Quest for True Self — Your Being Undiscovered (K021)
⁘ Created: 2025-06-11 ⁘ Updated: 2025-10-24
You and your Quest for the legendary True Self. Without a clear map — still chasing the phantom? Looking for a stable lasting self to hold on tight. Is it worth your effort — or a total misadventure?
We look at the spectrum of candidate selves. Spheres of our being beyond roles in transit. In a world where change is the only constant, is there anything we can claim for our nest?
Higher self versus lower self — true or false? Then innate self, current self, reactive self, collective self — even the world spirit self. Actual true identities or holograms of passage?
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- ¶ Basic Truths of Self — What We Know for Certain ↴
- ¶ Higher and Lower Self — Major Selves in Operation ↴
- ¶ Transcendental and Existential Self-Candidates ↴
- ¶ The True Self of What-Is — No Need to Lock It In ↴
A quest for the true self — an elusive journey. Often a misadventure, chasing something ill-defined or undefined. An idea that really isn't anything in particular.
Roaming about without a map or clear bearings, how are you going to find that true self of yours? May have been permanently lost in the woods. So how are you going to get there?
Basic Truths of Self — What We Know for Certain ¶
Now one thing we can note for certain. Whatever it is that you perceive yourself as, that you witness from moment to moment in different situations, there is certainly some truth to that. It is — it may not be the ultimate or the absolute — but at least it is something.
Beyond that, shall we go looking for the higher self, that is perhaps the true self. Now what about the lower self, is that also not true? is it a false self, and there is a higher self that is a true self? These are all very fascinating contradictions, juxtapositions, contrasts, that may or may not have any lasting relevance in our self-evolution, in the growth of our awareness.
Now let's take a slightly more methodical approach. First of all, eliminating what it certainly isn't. The me climbing up the hill, the me coming down the hill, that is in transit — certainly isn't my true self. Beyond that, anything where you are framed in a particular role and context is hardly a true self.
Higher and Lower Self — Major Selves in Operation ¶
There is something more permanent, still impermanent, but more concrete. If we speak of the higher self, we have the self that contains the casting of a full picture of our potentials, the comprehensive network of meanings in our lives. There is a certain self there.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the baseline self. The blueprint, the innate self, which is the composite matrix of everything that you carry. Your repository of reference as to what you are as an entity, that's already a more concrete self over there.
Then you have the current self, the fluid entity. Coursing through existence with a particular momentum, particular trajectory, gliding along, adapting on its vectors of life. There is a certain identity there that is more constant.
Again, you have the responsive, interactive self. The way in which you react to the world when you encounter something, your typical method of response. That is also a particular sketch of the self.
All of that, obviously, in change. Necessarily so, cannot be fixed — the conditions in which your blueprint, your current, your reactive pattern and your network of meaning exist. Conditions change, you evolve, all things change. So there is no true self in there, except for the momentary snapshot of what is true of me right now.
Transcendental and Existential Self-Candidates ¶
Let's go transcendental. We have the clear white light, somewhere up about in the sky, before it reflects into the prism. Is this perhaps the famed Atman that has become the Brahman, the cosmic radiance, the world spirit — perhaps that is my true self? That's simply really just state of consciousness.
Just like a light is not a true movie, the light is simply the force that casts images to the screen. It is no more your true self than the absolute darkness, the formative potential itself, is your true self. So that's all out and into the bin. No true self there, sorry — just false selves. They're real, but they become false when you think of them as permanent.
Perhaps my true self is found in the infinite emptiness? Perhaps my true self is in the absolute fullness? Well, not really, those are just homogenous existential fields that you may touch upon in states of meditation.
What about the magic mirror? Will that reveal my true self? But what exists in the mirror but reflections, reflections of reflections in a continuum of reflectivity. Simply holograms. That's all we are. Cascades of conditions, coursing through existence and then evaporating.
The True Self of What-Is — No Need to Lock It In ¶
Make of it what you will while it lasts — and when it ends, then make nothing more of it. Simple. Do not chase for a true self as anything that you would hold on to. You certainly do not construct a true self for yourself.
Whatever would you construct a true self from, true truths right? Well the true truth here is that there is no such true self. Simply is what is — and the what is in the right now, and the what was in the that direction, and the what will be that we cast in the other direction.
As they are, those are the truth of yourself at the moment. And that's all we really need to worry about. So be true to what is. Don't try to turn into anything else. It's all going to be fine at the end of the day. All right.