R- U -SELF * EGO - SELF DISCOVERY VS SELF CREATION
ALSO READ. : how-do-i-know-its-my-soul-ego-talking-battula-vinay-kumar-
According to the Ancient Hindu Scriptures:
The Self is hidden in the lotus of the heart. Those who see themselves in all creatures go day by day into the world of Brahman hidden in the heart. Established in peace, they rise above body consciousness to the supreme light of the Self. Immortal, free from fear, this Self is Brahman, called the True. Beyond the mortal and the immortal, he binds both worlds together. Those who know this live day after day in heaven in this very life.” – The Upanishads
It describes the Self / Atma/ Soul as
"as the immortal and spiritual body of light that animates life and reincarnates again and again until all necessary karmas are created and resolved and its essential unity with God is fully realized."
"Our soul body was created in the image and likeness of the Primal Soul, but it differs from the Primal Soul in that it is immature. While [God] is unevolutionary perfection, we are in the process of evolving."
It is generally accepted in Western culture and religions that every individual is a unique, sovereign self. Every person has a personal relationship with God and every person has free will and can determine the course their lives will take.
Western Philosophy describes SELF as “
Man so defined [as a separate ego] and so experienced is, of course, incapable of pleasure and contentment, let alone creative power. Hoaxed into the illusion of being an independent, responsible source of actions, he cannot understand why what he does never comes up to what he should do, for a society which has defined him as separate cannot persuade him to behave as if he really belonged. Thus he feels chronic guilt and makes the most heroic efforts to placate his conscience. – Allan Watts
However the East –West dichotomy was never as profound as it appears in addressing the issue of Self. At the same time, however, never were the prospects of a fruitful complementarity of the two systems of thought, as intellectually stimulating, as in re-conceptualization of a more holistic psychology of Self. Self as an experiential or ‘emic’ concept in contemporary social sciences as well as ancient eastern perspectives is to be distinguished from the ‘ego’ as used in an ‘etic’ or externally analytic approach to personality in Western psychology. The west with its scientific – reductionist orientations has long avoided discussions on Self and consciousness as metaphysical-ontological issues.
The reasons are two fold:
Firstly, these issues by their very nature are not open to investigations by usual scientific methods.
Secondly, a reductionist explanation of these concepts, in essence is impossible. On the other hand, the eastern theorists, in their quest for spirituality and transcendence, have invariably ignored the essentially phenomenal nature of human experiences, as a starting point. In establishing the supremacy of the ‘higher Self’ over the ‘lower self’ , most eastern systems of thought have trivialized the lower self, as a consequence of which it has been relegated to the background in all discourses on self and consciousness.
The problem of ‘Self’ lies uneasily at the border of science and philosophy. To ignore such a problem would be both unscientific as well as an act of intellectual lethargy and thus unethical. (Chalmers, 1996).
The following post argues that to comprehensively address the issue of Self as an integral factor in personality studies, an eclectic approach becomes indispensable. eclecticism and suggest that the inherent complementarity of the two perspectives discussed, among several other equally plausible reasons, necessitate eclecticism as the only possible route to a holistic analysis of ‘Self’.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE SELF
They say not all who wander are lost – but after wandering along many paths and dabbling in various interests, it’s time to sit down and take an introspective look at yourself. it’s important to identify your strengths and interests in order to keep going strong in the long run.
Happiness and satisfaction are more easily attained when you are able to use your strengths in the service of a cause you believe in. We are all uniquely talented and have the greatest capacity for growth and development in areas we already excel in. It thus follows that we have the greatest opportunities for learning and achieving excellence when we engage in work that allows us to utilise our respective strengths and abilities.
Gaining a Sense of Self-Awareness
The first step to gaining a good understanding of yourself is to identify your values and strengths. Your values reveal themselves when you feel strongly about certain things and your strengths are evinced in activities which you are naturally drawn towards, excel in and feel good about. To gain a better sense of self-awareness, examine and reflect on your thoughts and actions in the past, although don’t forget to observe your behaviour in the present. Some introspection and reflection will also help you decide if these notions are accurate.
