4 - Selfhood

Using the model from post #3, let's address the modern struggle to frame individuality.

Currently, humanity circles menacingly around the concept of selfhood. You’ll hear “enlightened” people say Self is a delusion. A hologram, an illusion, a dream. “It isn’t real.”

They’ll say you can experience peace and joy in all things, knowing you’re part of Source experiencing itself. 

It’s perfectly fine for Source to fantasize you exist, but many people think it's somehow misguided for you to have that fantasy… even while they tell you you’re Source. Not only shouldn't you believe in your Self, according to many teachers, but you’re not supposed to really enjoy it, either. It's still a popular message that the Self is a fraudulent ego fantasy, neither desirable nor constructive. So Source chooses to experience itself through you (Source) — "But don’t do it wrong, Source."

Obviously, there are problems with this perspective. 

All selves are fragments processing the expansion of All That Is. Each version of Selfhood provides experiential textures and opportunities to fragments of a higher/larger self, aiding its development. These include the experience of sculpting identity, overcoming personal challenges, and a uniquely rewarding evolution. Personal growth brings rich tensions, conflicts, and resolutions.

Model all these infinite existences in perfect unity, and you have Source. I AM. Fragment it all out as interaction, and you have All That Is. WE. Internal and collective harmony occurs in an instant, across billions of years, and across multiple universes.

​A Fusion of I and We

The Self is a doorway, a portal through which We manifests our possibilities. Self's experiences shape its own experience of Self, configuring which possibilities it can manifest on behalf of We. This alters our experiences of that Self, informs our collective choices.  Self becomes Our experience. A harmonious awareness of individual I and collective We brings visceral perception of Self as inextricable from All That Is. 

We is grateful for individual service, yet as a part of We, one Self is loved no more or less than another.

Through Attention, Selection, and Expression, experience by experience, the individual I and collective WE choose what We becomes.  "I" experiences - and creates - an intimate, personalized engagement with "We's" evolutionary expansion. An introspective Self choosing to experience Self more deeply will consequently produce more impactful changes to Self. Its attention and focus direct a portion of Source's expansion. For the benefit of all. Such is the nature of Source, and the function of All That Is.

You can't break anything. Do as you will. Your choices configure Self to manifest different possibilities. WE will see what works, what's desirable, what to keep -- and what to discard. In this respect, all life forms represent experiments.    

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