not completely occurred. Therefore part of the resolution of the self occurs is in dealing with and resolving the Ego, which is the relative low end of both who we are as individuals and the low end of our level of awareness which must be healed as part of the Resolution of the Self in order to move to higher stages.

The True Self :: Higher Self

In meditation practice, there are moments in any given practice when a shift occurs, and the transition to a new degree of silence can literally be felt which is accompanied by an increase of clarity, a shoot upwards of our emotions, and also a sense of expansiveness and deeper connection with what can be called Spirit. Though this experience comes from penetration inwards, which is very important to understand. In those moments I am experiencing an awareness of myself distinct from the lower level thought-feeling of the Ego.

I call this the True Self because when I would penetrate into this awareness the level of emotion, quality of thought, and new conception of myself was so much more powerful than anything else because I resonated – literally seemed to vibrate within myself (not the body obviously, but emotionally, mentally, as consciousness it seems) – with this information like it was trying to break out of me. The person I met in these experiences, the True Self, was something I was all along, like I was remembering it. Personally I saw myself as a musician, historian, scientist, spiritual teacher, athlete, and many other little things, all of which I knew unequivocally when I entered into this level of awareness. It was obviously more intense and more subtle than this, difficult to describe.

I was also inspired and bombarded with visions of what I was going to do with my life, how everything would come together, the work that I would do, and the person I would become. I do not practice visualization, just like I generally do not use mantras or affirmations or any such thing. I don’t have anything against them, it’s just that they are not relevant to me for reason’s I’ll explain in detail here. So it always felt as if I was a witness to these things, nothing more. And they were guiding me towards becoming this person in this lifetime. For these reason’s I would define the True Self as specifically the highest version of yourself that you can attain in this lifetime. Almost like a more advanced part of yourself attracting you towards it if you get beneath the Ego to listen – and act – in accordance. Within this will be included your life’s work, your purpose in this lifetime, because your Life Purpose is nothing more nor less than the perfect expression and extension of the person that you are and can become in this lifetime.

The other aspect of the True Self (which I realize upon writing might equate with concepts such as the Higher Self or the Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost of Christianity) in that it simply is an awareness, expression, and level of ourselves the next order of magnitude above the person that we were at earlier stages in this lifetime, before we began to awaken. This True Self is a Higher Self only in the sense that it is closer to Spirit. That person that I found within me was closer to Spirit because the awareness and emotion in these moments of clarity in meditation was so much better than anything I had ever felt. So from this perspective we can define the True Self as the highest potential of the individual, our more “spiritual identity” if you will, which is a far more genuine expression of ourselves that we can attain when we experience and embody Spirit to a greater degree.

Spirit :: One Consciousness :: Divine Self

Within the practice of meditation, roughly speaking, when we first close our eyes we are experiencing the Ego, which I think of as the distorted fringes of ourselves – unbridled thoughts and emotions – which are discordant. When we move deeper within as we build the intensity of our mental focus in an internally-orientated direction through meditation, we break through to deeper layers of ourselves characterized by higher emotions, a more unlimited, uplifting, powerful, and important experience and understanding of ourselves. The distinction between Ego and True Self is always relative and is always changing, because there are always new parts of ourselves to work on, refine, overcome, develop, and ways that we can improve ourselves. The resolution of the self is never at an end!

On the other hand, we can also experience and align with Spirit to ever greater degrees. Though the Ego moves relative to our progress, as it will always be the distorted fringe of ourselves, the forefront of our development so-to-speak. No person can ever become God (in the sense of Universal Awareness) and anyone who believes such a thing has deluded themselves as to how far they have gone, even while we all already are God, technically speaking. This in my experience is understandable, because when you have a transcendental life-changing spiritual experience for the first time, particularly one that lasts for weeks, it feels so incredible and you are inspired by such great emotions so high above your previous emotional range, that it is easy to be deluded by that experience. The trial comes later when we get used to that level of feeling so that it becomes normal, because then we are in some ways right back where we started and have to again do the work in resolution of the self, personal development, self-mastery, seeking, and self-discipline to make more progress towards Spirit.