It can also be useful to enlist the help of family and friends in order to better understand where your strengths lie.
Self-Discovery vs. Self-Creation: Keys to Unlocking Your Best Self
Interest in the topic and practice self-discovery has been growing steadily since the 1960s. Bearing the marks of an age of science and individualism, the premise of self-discovery is to study oneself in order to know oneself. Like the scientist who assumes an objective world that is ripe for discovery, the self-investigator feels confident that, with sufficient effort and diligence, her true self can be unearthed and brought into the light of understanding.
As interest in self-discovery has blossomed, we’ve seen a commensurate expansion of tools and approaches aimed at conceptualizing and identifying individual differences and abilities. This includes instruments designed to assess personality traits / types (e.g., INTP), intelligence, interests, beliefs, values, and the like. I have personally been immersed in personality studies for nearly a decade .I’ve long believed that the search for self is not merely a matter of practical import (e.g., finding a good career match), but also carries the promise of a more authentic, meaningful, and purposeful life. In other words, self-discovery can help us fashion a life that better reflects, supports, and enhances our authentic self.
However great the rewards of self-discovery, we must also come to grips with its potential limits and shortcomings. Konrad Lorenz once remarked that “scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.” It seems to me that this clever quip is not only applicable to scientists, but also to self-seekers. Namely, there comes a time in the quest for self when amassing more details about ourselves can start to feel counterproductive. What began as a search for a meaningful self-understanding can start feeling more like a pursuit of trivialities or minutia; in attempting to understand “the trees” of the self, we lose sight of “the forest.”
If I may briefly continue the metaphor, the forest of the self is synonymous with what is sometimes called the unified self. And it is really the unified self that intrigues the self-seeker. In asking the question—Who am I?—we are not looking for a laundry list of traits, but for a highly-concentrated, energy-dense image that captures the essence of who we are—our core self. We sense that understanding and tapping into this core has the potential to liberate vast amounts of energy, like a nuclear reaction.
Self-Creation: An Important Complement to Self-Discovery
What we need then, is a process that filters out irrelevant information and synthesizes our most essential characteristics into a meaningful whole. This is a key role of a process we will call self-creation. If self-discovery yields an assortment of clues or pieces about who we are, self-creation restores or brings unity to the self by arranging the pieces in a meaningful way, somewhat similar to a jigsaw puzzle.
However, self-creation differs from jigsaw puzzling in at least one important sense, namely, there is no guarantee that the pieces it’s handling will fit together in a neat or obvious fashion. It thus requires the aid of other faculties, such as intuition and imagination, to fill in the gaps and experiment with different arrangements, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a meaningful and useful self-mosaic.
When used biographically, the process of self-creation plays a central role in weaving a coherent narrative of one’s life. If we were limited solely to self-discovery methods, however, we might accrue huge swaths of data but remain blind to their core themes and over-arching narrative.
I’ve noticed that the notion of self-creation rarely sits well with hardcore empiricists who focus on soundness and comprehensiveness in data collection. For them, discovering the facts is more important than what they all mean in their totality. They may argue, for instance, that self-creation fuelled by bad data is like drawing a inaccurate map, one which is bound to be ineffective at best and destructive at worse.
In rebuttal, proponents of self-creation may contend that there are limits to what can be known about the self, especially about its subconscious aspects. Moreover, in light of life’s brevity, the time available for self-discovery is limited. These constraints seem to demand that, at some point, we be willing to draw and embrace a conclusion, even apart from perfect self-knowledge.
Self-creationists may also make a case for the top-down power of belief, asserting that powerful ideals can create downward effects that positively affect other aspects of the mind and body. Research on issues such as optimism and the placebo effect, for instance, has demonstrated that beliefs matter and can significantly impact our health and well-being. This could be interpreting to mean that the human organism, including the self, is actually more malleable than we typically assume. If we believe in something strongly enough and behave in ways that reinforce that ideal, might we eventually come to embody it? Strong proponents of self-creation, perhaps with certain qualifications, would say yes.
