I just had a little contemplation on what a lot of young folk and i guess some old people as well often say.
I am going to find my self. Normally this means traveling abroad to different country's in hope of finding something of significance in the search. Maybe its to find the ideal career or the ideal relasonship.
However i would say all of this falls a little short. It doesn't really work and will leave people feeling rather empty because they don't really know what they are looking for in the first place.
If we break down the sentence, " I am going to find my self " , the first problem is the concept of the self. Do we even know who and what we are to begin with? If we don't even know who we are then how we can even begin to find it!
When we search to find ourselves really what we are saying is, i want to realize my self. That is to say self realization, which is a greatly different concept to work with. In order to find the self we need to realize what the self is by asking the age old question, who am i?
The only place we can find who we are is within our self not something that's outside of us or inside another person.
So to find our self, we stop the search, we stop the effort, we stop trying and simply rest in the moment and in that moment is our own consciousness the awareness of the self, of who we really are.
koham soham.
I wonder, to what extent do other selves acting as mirrors enable us to realize ourselves?
Is there ever a point when it becomes redundant to use this catalyst of other selves as reflections of who we are. Maybe after a certain amount of spiritual advancement, the only option is to stop the search, stop the effort and rest in the moment.
Maybe therein lies the difference between actively using the catalyst of other selves to help you realize outer manifestations of your own inner being within others, and passively using it after enough experience to have either seen yourself in every aspect of others or realized that withing yourself are the only answers needed.
From another perspective , the self is everything and nothing. Its the all and nothing more beyond etc.
From what I understand from many traditions our human identity is like the self playing with itself self reflecting knowing it self via creation.
The hero's Journey as Joseph Campbell labeled is a set of quests that creator makes to experience itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
We are all the hero's of our own stories, the journey is the experience not the finish line. The price is apotheosis or becoming god. If we did not want a journey to re-discover us, we will not be here.
Sometimes traveling can bring accelerated catalyst to understand more aspects of all that is from a Human perspective.
I doesn't really need to be a trip but an experience/process we are going throught. But for some people the call of adventure includes the idea of going to move into a foreing location. Because as Bashar says "The only thing you will find in the unknown, is more of yourself"
Or the concept of the Over-soul to souls and self reflection for expansion contraction and an infinite array of possibilities.
But that is another perspective out of infinite ones? What is real and what is not? I don't know..
The brilliant John Bradshaw points out that most of us are playing roles based on childhood family dynamics. It is ingrained and most of the time subconscious. This is just concerning 3D life itself and the human interaction here (and does not speak to anything beyond such as soul or past lives).
All children adjust to family conditions, and end up doing things that serve them and that allow them to receive love, or attention, or to get their needs met both physically and emotionally.
So in this sense, finding self is extremely important. To shed any roles we took on and identified with and become our authentic selves without the roles, even just in the 3D sense, is important.
Don't be put off by Bradshaw's references to toxic shame in the quotes below; it makes sense within the context of his writings, and frankly there probably aren't any adults around who weren't shamed as children (either inadvertently, knowingly, and most of the time unknowingly as the parents were recipients of the same unconscious behaviors as children themselves).
Some quotes from John Bradshaw:
“Unconditional love and acceptance of self seems to be the hardest task for all humankind. Refusing to accept our “real selves,” we try to create more powerful false selves, or we give up and become less than human. This results in a lifetime of cover-up and secrecy. This secrecy and hiding is the basic cause of human suffering. Total self-love and acceptance is the only foundation for happiness and the love of others. Without total self-love and acceptance, we are doomed to the enervating task of creating false selves.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
“To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one’s authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
“Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You