Knowing Your True Self

It is not you who are mortal, but only this body... the spirit is your true self, not that physical figure.

Cicero
Tusculan Disputations

Each one of us is a unique person. We have different bodies and different talents, but your self is uniquely you.
Yet your self is not a thing that can be seen or touched in the outer world. It is not a fixed state that does not change. It is the dimension through which you experience your life. It is an evolving process that grows throughout your life. It transcends the composition of your physical body (which turns over its physical ingredients regularly). It is a pattern that transcends its parts, just as your face can be recognized as a pattern that transcends your eyes, nose, and mouth, and just as a melody can be recognized as a pattern that transcends musical notes. However, because it is multifaceted, you experience your self through its parts rather than as a whole. For this reason you cannot experience all aspects of your self simultaneously. Still your emotional comfort and psychological integrity depend upon your awareness that you have a whole self.

The easiest way to envision the pattern of your self is to build up a mental picture of it by describing its parts: your me, your myself, and your I. The personal pronouns me, myself, and I are very special words indeed. They have no synonyms.

The terms me, myself, and I refer to demonstrably separate parts of your self. Simply put, your me is your person, your myself is your mind, and your I is your self-awareness.

Your Me (Your Person)

Your me is your physical presence, your skills, and your personality that distinguish you as a particular person. It casts your external image in the perceptions of other people and of yourself through your visible appearance and actions. It is the only part of your self that you can see in a mirror. Your me relates you to the outer world.
Your me is reflected in your conscious awareness by your sensual perceptions of the outer world, of your emotions, of your bodily sensations, of your instinctual drives, and of your body image. Your me contains your cravings for physical gratification, security, and power. As such, the inclinations of your me are to use other people to satisfy your own needs and to fight or flee when your own needs are threatened. Your me contains your "false selves" that you have learned as accommodations to the expectations of others. A false self will be defined later.

Although your me aims to ensure your survival as an individual, your me cannot be de-pended upon for satisfaction with your life. In addition it can create problems for you by demanding unattainable security, by becoming obsessed and bored with material possessions, by competing with others for power and control, and by urging impulsive actions.

Your Myself (Your Mind)

Your myself is your mind. Your myself consists of mental imagery of your outer and inner worlds. It is composed of your conscious and unconscious thoughts, your imagination, your dreams, your knowledge, and your conscience. It includes your beliefs, your values, your self-concepts, your evaluations of your own personal qualities, and your judgments of others.

Your True Self

The core of your being lies a powerful, loving, creative nature - your true self.

You are born with your true self. It contains your genetic potential. It is the source of your creativity, the perceiver of your sensuous perceptions, and the site of your spirit. It is the source of your capacity for unconditional love; of your capacity for integrity; of your capacities for truth, beauty, and justice; of your capacity to experience moral guilt; and of your capacity for self-esteem. Your true self is remarkable indeed!

Knowing your true self depends upon making what may still seem to be a fine distinction between the terms sensuous and sensual. Yet that distinction is crucial to understanding the sensations that you can use to become acquainted with your true self. This is because your access to your true self is through your sensuousness.

In order to fully understand the difference between sensuous and sensual, you may well need to go against the way in which you have been conditioned to think.

Unfortunately, our society does not help you become aware of your sensuousness. One of the basic problems in our society today is the failure to distinguish between sensual and sensuous experiences. This is most clearly seen in confusion about the meaning of the word love. Is love a sensual (physical) or a sensuous (spiritual) experience? It is no coincidence that confusion about whom and how we love actually reflects confusion within our own selves because we do not know how to distinguish between our sensual and sensuous experiences.

Discovering and developing the sensuous experiencing of your true self is not easy in our contemporary society, which does not encourage the appreciation of natural rhythms, pleasures, and discomforts. We are preoccupied with the sensual stimulation and discomfort relief provided by commercially produced machines, by machine-made items, and by events of the outer world. As a result we have come to believe that the products we purchase are superior to the sensuous experiences that occur naturally in our inner worlds. We find ourselves spending money, sometimes lavishly, in the quest of satisfactions that money cannot buy. We find ourselves turning to the stimulation of movies, television, and computers for excitement and pleasure rather than drawing upon our own creativity.

Our society fosters satisfying immediate sensual pleasures rather than savoring sensuous satisfactions. Both political and commercial purposes can be served by gratifying our sensual urges. Appealing to pleasures, fears, and pains is a sure way to manipulate people to serve one's purposes and to buy one's products. We are bombarded with continual sensual stimulation by events in our outer worlds. We find it difficult to reflect peacefully in our inner worlds. Consequently, we be-come bored easily and seek the continual stimulation of work, recreation, and chemical agents. Some of us compulsively indulge our sensual urges in mechanical ways, as in excessive eating, smoking, drinking, and sexuality. We become conditioned to seeking sensual gratification. And that is good for business.

Because of the sensual orientation of our society, you may well be unaware of the vital distinction between the intangible experience of sensuousness as beauty by your I and the tangible experience of sensuality as the bodily gratification of your me. But you can become aware of the differences. When you are under the sway of your sensuality, your life revolves around the appearance of your me in the eyes of others and around maintaining a desired public image. When you are in tune with your sensuousness, you are responsive to the inner world experiences of your I, and your life revolves around your spirituality. Your capacity for sensuality favors a materialistic orientation to life, whereas your capacity for sensuousness makes it possible for you to develop a spiritual orientation to life.

You may not realize it, but one time that you sensuously experience your inner world is when your creativity holds sway, as when you use a tool in an art or craft. The satisfaction you experience from a creative thought or act is sensuous. While tools extend your creative use of your hands and senses, machines can either replace or enhance your creativity. For example, computers can do tasks for you as machines, but they also can extend your creativity as tools.