Antecedents to the Self-Creation Concept
From time immemorial, human beings have been story-telling creatures. Although this isn’t the place for expositing the history of story-telling in human culture, suffice it to say that stories have served as our preferred medium for acquiring and delivering information, entertainment, guidance, and inspiration. Moreover, we have no reason to believe that the self would ever be excluded as a rightful subject for our stories.
Embracing and heralding the importance of the individual soul, religion has always been in the business of self-stories.
Religious stories have long imbued human affairs with a higher sense of value and purpose, thereby rendering an otherwise hard and toilsome life more meaningful.
Generally speaking, religious stories remained largely unopposed until the Enlightenment prompted intellectuals, in particular, to start doubting their value and veracity. What many thinkers failed to foresee, however, is that this would create a vacuum of meaning, one that, despite considerable scientific and technological progress, still persists in large measure today.
Even after the Enlightenment, religion continued to operate as the primary counterforce to the mechanistic worldview of science, but others would arise as well. Among these were the existentialists, who espoused that the meaningful life was not limited to religious believers, as the individual could find ways of cultivating his own meaning. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in particular hoped to create a sense of meaning and purpose of an almost religious nature, but without the trappings of traditional religion.
Another counterforce to the scientific worldview is post-modernism, which is closely allied with social constructionism. Post-modernists are skeptical of our capacity to know things with objective certainty and thus consider all truth claims—be they religious, scientific, or otherwise—to be tenuous constructions of the human mind.
Self-discovery is undoubtedly a valuable and worthwhile enterprise, which is why I’ve spent nearly a decade researching and understanding about it. But as I’ve continued to observe and reflect on our relationship to the self, the importance of self-creation as a complement to self-discovery has become increasingly evident.
That said, there is bound to be disagreement regarding where to draw the line between discovering and creating ourselves. In my view, such disagreements stem largely from personality differences. Those with a more analytic or scientific mindset may favor self-discovery, while those who view the self as more fluid and amenable to interpretation may emphasize self-creation.
Despite the apparent value and necessity of both approaches, it seems that we in the scientific West often fail to give self-creation its proper due and may thus be perpetuating the vacuum of meaning of modern life. Perhaps it’s time for a renaissance of the imagination.
These are the 3 Keys to Self-Discovery
Who are you? “Oh, this is an easy answer”, but is it really? Who are you or who am I really? It’s easy to assume that we have true knowledge of self, but have we really questioned ourselves? I know the answer for most would be an automatic NO. We are all programmed growing up to protect ourselves from discomfort and danger it is only as we become wiser that we realize that is where the most growth lies & if we ever want to achieve great things we have to be brave enough to put our selves on the edge and honest enough to admit that we have a lot to learn about ourselves. My self-discovery has three keys to establishing that foundational self-discovery. Make yourself uncomfortable, educate yourself, be alone and great growth will follow.
1. Self-Education
The first step to self-discovery is educating yourself for yourself. This means that you must remove all tradition and what you’ve learned throughout your entire life. It is time you question all that you were taught and told. You must even question your strongest beliefs and look at everything from many different views. This means that you must read books, have dialogue with strangers, and travel. Reading has done so much for me in my years. Growing up, reading was the only thing that I would ever do and never in life thought that it would be the key in my life transformation. I have read many books that have literally help change my life and my views of life. I am yet to travel to many states, and countries to discover new land and new cultures.
2. Removing Comfort
The education that I getting for myself also created some discomfort. I was learning new things and found out that there is no right or wrong way to look at things in this life. People have made me think that there is only a right way and of course it’s their way. Educating myself has made me uncomfortable with family, friends, and society. I have also made myself uncomfortable with self-challenges.
Challenging what you think is not possible will remove comfort from your life totally. Going to a mosque when you are Christian is a challenge of comfort. Moving to another state or country when you don’t have any family or friends there is a challenge of comfort. Try new foods, new activities, and tackle all physical and mental fears. When you challenge your mental comfort, you will see what you are capable of and possibly discover something you like along the way. You can read about sky-diving and know everything about the activity but it’s nothing compared the physically act of sky-diving. Go ahead and try new things and you will learn more about yourself than ever before.
