Each individual that finds meaning for their life addresses the four fundamental questions of life: Who am I? Where do I come from? Why am I here? What will happen when I die?
The answer to all four questions exists inherently in discovering your true Self.
Happiness, inner peace, healing and wellbeing, effectiveness in what you do as well as your ability to bond with others and enjoy intimacy. All these are inseparable from a strong and clearly defined identity. An identity is the reality of being who you are.
How you define yourself, to yourself, depend on your core beliefs, the level of personal development you are at and the stage of life you are in. In other words, your identity changes and evolves over time. Most people enter adulthood with unresolved inner conflicts that remain unresolved out of ignorance of who they are, including an inability to function as a whole person. Self-Awareness is the process of discovering your true Self by means of Self-observation and assimilating and implementing accurate information about you.
The Dimensions of a whole person:
•Spirit: non-physical consciousness. It is the benevolent, creative intelligence source of all existence. Spirit is realized through direct experience as an ever-expanding awareness.
•Soul: the medium for Spirit life’s experiences. Also known as the immortal personality because it transcends death, your Soul records all events and distills the essence of what is experienced into common sense wisdom. The Soul is a non-physical organ of perception for Spirit. Your Soul feels deeply and it embodies the pure essence of qualities of being: love, joy, peace, creativity, power, strength etc. Your Soul knows intuitively what is true and appropriate in every situation. It functions as a guide whose knowledge is accessed through sensing the body instead of relying on the intellect.
•Mind: or intellect is the capacity for thinking residing within consciousness. In other words, consciousness knows while mind thinks, one is a state of being the other is a mental activity that generates emotional states. You have a mind instead of being a mind. Your mind is the process of decoding information picked up by the senses in the brain. It constructs its own separate identity known as ego by assembling a personality. When you engage in personal development you begin to function as an aware-ego: you recognize being aware and present yet you still identify as being your ego. Personal development process uses psychotherapy to heal emotional trauma and Spiritual/religious practices for direct connection to Spirit. Both psychotherapy and spirituality expand consciousness and increase Self-awareness.
•Body: the living vehicle for Spirit’s experience of physical reality. In knowing your Self it is essential that you understand you have a body instead of believing you are a body. The body expresses life’s intelligence as a self-organizing entity that is subject to mind. The body’s wellbeing or lack of it is a reflection of the subconscious mind and unconscious core beliefs.
Self-Awareness
To be Self-aware is to know yourself as a conscious and integrated Being: Spirit-Soul-mind-body. As a human being you are a unique individual distinct yet interconnected with others. Awareness knows that it knows and it is an effortless capacity of Spirit/consciousness to observe and pay attention.
Some fundamental characteristics of being Self-aware are knowing that you have a mind instead of believing you are a mind, distinguishing being from thinking by recognizing your internal space which is silent and, recapturing the capacity to be natural, loving and at peace with yourself.
Today most people are mentally conditioned to live life primarily by thinking. In westernized cultures it is normal to live life identified with a conflicting mind chatter that generates negative emotions, this is unnatural!
The process of knowing yourself includes dis-identifying from your mind, resolving mental inner conflicts, fulfilling the desire for Self-expression and, realizing your life purpose.
Facts about not knowing your Self
When you don’t know your Self and are able to function as a whole person, you are bound to live life under the control of your ego. Your effectiveness in life is compromised by your ego scattering energy and vitality in different and often opposite directions. The ego’s personality emerges out of childhood with competing core beliefs. This inner conflict is painful and maintains a background low-level inner anxiety as if you are always in a state of survival. In fact, your ego lives in an unconscious state of survival.
Understanding the sources of inner conflict:
Spirit chooses a particular set of experiences that define your life purpose and destiny.
Your Soul is compelled to fulfill its destiny by creating a blue print or map for this life’s journey. The sign post along the path are inspirations from Spirit that awaken deep desires that your soul longs to fulfill. Powerful desires are aligned with your destiny. Desires come through and are felt through, your heart. A desire brings a sense of fullness by the energy of excitement it contains.
Mental conditioning in the form of core beliefs drives your ego to perpetuate a state of wanting, which is an emotional state of lack. To want is to desire without having which feels uncomfortably empty.
Your body and your Soul have needs that are not negotiable, they must be satisfied. During infancy the Soul experiences itself as a body and it needs nurturing attention in the form of tender contact, holding and a quiet peaceful environment. From childhood on your Soul needs to express its creativity and have intimate relationships with others. For its entire existence the body requires adequate amounts of food, a safe shelter, daily movement and enough consistent sleep for self-repair.
The deepest and most devastating inner conflict is excluding your Soul and Spirit out of your awareness. When you are only identified with your ego “it” has internal conflicts regarding choosing what is most valuable to pay attention to: desires, wants or needs.
These are some of the ego’s inner conflicts:
Indecision
Procrastination
Perfectionism
Helplessness/hopeplesness/dispair
Self-control and need to control others or situations
Doubt/worry/anxiety/fear/terror
Self-punishment/self hatred
Frustration/anger/rage/fury/hatred
Cowardice
Mediocrity
Dis-harmony in relationships
Struggle with authority
Confusion
Isolation/clinginess/neediness
Your life purpose contains the solutions to eliminate all your inner conflicts and, move steadily in the direction of fulfilling your desires. As you complete the different stages of development in the different stages of your life by following your common sense your life purpose reveals itself.