The Self Experience of Experiencing the Self

A Diagram of Being and Identity

Introduction

Gnothi Seauton.

So it was written on the side of the Orphic temple at Delphi in Ancient Greece.

This short phrase—translated as know thyself—has been the core tenet of most every esoteric philosophy and spirituality. It all comes back to the experience of knowing and being who you really are.

It makes sense, given that the experience of being you is the only thing you can really be certain of in life. There’s no real way to see inside someone’s mind and perceive the world like they do. We may forge tools that hold ubiquitous results for how the world “out there,” holds up, but we can only experience those results at abstractions within our own field of understanding.

It’s almost existentially terrifying to think of how someone else is perceiving reality in a way different than yours. You have no way of knowing if what they think of as red is actually much darker than what you’re seeing. We may have these loose labels and categories, but we are all relating differently to these constructs.

Because the experience of the self is all that we as individuals can ever truly be certain of, it makes sense to try and understand it to the best of our ability. Our experience of the external world is inherently forced through the filter of our own bias and subjectivity. Therefore it follows that to understand the external world accurately requires an accurate understanding of the self.

This level of understanding goes well beyond the shallow understanding of knowing what you like and don’t like. It’s about intrinsically knowing how you perceive, quantify, and relate to information. Knowing thyself is about knowing the mechanism that is who you are. Not knowing what—but why.

This document will serve as a map of the self as I see it. It will be rooted in my own personal constructed understanding of reality. Many different theories have morphed my understanding, yet none will be credited here. Guided by my personal Gnosis, this is a place for my own experiential nature to take shape and fit itself to the words on this page.

It is likely you will find a resonance with this depiction, as at our core we are all having the same experience. It is helpful to think of this as the skeleton, the initial framework that gives meaning to the meaningless.

There is also a chance you will struggle with this definition of the experience of the self. That is understandable. The attachment to the constructs of the self are tremendously strong. Pure experience of being is not something many are intimately aware of. The realization of the true self is something that many spend their whole lives perfecting.

I am also not claiming to be at any stage listed. I’ve only experienced glimpses of some of the more integrated levels. This is merely a sketch of the path that I see myself walking down. If anything, take these words into consideration, forming no initial judgment on what is presented.

In The Beginning

The real self is inherently formless.

The self is pure experience, and experience in its natural state (much like water) is only bound by the confines of the environment it is in.

The essence of experience is limitless.

It is true that reality is constructed in a similar interconnected way. The experience of borders is merely an illusion. There is a constant enmeshment of everything, everywhere, all the time. It is only dependent on the specific level of awareness one is experiencing that defines the borders of reality.

To experience the tangible material world implies that the experiencer is made of the same material it is experiencing. We can experience the tangible borders of the mineral and vegetative worlds because we are made of the same materials found in such worlds.

Within this mesh of interwoven energies, reality can therefore be seen as operating on the basis of frequencies. Matter is simply made of atoms vibrating at a certain frequency that gives it a specific shape. When two objects are made of material vibrating within the same set of frequencies, they can “see” each other and interact.

As we move through the various frequencies of reality, we begin to transcend the material world and enter the world of concepts. This level of awareness is absolutely critical. This is the level where sentience takes shape. Because the self can now mold itself into a construct, it can see itself. It has something tangible to lock onto and “look at.” This brings us to the next stage of self awareness.

Form and Construct

As we’ve seen, the self begins inherently formless.

It just is.

Think of animals in the wild that don’t reveal much (yes there are some exceptions) self reflection. They simply act. They simply are. This is what the initial experience of being is. It is a mere I am.

This is a wonderful place to be. This is where all spiritualities are leading to. The eternal present moment and all its glory. To be here, now, fully aware of what is happening, fully attuned to the present moment is the true treasure at the end of the spiritual path… or so it would seem.

This initial level of presence is indeed the end goal, but it is inherently lacking. It knows not who or what it is made of. It just behaves according to its biology and its intrinsic needs and wants. It knows not of any higher understanding for it’s already content with where it’s at. It is completely lacking in self-awareness. At this stage we can say that ignorance truly is bliss.

In order to know itself, the self must fit its inherent formlessness into a mold. By doing so, it now has something tangible to point to and say “This. That is who I am.” This brings tremendous comfort as the self now has some semblance of who it is.

The only issue is that these molds, while derivatives of the world around us, are only processed as abstractions. They are ideas, concepts, labels, categories. In essence, they are not real.

This unreality of the world of form is the greatest issue the self must contend with. These concepts—these molds—are only tools for the self to be able to make sense of who it is. They are not meant to be permanent. They are like scaffolding that supports a building. Once the structure is completed, they are unnecessary.

This middle phase is the most painful for a sentient being to be at. Too self-aware to live life from a purely instinctual place, yet not fully self-aware enough to live from the place of enlightened presence. Instead we are stuck in the middle phase of being self-aware—and suffering all the awkwardness of it.

Ideally, we can learn to continue this evolution ourselves. To transcend the biosocial bands— the trivial beliefs handed to us from society—and enter into a space of not only full self-awareness, but self-acceptance. In knowing and accepting who we are, we can feel safe to live fully in the present moment.

Need and Opportunity

We can only know ourselves to the degree that we have experienced reality. This is why wisdom usually emerges at the end of a life well lived. Young people just haven’t had enough experiences yet to truly understand the full scope of what being alive is truly about.