Step 3. Be Alone
Now while you are educating and removing comfort from your life, no one should be along for this ride. The journey of self-discovery is exactly for the first part “self”. Being alone removes opinions, judgement, and all the other unnecessary distractions. Being alone will help you master your thoughts and meditate to clear your thoughts as well. I want you to know that being alone does not mean you’re lonely. Loneliness is a feeling of insecurity, trauma, and grief, and being alone is self-love, healing, and secure.
I know we confuse the two often and it makes people feel like they always need someone with them on great adventures. This alone time will give you time to develop your thoughts and master your conscious and subconscious. We have full control of our thoughts and it seems that they run amuck when we are alone, but we can control them. We have full control of our minds and bodies, but we must become conscious of that during self-discovery. Meditate, pray, change bad thoughts into great thoughts, and beat positivity into your subconscious by reading, watching, eating, and listening to just positivity. Being alone and deciding of what you want to think is all in your power.
What are the KEYS TO SELF CREATION
Your mental diet largely determines your character and your personality and almost everything that happens to you in life.
When you feed your mind with positive affirmations, information, books, conversations, and thoughts, you develop a more positive attitude and personality.
You become more influential and persuasive. You enjoy greater self-esteem. You learn how to be confident.
Those who use computers at work use the expression “G.I.G.O.” or “Garbage in, Garbage out.” But the reverse is also true, “Good in, Good out.”
When you make a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to take complete control over your mind, eliminate the negative emotions and thoughts that may have held you back in the past, and become a completely positive person, you can actually bring about your own personal transformation.
Mental fitness is like physical fitness. You develop high levels of self-esteem and a positive attitude with training and practice. Here are some keys to self creation:
1) Positive Affirmations
While speaking to yourself, speak positively; control your inner dialog. Use positive affirmations phrased in the positive, present, and personal tense. Here are some tips:
“I like myself!” “I can do it!” “I feel terrific!” “I am responsible!”
We believe that fully 95% of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself as you go throughout your day. The sad fact is that if you do not deliberately and consciously talk to yourself in a positive and constructive way, you will, by default, think about things that will make you unhappy, lower your self esteem, or cause you worry and social anxiety.
As we said before, your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.
2) Positive Visualization
Perhaps the most powerful ability that you have is the ability to visualize and see your goals as already accomplished. Create a clear, exciting picture of your goal and your ideal life, and replay this picture in your mind over and over.
All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. As you “see” yourself on the inside, you will “be” on the outside.
3) Positive People
Your choice of the people with whom you live, work, and associate will have more of an impact on your emotions and your success that any other factor. Decide today to associate with winners, with positive people, with people who are happy and optimistic and who are going somewhere with their lives.
Avoid negative people at all costs. Negative people are the primary source of most of life’s unhappiness. Resolve that from today onward, you are not going to have stressful or negative people in your life.
4) Positive Mental Food
Just as your body is healthy to the degree to which you eat healthy, nutritious foods, your mind is healthy to the degree to which you feed it with “mental protein” rather than “mental candy.” Read books, magazines, and articles that are educational, inspirational, or motivational.
Feed your mind with information and ideas that are uplifting and that make you feel happy and more confident about yourself and your world.
5) Positive Training And Development
Almost everyone in our society starts off with limited resources, sometimes with no money at all. Virtually all fortunes begin with the sale of personal services of some kind. All the people who are at the top today were once at the bottom.
The miracle of lifelong learning and personal improvement is what takes you from rags to riches, from poverty to affluence, and from underachievement to success and financial independence.
As Jim Rohn said, ”Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
When you dedicate yourself to learning and growing and becoming better and more effective in your thoughts and actions, you take complete control of your life and dramatically increase the speed at which you move upward to greater heights.