This progress towards Spirit (or at least higher and higher pinnacles of an experience of Spirit) is what meditation and spiritual discipline are all about. We travel through the layers of the Self, through the perceptual spectrum of the Self (or Consciousness if you prefer) from lower individual self (Ego) to relatively higher individual self (True Self) ultimately towards ever-changing and deepening experiences of the divine unlimited self (Spirit/God). This trajectory is the path of the Resolution of the Self. On the one hand the goal is to become better people, to achieve more and get more out of life. But fundamentally speaking, and for everyone who has had intense spiritual experiences, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is getting the garbage out of the way within us more every day so that we can feel and live in the light of what can only be called One Consciousness.

These types of experiences are attained from time to time in meditation. We penetrate to deeper levels of silence, clarity, and emotional intensity with a distinct bent towards love, joy, inspiration, and such, because these emotions define the nature of One Consciousness. Sometimes we experience “normal bliss” meaning that we go to the “feel-good” place, but no more or less than usual. Though every once in a while, we transcend and surpass everything, the upper limits of our emotional and perceptual range, and come to a deeper place of integration with Spirit.

There is no limit to this integration, there is no final stage of enlightenment, just perpetual stages of enlightenment. There is no goal then as a destination, which is futile when you’re on an infinite path. The goal is to learn how to walk the stages quickly and efficiently so that you can always deepen your experience of Spirit because you have learned to deal with the adversity of the spiritual path with wisdom, creativity, and intelligence. Every new transcendental experience of Spirit changes us. Little by little. And it makes us want to identify with Spirit even more, and it gives us new information and insight on how we need to and want to change as people to move forwards.

The Resolution of the Self

Both the True Self and the Ego are equally a part of the Self, because they both ultimately define the individual, just like we are all also Infinite Self at the same time. Even though I define the Ego (False Self) as the parts of ourselves that are erroneous, distortions of the individuals True Self and Spirit, the content of the Ego is still a part of us! If our Ego is defined by hatred, anger, and spite then so are we! This is just as important as the best of what we are, because it is there to teach us how to resolve mental and emotional bents of our nature so that we can move towards Spirit. You wouldn’t be filled with anger if you knew how to process it and express it as something better.

The quality of the Ego must be accepted and owned, because our flaws define us (whether we are aware of them or not) equal to the degree that our strengths and brilliant qualities do. Ignoring the parts of ourselves that are distortions is not the path to personal or spiritual development, because it is precisely the resolution of these distortions in self-image, habit, thought, emotion, and behavior defined by a movement towards the True Self which defines personal growth, and literally is the process of the Resolution of the Self.

The resolution of the self cannot take place if we deny, shun, or suppress the Ego, because so much of what we are is entangled in and occluded by the Ego. In other words, if we do not work through the Ego, then we cannot come to discover, realize, cultivate, and set free our limitless potential. Moreover, if we do not move through the Ego we cannot come to know Spirit, simply because we will remain too superficial and distorted.

This is true even if our denial of the Ego is attained by focusing on the parts of ourselves that are the True Self, because ignoring something cannot help us to understand it, just like ignoring a problem will not solve it. The Ego is, fundamentally, little more than a complex of pain and suffering because it is that which occludes who we are, and which hinders a natural powerful expression of the individual. The only way that the Ego can be resolved is by processing it, as in emotional processing, which is literally what meditation does.

The other side of the Resolution of the Self is the resolution (this time meaning “bringing into focus”) and articulation of the True Self. When I personally found some of the modes of expression and life purpose that I associate with my True Self (physics, music, history etc.) it literally took me years after their discovery within myself to cultivate, polish, and resolve my skill and knowledge to the level that I initially knew them (and myself) to be at. Paradoxical. The pain of this was incredible, like a guitarist who broke his hand and had to relearn to play the opposite direction. You feel the music in you, just do not have the skill and dexterity to express it, like a lion in a cage who wants only to run free.

The resolution of the self is an incredibly complex and difficult process which will take time, and it will never end. You will move through stages of intense challenge and suffering, but you will reach a breaking point so to speak where you have achieved enough that the rest becomes easier and more enjoyable. Moreover, it is not something that will (or should) be embarked upon until it is absolutely required by the individual, until they have begun spiritual awakening (which will happen when it happens) when one will literally be forced into these necessary changes which seem to facilitate a new stage in the evolution/development of humanity. Though at any stage a human can choose to better themselves and move towards spirit, which is more important than anything else: the desire to grow and become better people.