True Self in the Real World

It sounds a bit odd, but even though you’ve been around for a while, it’s possible that you are just now waking up. To use one of my favorite metaphors, it takes some time asleep inside its cocoon before the butterfly is ready to emerge.

I’ve placed you there in my diagram, right at the center … I was going to say “where you belong,” but you don’t really belong there.

This just happens to be where you are waking up, after years of working diligently – if often confusedly – on becoming somebody special. It’s critically important to understand that your ego, this separate center of self-conscious personal identity, is not all that you are.

It’s not even your true Self.

In other posts I have gotten down into the dirty details of how an individual’s separate center of self-conscious personal identity is formed, but this one will stay at the level of an overview. There are forces and dynamics that fade out of the picture when we poke and dig into the nitty-gritty.

True enough, our successful navigation of those finer points is essential to our liberation from where we happen to be stuck. All those deeper elements comprise larger patterns, however, and sometimes we need to zoom out to really appreciate and understand how it all works – and why occasionally, or perhaps chronically, it doesn’t work so well.

So we will begin by making a clear distinction between the separate center of self-conscious personal identity that you are currently managing on the social stage, and your true or authentic Self.

As you will see, this conditioned and domesticated self (lowercase ‘s’), which we will label “ego” (Latin for “I”), has a corresponding habitat in a world – the domicile or “house of meaning” where its domestication is facilitated and a personal identity is installed.

Therefore, just as we must distinguish between your conditioned self and your authentic or true Self (uppercase ‘S’), the spiritual wisdom tradition also distinguishes between your personal world (lowercase ‘w’) and the real World (uppercase ‘W’), or Reality for short.

Both your conditioned self and your personal world are social constructs, made up and put together for the purpose of providing you an identity and the orientation you need to make it in this world – referring once again to the lowercase ‘w’ world that you share in common with other members of your tribe.

This conventional world is equally a social construct, even though in ordinary language we often confuse it with the real World (i.e., Reality).

To help organize these important ideas, my diagram illustrates the distinctions just introduced, presented as a dynamic pattern of polarities. A horizontal line or axis identifies the primary dualism at work in the formation of your conditioned self and personal world. The vertical axis is not a straightforward intersection with this self-world, but rather follows a zigzag pattern, zigging down to the contemplative pole and zagging up to the transpersonal pole of your authentic Self.

This will make more sense as we step through it together. Let’s return to the horizontal axis and give attention to your ego there in the middle of everything.

As already mentioned, your separate center of self-conscious personal identity is a social construct designed for the purpose of managing an identity inside a world of personal and shared meaning. In other words, your conditioned self did not come into existence at conception or birth, but instead formed gradually over time under the considerable influence of your local tribe.

A principal function of a personal identity is to connect and coordinate your interactions with other tribal members in the social role-play. To the right of ego in my diagram is a full-length mirror holding the reflection of somebody special. See the halo? That’s you being a good boy or a nice girl, a star athlete, a stunning beauty, or a Fortune 500 CEO of the Year.

Congratulations.

All of these identities are in italic text to remind us that the categories, definitions, and values are social conventions. “Good” and “nice” (etc.) are shared standards of a society, qualified by its moral frame and conserved from one generation to the next through parental discipline and cultural education.

One society’s moral frame is different from the moral frame of another society, sometimes in significant ways. Additionally, the same social tradition will move through different moral frames over its history, although these changes tend to be less revolutionary and more incremental.

There are exceptions, of course, and our present period seems to be one where the inherited moral frame is undergoing either a radical remodel or a complete collapse. Something new will emerge, but at this point it’s difficult to envision what it will be.

Anyway, back to you.

Associated with that full-length mirror and its image of somebody special looking back at you is the suit that identifies you to others in the social role-play. It might help to think of culture as the theater, society as the stage, and the various role-plays as tribal and interpersonal scenarios that transpire in the local settings of daily life.

Everyone has a role and plays a part – even the bystander, dropout, and outcaste who is shunned or ignored by the other actors. Each of them wears a suit that identifies them with a particular or more general role-play.

As you were zipped into suits assigned to you by your tribe, or maybe tried on some styles as a way of experimenting with identities, others recognized you by your role, and their reaction came back to you like a reflection in the mirror. In this mirror reflection of social responses to your role and how well you played it, you picked up clues to help you make adjustments, change tack, or maybe give up trying.

The reinforcement you were looking for were signs of recognition, acceptance, approval – and ideally admiration, but this is typically harder to win. “Accepted and expected” summarize the set, referring to the domestication objectives of fitting in (what’s accepted) and stepping up (what’s expected).

Your conditioned self is designed with a compulsive need to belong, to be “one of us.”

Depending on how nurturing, generous, inclusive, and forgiving your tribe was, your experiments with identity and gradual improvements in performance resulted in what self psychology calls “ego strength” – a centered and balanced personality with demonstrated integrity and resilience across a wide range of social situations.

Even though this isn’t your true or authentic Self, ego strength in your conditioned self is a critical achievement of development on your longer human journey.

If, on the other hand, your tribe wasn’t so nurturing, generous, inclusive and forgiving, the work of fitting in and stepping up was more challenging. In order to win the acceptance and approval of others in various social role-plays, the mirror reflection in their reactions made it clear that certain “energies,” talents, inclinations, preferences, and behaviors did not comply with the moral frame.

If you wanted to belong, then ironically you would need to keep those things off-stage and consequently leave some of yourself out of the role-play.

Better yet, locked behind a door.

That image of a door to the left of ego represents the closetful of things in your temperament and personality that had to be denied, censored, and suppressed in the interest of being somebody special on the social stage.

Along with a few animal impulses and morally deviant fantasies, included among these rejected (and eventually forgotten) parts of yourself are talents and other natural gifts that were either too unique or too threatening to the status quo for others to recognize and accept.

So you threw them on a pile and locked them behind the door, where the whole collection became what self psychology names your shadow.

The fact that the “shadow principle” is regarded in society and conventional religion as an antisocial, malevolent, and diabolical force (e.g., personified in the Devil) is really the function of a preceding fact, which is that every society tends to demonize what it fears, can’t accept, or is unwilling to include.

Interestingly, our conventional names for the personified shadow principle – Lucifer and Satan – carry a mythological insight into its dual character: (1) as the depository and keeper of your rejected light (Lucifer means “Light-bearer”); and (2) as a force that can destroy you from inside if you insist on pushing it behind the door (Satan means “Adversary,” or one who turns against).

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, 70

As you can see, your conditioned self is in a very interesting space – a kind of existential dilemma, really – with its irrepressible need to belong and be somebody special (mirror and suit), while compulsively cramming your light into a closet (door and shadow) – or using a related metaphor from the teachings of Jesus, hiding your light under a bushel basket.

The spiritual wisdom tradition teaches that the way to your authentic Self, or soul, leads through your shadow and deeper into the grounding mystery of Being. You need to take back your light and use it to illumine the contemplative path, “zigging” inward to a Peace that eludes definition – or “surpasses all understanding,” in the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Christians in Philippi (Philippians 4:7).

In your soul or inmost Self there is no drive or interest in becoming somebody special, for you are perfectly content in just being.

Your authentic Self also invites you to “zag” upward, above and beyond the role-play stage and your personal world. The real World (or Reality) is not divided into insiders and outsiders, parties and castes, colors and creeds. Up there, everything is connected and All is One. Such divisions are merely social conventions, constructs of language, ideological fictions – and ultimately deadly delusions.

Your authentic Self, as spirit, breaks through this cocoon of identity and meaning, gliding above personal attachments and interpersonal conflicts on the wings of a transpersonal freedom.