6) Positive Health Habits
Take excellent care of your physical health and wellness. Resolve today that you are going to live to be eighty, ninety, or one hundred years old and still be dancing in the evenings. Eat healthy foods, natural and nutritious, and eat them sparingly and in proper balance. A nutritional diet will have an immediate, positive effect on your thoughts and feelings.
Resolve to get regular exercise, at least two hundred minutes of motion per week, walking, running, swimming, bicycling, or working out on equipment in the gym. When you exercise on a regular basis, you feel happier and healthier and experience lower levels of stress and fatigue than a person who sits on the couch and watches television all evening.
Especially, get ample rest and relaxation. You need to recharge your batteries on a regular basis, especially when you are going through periods of stress or difficulty.
Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
Some of the factors that predispose us to negative emotions of all kinds are poor health habits, sleep deprivation, lack of exercise, and nonstop work. Seek balance in your life.
7) Positive Expectations
Practicing the Law of Attraction is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to become a positive person and to ensure positive outcomes and better results in your life. Your expectations become your own self-fulfilling prophesies.
Whatever you expect, with confidence, seems to come into your life. Since you can control your expectations, you should always expect the best.
8) Expect to be successful.
Expect to be popular when you meet new people. Expect to achieve great goals and create a wonderful life for yourself. When you constantly expect good things to happen, you will seldom be disappointed.
In order to make our lives better we have to understand that our lives are guided not by the rules and laws made by man but the
FUNDAMENTAL LAWS THAT GOVERN THE UNIVERSE..
Understanding these metaphysical laws helps us to perceive how the universe works. When we understand how our own emotions, energy and thoughts affect the reality we experience, we can begin to move forward in our lives and change our world for the better
Neither science nor religion have all the answers to how the universe works. But there are Twelve metaphysical laws that can guide us.
If you are interested to learn how the universe works on a spiritual level, explore the below laws:
1) The Law of Divine Oneness
The first law of how the universe works is the law that explains how we are all one. There is only one source of energy in the universe. Each of us is part of the ocean of universal energy. This is why hating someone or wishing them harm is so dangerous. When we do this, we are in effect hating or wishing harm on ourselves.
The good news is that we don’t need to ask universal energy or the divine to help us. We are the universal energy and the divine. When we respect the divinity in all things, including ourselves, we align ourselves with universal energy and tune in to all that is.
2 ) The Law of Vibration
All things are made of energy. This is scientific fact. The law of vibration indicates that we must align our energy with what we want to attract.
We don’t need to avoid our human emotions to do this. In fact, blocking emotions can block our connection with the divine. However, we can choose to express our emotions in healthy ways and focus on emotions such as love and gratitude as much as we can. This helps us to vibrate at a higher level and attract higher things back into our lives.
3 ) The Law of Action
We are divine, but we are also human. We must embrace our experience here on earth in physical form. This means that we should take action in the material world in order to grow and learn the lessons of our current incarnation.
However, taking action doesn’t mean pain, hard work and struggle. When we are aligned with universal energy the right actions become clear to us. We can work towards our goals with a sense of flow.
Challenges help us to learn and grow. However, if we find ourselves constantly struggling, we may need to reconnect with our higher selves. This will help us to discover the lifestyle and goals that will help us grow without struggle.
4 ) The Law of Correspondence
This law of how the universe works states that your outer world reflects your inner world – like a mirror. For example, two people could interpret the same events and circumstance in a very different way. One person may take a trip into a forest and admire the beauty all around them, wondering at the creatures big and small with which they share their world. Another person might take a trip to the forest and moan about the heat or the cold. They might complain about the biting insects and fear the spiders.
The world outside mirrors your inner self. What we choose to focus on will become our reality – whether good or bad.
5) The Law of Cause and Effect
This law states that what you reap what you sow. Many spiritual traditions have taught this universal wisdom for thousands of years. The most well-known way is the law of Karma. This makes sense in terms of us all being one.
If we harm others, we are, of course, ultimately harming ourselves. However, if we work for the highest good of ourselves and others and from motives of love and compassion, we will find this reflected in the people and events that occur in our lives.
