I want to talk about “higher self” and the “expansion” of consciousness.
This is a concept prevalent in New Age philosophies and derivatives. Most New Age literature depicts the Higher Self as a guiding force. The Higher Self is what introduces obstacles and challenges into your life to “expand your consciousness.” There are endless articles which base their assertions on this expansion concept as justifications or explanations for the how / why of the human condition.
In most cases, we are meant to believe that the Higher Self has its own consciousness, or that we even agreed to a contract or “plan” before incarnating on Earth. Believers of soul contracts and plans, I’m sure, would agree that the plan is intended to be adaptable (to allow for free will, they will argue) but to guide you to a certain conclusion.
I have lots of problems with this.
New Age also teaches a couple of important concepts and that is the idea of separation and/or unity. This article is not intended to visit those particular topics but the simplistic idea of unity is the idea that we and the universe are are all connected.
But is the concept of Higher Self compatible with unity? I contend that it is not. It introduces a separation of yourself. Opponents will argue there is “ego”, which we want to shed and then there is what the Higher Self intends, which we want to follow.
As I often say, ego is too often used to just label everything you don’t like about yourself – or your Wave.
All of these different layers just introduces separation. You “are” your Higher Self. There is no divide. Needing to divide yourself this way is just a crutch to getting you to trust your heart, or yourself. You need to “speak” with your Higher Self rather than just knowing it immediately.
The very fact that you can make a decision means you have an “ego.” The ego is the limitations that allow for the perception of the self, or the “I AM.”
To shed your ego 100% would be to cease to exist. This serves no one, especially not Source/God.
It would be more useful to think your entire personality matrix / identity has no consciousness at all and that “you” are simply a manager of its energy. Managing this energy is how life is experienced. You do not have to become fixated or “attached” to it.
The fundamental problem I have, though, is the idea of challenges, or obstacles as a method for creating “expansion of consciousness.” To me this has become doublespeak for “suffering.”
Just by existing you are “expanding” consciousness. There is a lot to learn in idleness, or “doing nothing.” When you are sick of it, you will naturally seek out different experiences. You do not need a “plan.” Much like going on a binge, you will become bored and do something else. You need no authority to hold your hand. Your heart guides you throughout as you change your decisions.
The very concept of expansion is contentious because it implies that there is “one direction” for consciousness to go.
To value certain types of experiences over others would collapse the entire universe in a “one true path” problem. All other experiences would eventually only exist to service the more valuable ones, creating an entropic state (this means the exclusion of God/Eternity/Infinity, which is a Nonsense state.)
Along the same vein, a contract or plan would annihilate your free will. The fulfillment of the contract would introduce a weight to all experiences, meaning some experiences would be more right, or more wrong. And what does that do? It creates entropy. It ejects God (it does not account for infinity ; it does not produce an eternal state.)
Contracts, simply, are polarity / machine mind. The contract is a way of interacting with the universe in an experimental/procedural way that eliminates the variance of potential (in other words, God.)
Your choices would be meaningless, because the end state is assumed, thus no real experience was acquired. The “journey” was just the processing power needed to produce an outcome. Are you content to just be a “functional call” of the universe?
Why are plans, contracts, Higher Selves, and so on doublespeak for suffering? Because they are invariably brought up to explain the trying circumstances of our lives. But this is 100% hand-waving self-absolving bull.
Suffering exists because it is chosen. Because it is chosen, it means it was “designed”, even if it was designed in ignorance. We cannot answer the question of whether we live in a universe that was purposeful or accidental, or both.
All we can do is choose how to live OUR lives and we choose to recognize that suffering is an EQUAL experience. Being equal means that it is no more valuable than any other experience we need to “expand” ourselves. And knowing this, this means we can imagine life paths that have no suffering whatsoever, because all experience is valuable (we can know this simply via Infinity Principle).
And knowing this, means we allow our hearts to provide paths without suffering. When we surrender to our hearts, our choices begin to reduce suffering whenever we find it.
Even if we are just aspects of God, then we should be doing our best to create a fundamental reality that reduces suffering while exalting mobility/choice. This is not pretending suffering is less valuable and thus introducing entropy, but recognizing our supreme sovereignty (choice) to reorganize reality as we decide.
As I say … we do not need to live with bears to know we do not want to be mauled by bears. There is the “wild” and there is where we make our home. This doesn’t mean we need to erase bears from existence.
Why am I writing this article? There is so much literature out there that believes we “have” to suffer which just perpetuates the entire concept within the collective. If we don’t realize this, then we haven’t done the inner-work to remove suffering from the choices we are making.
If the Higher Self is making our decisions (via the weighted coercion of experience), then we have no need of hearts and none of our intentions matter. We suffer – or not – at its behest.
If there is no free will, the entire universe reverts to a void as decisions cannot be made – this means potential cannot be “collapsed.”
What is the point of this discussion? For me to not trigger whenever someone begins speaking about Higher Selves and life contracts.