The Real You

"Christ in You, the Hope of Glory"

Who are you?

The simplest way to describe who You are is that you are a perspective: a localized lens through which Universal Consciousness or “God” is focusing its awareness and thereby gaining an experience of Self-knowing.

• So by implication: the more you know and experience yourself, the more Universal Consciousness is knowing and experiencing itself through you. 

The particular link that each individual has with Universal Consciousness or God is through their Higher Self.

• From each person’s individual perspective, the Higher Self is the divine core within; it is the particular aspect of God that is closest and most personal to us. It is also the root of Self-Consciousness within us: the source of the light that illuminates the mind and the fire that animates the body.

• The “lower self”, by contrast, is the physical personality. Think of it as an outer extension of the Higher Self. The Higher Self is what reincarnates, and the lower self is the vehicle that it incarnates through.

• The goal of philosophy is to put the “lower self” into conscious attunement with the Higher Self. To dissolve the polarity, in other words. This is accomplished in stages or degrees.

While each of us possesses a unique Higher Self, it’s important to remember that all Higher Selves are actually manifestations of one supreme Universal Self or Universal Consciousness. So there are many selves, but only one Self.

• As stated above, the Higher Self of each person is fashioned as a unique lens or perspective through which God - the Universal Being - gains an experience of Self-knowing. As you come into communion with your Higher Self, you are simultaneously coming into communion with the Universal Being or Universal Self.

• God comes into a complete experience of Self-knowing through the cumulative experience of collective humanity. This is why it’s never enough to just focus on your own self-growth: the Self within you is intimately connected with the selves of those around you, and the Universal Self (the One Self behind all selves) can only find its ultimate fulfillment when all selves are awakened to it.

The fact that our innermost Self is, at its core, a localized aspect of Universal Consciousness sets the stage for a simple and clear understanding of human destiny: in the fullness of time, when the human soul’s evolutionary journey here on Earth is complete and the Self has developed all powers and potentials possible to itself, each unique Higher Self will be reabsorbed back into the being of Universal Consciousness, such that, in the end, only one Universal Self remains. That is a future we can all one day look forward to. 

• Between now and then is the path of becoming. Of self-actualization, where the human soul learns to cultivate and express the full spectrum of powers and potentials bestowed to it by God.

• The human soul’s path of becoming is the same one that famous mythologist Joseph Campbell called The Hero’s Journey. In this case, the Hero is the Higher Self; the journey it takes is the fulfillment of its God-given evolutionary destiny; and its method for completing this journey is through the growth and development of an evolving series of lower incarnating personalities. 

• You are one of these incarnating personalities, and the experiences you have here on Earth are part of the ongoing Hero’s Journey that your own Higher Self has been playing out over the course of many lifetimes.

This pattern is the basis of philosophy’s doctrine of reincarnation. The Self or Higher Self is the entity that reincarnates; it does this by fashioning a series of incarnating “lower selves”.

• Each of these physical personalities or “lower selves” is fashioned by the Higher Self as an instrument to facilitate its own evolutionary growth.

• Thus, when you experience yourself growing and developing as a person, what is actually happening is that the Higher Self within you is growing and developing and it is expressing that growth and development through its outer instrument: you. 

The end destination of the Hero’s Journey is Self-actualization. This happens when the Higher Self has developed all its God-given powers and potentials and is putting them into active use within its Earthly instrument: the “lower self”. 

• The lower self needs to be developed, matured, and disciplined in order that it may become a willing receptacle of the full spectrum of conscious energies flowing into it from the Higher Self.

• This means the ego has to be put into its proper place. It is intended to be the useful servant of a higher Master. When it attempts to usurp the Higher Self and drive the actions of the personality on its own, it becomes a tyrant.

• Until the ego’s complete surrender to the Higher Self has taken place, the evolutionary journey of the soul will remain incomplete.

The fully-formed human is one who’s Higher Self has completed the Hero’s Journey. This results in the God-man of myth: a figure like Jesus Christ or Thoth-Hermes. In the Eastern way of thinking, this is the human who has risen to become the Bodhisattva. 

• The Bodhisattva represents the fully evolved human soul: one that has perfected and matured itself in such a way that it becomes capable of serving as a clear channel between heaven and earth; Higher Self and lower self.

• Within the inner mental nature of the Bodhisattva, there is no conflict between the will of the Higher Self and the actions of the lower personality functioning here on Earth. There is only the Divine Will flowing seamlessly from Higher to lower.

• To achieve this condition is the destiny of every human being. In the fullness of time, we must all become Bodhisattvas.

To sum things up, let’s return to our original question: Who are you?

• You are the Universal Self expressing itself through a Higher Self, which in turn is expressing itself through a physical personality.

• And what is the Higher Self? A localized atom within the infinite being of God, the Universal Self. This is the Real You. God incarnate.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”