The Awakening Of Self-AwarenessSelf-awareness is the awakening of the self to its true nature. There are two aspects to our being, two levels of consciousness, one contrived, one pure. There are two selves, the self and the Self. Each level has its own version of self-awareness.
Two Levels Of Self-AwarenessThe self with a small “s” is the conditioned mind engaged in the world. It is an organic machine, a biocomputer, that responds to the codes of symbols, images, and emotions. It is transfixed by popular distractions, ranging from entertainment to world dramas. This superficial self is perfectly portrayed in television, whether we're watching a movie, the news, or a commercial. This reactive self, assaulted by a problematic world, seeks the constant need for external remedies, ignoring its own power to change things with dynamic thought. This self is a slave to the demands of its own instrument, the human mind. Moreover, the human mind is a slave to the constant stimulation of the cultural memes. The self is what suffers in the world and after death returns to suffer again. Reincarnation is a perpetual cycle of suffering because of attachment to ephemeral things. The Self with a big “S” is the unconditioned aspect of ourselves that is multidimensional and has omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. It can be called the divine within. In Hinduism, it is referred to as the Atman. This Self knows only unity with all aspects of life. It is a sovereign consciousness, completely independent, free from the conditions of any plane of existence. We are here on this planet to quicken our awareness to the point we awaken from the nightmare of the holographic world. Initially, there is self-consciousness. Then there is Self-consciousness.
The Self-Awareness Of The Little SelfThe self that we know is almost completely without deep awareness. It appears animated and intelligent, but it has no clue of its real nature, no inkling of its grandeur. It is easily entertained, misdirected, and manipulated to cater to base animal desires related to survival. It’s allegiance to common culture is self-serving, as a way to meet its needs. The self hungering for money, power, sex, and other simple rewards finds these in common culture. In turn, common culture, an artificial entity built on a collective will, seeks to enslave the self into political and economic servitude. In fact, the self is so unconscious that it is even willing to die to appease the demands of the common culture. All it needs is a few trigger words about religion or patriotism to enter the thick of battle. This self is only awake enough to attune to the matrix of religion, politics, economics, and territoriality. The self has been completely hoodwinked by the human mind, and the human mind is only concerned with constant stimulation from symbols propagated by common culture. As we explore the vagaries of the self through self-inquiry, we transform, discovering new things about ourselves and our relationship to the world. We discover more about the self by looking deeply into the mind. We find that the mind is not simply conscious, but also subconscious and unconscious. The conscious mind is that which observes and interacts with the world, the thinking aspect. The subconscious mind splits into two subgroups, the personal subconscious mind and the racial subconscious mind. The personal subconscious mind has memories that are just below the threshold of awareness, and it is a mix of the positive and negative experiences of the past. It is this mind that Sigmund Freud identified as the source of all latent neurosis. Healing the traumas of this aspect of mind releases more awareness and this creates more success in life. Failing to heal the traumas causes an endless loop of frustrations in fulfilling the basic needs of a human life. The racial subconscious mind holds the genetic instructions of our bloodline, the information transmitted into our biology by our long line of ancestors. This is partially why different races have traits that distinguish them from other races. Enculturation feeds into this genetic imprinting to make it more pronounced. Finally, there is the unconscious, which is the consciousness of all human beings that ever lived. We get glimpses of this when we can identify various archetypes. This is the aspect of mind identified by Carl Jung. The self expands by refining its mastery of symbolism and in a limited way improves its life conditions because it creates more rapport with the various agendas that operate the world.
The Self-Awareness Of The Big SelfHowever, a point comes when the self turns its back on catering to all the demands of enculturation and it asks if there is something else beyond everything it has learned. Since nothing in the world, despite strenuous efforts, makes it happy for very long, it begins to wonder about new possibilities. This stepping away from engagement with the world and all its symbolic overload releases the hold of the mind and births a glimpse of the Self. Through the practice of mental silence, engaging the resonance of awareness without the filter of symbolic interpretation, it slowly begins to awaken to its true power, recognizing that left alone it has peace, presence, and purpose. By engaging the power of now, by immersion in mental silence, by allowing for simple wonder, it begins to awaken to its own deeper nature. If this continues long enough and intensely enough, a state called enlightenment unfolds. The caterpillar has transformed into a butterfly. Enlightenment is the state when the self recognizes the Self. The small self has expanded so much that it no longer fits the narrow cultural definitions of what it means to be a sentient being. The fleeting things of the world are of no interest to the Self. The rewards of fulfilling the needs of the body pale in comparison to the rewards of simply being itself without attachment to anything. The world and all it offers are now considered trivial when compared to the magnificence of feeling truly alive and happy all the time. Nothing external, no earthly rewards, satisfy as much as immersion into the pure awareness of its own nature. Although enlightenment is awakening to our true nature, it is not the complete reclamation of the Self. It is merely stepping on the threshold of multidimensional awareness. Beyond this point, all symbolism fails to communicate what happens. The mind cannot go beyond the world of form, either earthly or astral. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna gives Arjuna a glimpse of multidimensionality, but it is so overwhelming that it makes no sense to him when he returns to ordinary consciousness. Quite simply, the mind does not know how to interpret the experience of complete union with pure intelligence. Language and other symbols can only crudely describe aspects of the world of form, but beyond that it has no power. The formless is beyond description. The mind can understand the self-awareness of the little self. But it cannot fathom the self-awareness of the big Self. It can only begin the journey by shaking off its attachment to trivial things. What happens beyond this point is beyond its symbolic logic. Go from Self-Awareness to Spiritual Growth
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