This brings us to your true self. The psychologist Abraham Maslow described the true self as the source of sensuous, aesthetic experiences in the form of truth, beauty, justice, coherence, simplicity, and creativity. Contact with your true self takes place through subtle feelings, such as inner peace, inspiration, self-confidence, integrity, and effortless activity. Expressing your true self takes place through the unconditional loving of others and through harmonizing conflict and diversity. In the quiet center of your true self you also can discover the truths that lie in the fundamental paradoxes of life.

More specifically, the two sensuous experiences of moral guilt and self-esteem are vital clues to expressing your true self. You and I have the innate capacity to experience authentic guilt when we are not fulfilling or are betraying our potential. That twinge of guilt, although uncomfortable, can be a growth-producing clue that you and I are not fulfilling the potential of our true selves. Moral guilt, more than social guilt that arises from our consciences in our myselves, can be a wholesome, monitoring influence in our lives. It can help us to improve our lives.

Just as there is a crucial difference between sensuous and sensual, there is an important difference between what we should do and what we ought to do. Doing what we should do con-notes doing the proper thing with respect to other people. The voice of your conscience tells you what you should or should not do, revealing its origin outside of you in the expectations of others. Right and wrong are determined by values you learn from other people. Your conscience gives rise to social guilt. For example, you feel guilty when you do not do what you are supposed to do, such as attend a particular religious service. Because social guilt is not authentically our own, we tend to have ambivalent feelings about responding to it. It can mire us in pointless self-recrimination and depression when we feel we are imperfect in the eyes of others and therefore in our own eyes. That kind of social guilt can be stultifying and inhibit spiritual growth.

In contrast, doing what we ought to do connotes moral obligation. Moral guilt reminds us of the things we ought or ought not to do. Moral guilt reminds us that we are imperfect and can do better. It stimulates growth in our spiritual journeys.

The feeling of self-esteem also is a cue that you are in contact with your true self. Self-esteem results when you value yourself, when you nurture your talents, and when you accept your imperfections. You experience self-esteem when you appreciate your own worth and when you accept accountability for your own shortcomings.

Our true selves are the parts of our selves that contain our innate talents. They are the sources of our creativity. Although we will never fully know our true selves, they are exciting realms of continual discovery throughout our lives. Therein lie both our challenges and our fulfillment in life.

False Selves

Just as ancient Greek actors wore masks (personas) while performing, we wear the masks of our false selves in order to maintain the outer world images we have learned to show in our various social roles. An obvious example is when we act differently in our work places than we do with members of our families in our homes. Our personalities include these necessary false selves first learned in our childhood roles, so that we do and say the appropriate things expected of us in particular social situations. The parts of our selves that show to other people are our false selves.

Each of our false selves is expressed by behaving so as to maintain a particular image in the eyes of others. Our false selves are necessary social adaptations, because we all have reasonable expectations of each other. Certainly shopping goes better when store clerks act courteously even though they are tired and eager to go home. We are well advised to observe false self etiquette in social situations.

The term false self is an appropriate description of one of our external faces, because it is in accord with the fact that you and I are imperfect human beings engaged in a lifelong struggle to discover and to express our true selves while living in an outer world that necessitates social accommodations. The term false self also helps to explain why you and I do feel false at times and why some of us are actually known as "phonies." Your challenge and mine in life is to imbue our false selves with as much of our true selves as is possible.

That challenge is becoming increasingly imposing. The technological advances and changing lifestyles of the last century now expose us to many new social roles. One of the effects of this social overstimulation has been the generation of new roles for ever-expanding audiences, such as father, stepfather, son, stepson, brother, husband, ex-husband, student, teacher, friend, athlete, team-mate, patient, client, customer, seller, employee, boss, taxpayer, voter, expert, critic, performer, patron, parishioner, driver, passenger, contributor, writer, reader, victim, perpetrator, foster parent, foster child, adoptive parent, adoptive child, and so on. As you can see, each one of these roles brings out a different aspect of your self.

Do the many roles you play contribute to stress in your life? Isn't it likely that this is true if the motivation to play a role comes from the outer world rather than from your inner world?

Our false selves are based on our own and others' perceptions and are defined by what we and others can see, hear, and touch. They are superimposed on our sensuous true selves. A particular false self usually arises in compliance with the expectations we imagine others have of us. However, it can be expressed in opposition to the expectations of others, as does a rebellious teenager. It can be a reaction to distortions of how other people perceive you, as does a shy person. Or it can conceal unacceptable parts of your self, as does a pious person. A false self also is subject to lapses when "others are not looking."

A false self lacks full authenticity because it is primarily determined by our social obligations and by our psychological defense mechanisms rather than by our true selves. It tends either to assume the characteristics of the person upon whose expectations it is based or to assume the opposite. Therefore, we are likely to have ambivalent feelings about a false self. It may be overly compliant with others' expectations, or it may differ too much from others' expectations. This explains why we can have conflicting feelings about the ways in which we play our roles in our vocations and in our family relationships. We may even be confused about what others expect of us because others can be unclear about what they expect of us as well.

Our false selves can confuse and destroy relationships when they are not grounded in, and monitored by, our true selves. When our false selves are out of touch with our true selves, we are like a machine playing out recordings prescribed by what others expect of us at particular stages in our lives. Our false selves can become rigid and fail to adapt to our changing social roles. We then are threatened by change and may well cling to dogmatic beliefs and to the conviction that only we are right.

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