6 ) The Law of Compensation
Gandhi once said we must ‘be the change we wish to see in the world‘. Instead of wishing things were different, we have to be different.
Whatever we feel is lacking in our lives is probably something that we are not giving. Whatever you feel you are lacking, whether it is money, time, recognition or love, practice giving it to yourself and others first. This will change your energy and your world.
7) The Law of Perpetual Transmutation of Energy
This last law of how the universe works is about how we react to the world around us. We sometimes think that the only way to change our world is to try harder or struggle. Often we behave this way through fear. We worry about what might happen to us and we try to control things in order to feel better. When we do this, we restrict the energy flow. We don’t allow universal energy to move through our lives and change things.
If we can let go of control over life and learn to go with the flow a little more, we can get the energy moving once more. We need to have faith in ourselves and the universe. Whatever happens to us, we should know that we will have the inner resources to deal with.
8 ) THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF FREE WILL
The law of free will operates in three ways:
1. Although many of the major events in your life are Astrologically predestined, you always have free will to mitigate the impact of the event, or to transcend it entirely. This will result from how you live your life up to the situation you have destined for yourself to experience. If you give grace and mercy to others, are positive, loving, compassionate, and demonstrate by your action that you have learned past lessons, you can minimize disharmonious experiences!
2. As you obtain Master of life awareness and develop conscious detachment, you will be far less affected by worldly events than in the past. A Master of Life enjoys all the warmth and joy that life has to offer, but detaches from the negativity by allowing it to flow through him without affecting him.
3. You always have free will in how you respond to any situation. If you respond with positive emotions, compassion and integrity, you have probably learned your karmic lessons and will not have to experience a similar situation in the future.
9) THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF CONSCIOUS DETACHMENT
Buddha's earthly teachings are best summarized with one of his statements, "It is your resistance to what is that causes your suffering," and by suffering, he meant everything that doesn't work in your life; relationship problems, loss of loved ones, loneliness, sickness, accidents, guilt, monetary hardship, unfulfilled desires, and so on. When you accept what is, you accept the unalterable realities in your life without resisting them. Some things are facts. They exist, and no matter how much you resist them, there is nothing you are going to be able to do about them.
Change what you can change, but have the wisdom to accept unalterable situations as they are, without wasting mental or physical energy attempting to change what you cannot change. Out of acceptance comes involved detachment. The ability to enjoy all the positive aspects of life, but to allow the negative to flow through you with out resistance and without affecting you.
10 ) THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF GRATITUDE
From the perspective of Karma and the Law of One, the more you give, the more you will receive. The more you assist others, the more you will assist yourself. The power of this Law also works in your day-to-day life.
11 )THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
The expression of unconditional love will eventually result in harmony. Unconditional love is not romantic love. It is the acceptance of others as they are without judgment or expectations. It is total acceptance of others without attempting to change them, except by our own positive example. The law of unconditional love says, "If you go out of your way to express unconditional love, you automatically rise above fear, and, as you transcend your fears, you automatically open to the expression of unconditional love.
12 ) THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF DIVINE ORDER
If you seek to understand the Law of Divine Order, study the natural balance of nature, for it works very much the same way. Everything is as it should be, although mankind (our energy gestalt) is far from experiencing its potential of total harmony. There are no accidents. Your energy, translated into thoughts, words, emotions, and deeds, causes all your experiences. This assures that you always have the learning opportunities you require to resolve your Karma, and, as with you, the collective thoughts, words, emotions, and deeds of mankind create the environment for us all.
If enough souls focus their energy upon peace, we will have peace. If the majority of souls are filled with anger, we may all have to experience war. We are all one, and like the many sub-personalities within you, the dominant traits of mankind (the entire gestalt) will emerge to resolve our group Karma.
I am often asked why I smile so much and why I am so positive. I live by some very basic beliefs and in an effort to share I created an abbreviated outline of the seven natural laws and added my two cents.
Energy Is Everything! Energy is potential and momentum. There is a natural ebb and flow to life. It is important to accept what is and learn to move within the natural flow of energy.