Little Self, Higher Self, “True” Self
Okay, we’re taking a deep dive this month! Why not devote a bit of your vacation time to reading and thinking, and come out calmer, wiser, and more “you?” Stay with me here! And check out my recent newsletter to learn why high achievers always pause!
Yoga teaches that we humans have access two levels of consciousness: the “little self,” and the “higher Self.” The little self is the ego, the sense that we are unique individuals navigating a world of other creatures and the natural and manmade environments. The little self’s job is to keep us alive, which involves building alliances with friendly forces and battling (or avoiding) foes. The stress of self-protection takes its toll and propels us into fear-based “us vs. them” thinking. Racism, agism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia are the results of ego-driven living. Indeed, “identity politics” grew out of a perceived need to be sure our tribes are safe, respected, heard, and honored. Which in turn leads us all to hunker down in our respective silos and speak only to those who speak our dialect.
Yoga’s higher Self, on the other hand, has no qualities, no individual markers. It’s the “witness consciousness,” the part of the mind that can see the rest of your body/mind experience from above or outside. The awareness that can say, “I’m angry,” or “Yesterday I was tired,” or “I had a dream last night.” If you really dig into “who” or “what” or “where” this awareness is, things can get a little trippy!
On the spiritual level, this Self unites us all as conscious beings: While we each experience the world in unique ways, what we all share is consciousness. Problem is, that Self cannot function in the everyday world. It exists on a higher plane, above the fray of human interactions. In fact, you can never truly experience the Self because to do so, you have to stop being “you”: the little self must dissolve into the One.
Then there’s the modern notion of the “true self”: the idea that you have some core identity that’s somehow gotten lost or buried under all of the false identities life and misguided choices have draped over you. I need to “find myself,” says a disillusioned mid-lifer. “Let us help you find your true self” promote therapists and New Age gurus. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any such fixed identity within us. Rather, I believe we are shape-shifting, ever evolving, protean beings. As Walt Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself”:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Great writers have long tackled the slippery nature of “self.” Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Stendhal’s Vie d’Henri Brulard, and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground deftly illustrate how each human mind is in constant flux. Indeed, as Gertrude Stein once commented about Oakland, California, “There’s no there, there.” Roland Barthes and the post-structuralists posited that our “selves” are merely random, shifting composites of socially fabricated codes (determined by our race, class, gender, era, and other accidents of birth as well as the choices “we” make throughout our lives). Buddhism agrees, arguing that nothing in this world, including our minds, has an “essence.” They talk about the “emptiness” behind what seems real.
If I’m making you uncomfortable, have no fear! Unplugging from your doomed attempts to define yourself can be radically freeing. In fact, change is the one constant in this world! To respond and adapt to changing circumstances is to be alive. As Wallace Stevens wrote of one character, “He made up his mind; therefore he died.”
Of course, relinquishing fixity within ourselves—and even more importantly, abandoning the effort to fix others—can leave us unhinged. The hole in the donut, surrounded by other holes. Or at best shifting sands ever washed by the tides of shifting seas. It means acknowledging that each of us morphs in his/her/their individual, unpredictable ways, and everyone else is doing the same. It’s a realm of no guarantees.
Feeling untethered and lonely? Here’s the bright spot:
- Remaining fluid means remaining teachable: We can (and must) continue to learn and grow.
- Would you really want to live in a world where you knew everything about yourself and everyone else? As a tailor shop in my neighborhood proclaims, “If we all looked alike, how could we fall in love?”