The reason experience is so vital is that it simultaneously offers new molds to fit the self into, but also offers contention to pre-existing molds. Let’s explore each of these individually.

First, when we experience something new, we get to see how we behave in a new environment. We are literally born witness to a new version of who we are—new reactions, new feelings, new connections. This data aids us in experiencing more of who we can be. Another character unlocked in the video game that is our life. This is invaluable. We can only grasp the bigger picture if we have all of the pieces, and witnessing who we are and how we react during new experiences offers us a new piece of the puzzle.

To the second point, new experiences also challenge our pre-existing constructs of identity. As previously mentioned, the real self is not any of the labels that say who you are. The real self is an experience of wholeness. It is so overwhelmingly easy to identify with these constructs and mistake true identity for these abstractions.

This over-identification keeps us stuck. We can become so mired in our idea of who we are that we refuse new experiences. We double down on what is known, never giving ourselves the opportunity to grow. Breaking the mold allows for new concepts of self to emerge. It shifts self-identity away from these concepts towards genuine, grounded experience.

Once self-identity has been wrenched from the mental-construct level and rooted instead in pure, embodied experience, it begins to develop a natural sense of non-attachment. It can now choose what it attaches to, surrendering to love, knowing that one day it will all vanish. Because the self is now rooted within, nothing can truly disturb its inherent structure. It will still experience sadness and loss, but the core of being will never be lost again.

Because these constructs and labels are products of the world in which we live, basing self-identity—and as an extension, self-worth—only results in experiences of loss at some point. Everything of the material world will someday erode back into nothing. From dust it has come, to dust it shall return.

When the self is wrapped up in proving itself based on fallible means, there will always be a degree of internal conflict. There will always be either resistance to change and novelty, or a constant pull into the void of unawareness. You will either shut down and minimize your life, or seek out activities that make you less self-aware (binge watching shows, drugs and alcohol, mindless video games, etc.).

However, when the self is grounded in its own experience, this isn’t the case. Perhaps given that everything in life will someday dissolve into nothing, the only thing we can be sure of having with us while alive is our own body. Yes, the body will someday dissipate back into billions of atoms, but as long as we are conscious as a human being, we will have our body. It is the conscious experience of being in the body that is the foundation for the type of self-experience I speak of.

The body is literally made of water. Allowing our awareness to sink into the body, grounding itself in the truth that rises up to meet us, is exactly the process required to shift from mental-construct based identity into true being. When this happens, we can flow with life. We can simply be—experiencing what we experience, allowing the emotions and thoughts within us to shift and flow; noticing, observing, understanding.

We will intuitively know when to have new experiences, allowing new versions of the self to emerge. Like water, we can shift to fit new molds, trying out different selves, expanding our total experience of what it means to be human.

The Universe Experiencing Itself

Often in many New Age spiritual circles, you may hear the phrase “you are the universe experiencing itself.” Personally, I find this phrase to be ripe with grandiose inflation, though with some tweaking we can utilize it for our purposes of describing this process.

This is not a document on the esoteric construction of the universe we are in. This is merely a document on the universe we experience within.

While it is rather inflated to claim that you are the universe experiencing itself (though there may be some truth to that) it is better to think of this process happening entirely within you.

You are the self, experiencing the self.

You are a human being that is self-aware, with the sole task of experiencing the full-spectrum of what it means to be human.

These constructs, these labels, these abstract identities, are fundamentally not real. They are illusions designed to facilitate increasing self-realization. The realization that you are an experience. That your sole purpose in life is to have a deep and meaningful experience of what it means to be human.

I will add that experiences don’t always have to be external. Having an experience within, rooted in imagination, can be just as moving and revealing as experiences in the tangible world. The key is that it is an experience of embodied imagination.

When awareness is recentered in the body-mind union, the external and internal worlds have equal weight. They can both be interacted with, identified with, even loved in exactly the same ways. The self will always know its true home is grounded in its embodied experience.

Know Thyself

Finally we’ve come full circle. Not much has changed since 600 BC when thousands of ancient Greeks witnessed the words know thyself on the side of the Delphic temple. Now as psychology advances and techniques for mental wellness and self-actualization emerge, the time-tested wisdom recirculates.

It all comes back to knowing thyself. That is really the whole point of this crazy experience of being human.

Knowing thyself gets to be a lot easier when we are able to establish the core of what it is we are trying to know. In a previous article, I wrote about a psychosynthesis concept of developing an “aware-ego.” You can read it here. This is the exact concept of shifting the center of awareness into a center of experience rather than an abstract construct.

Below is a diagram from this psycho-synthetic approach to consciousness:

You are not your thoughts or your emotions. You are the center that observes, witnesses, and reacts to what comes in.

Control is an illusion. We often don’t get to control our thoughts or our emotions. We can be blindsided by experiences of pain and anxiety that suddenly erupt into consciousness. All we can do is observe them, seek to understand what information is lying encoded within them, and reach a deeper sense of clarity around why we experience reality the way we do.

Find the center, and cultivate experience. Learn, grow, embody, and most essentially, be. Truly learn the art of conscious being. Not only does it lead to deep fulfillment but it leads to, at the very least, a life well lived.

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Articles Referenced:

• Dissociation vs. Disidentification

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