Reaching for the Stars
This is the first post in the Reaching for the Stars series. The nineth tool in the Introspection Toolkit.
What is it?
All the preceding tools in the introspection tool kit have been designed to help you better understand your internal world and move your conscious focus to the present moment.
Reaching for the stars is all about discovering our higher-self. Higher-self is just one expression to describe what we are talking about, others are the super conscious, the one-self, or even God.
When we embody our higher self, we take authentic action. We live as our true self. The oneself.
This is a state of enlightenment.
Understanding Our Higher self
So, what is the Higher Self?
Before we talk about the higher self, we first must appreciate vitality. Vitality, quite simply is life energy. It is what powers all of the processes of your psyche, it is what causes the universe to expand, it is what enables you to wake up in a morning, it is what drives the processes at the core of planet Earth.
Vitality enables your forest to grow and lights up the stars in the sky.
It is both the driving force behind everything and source of everything.
Our higher self has a direct connection to the vitality of the universe, more than that, it is the vitality of the universe…
There is no my higher self or your higher self, there is just our higher self…
The one self.
Consider that the vitality in our human body right now in this present moment being much like water put in to a glass, the vitality of the universe is the infinite lake which is the source of the water in the glass. Our higher self is connected to this one source and can access the infinite wisdom it contains.
Considering this; throughout this tool, I use the expressions higher self and oneself interchangeably – they all mean the same thing. Vitality is just the bit that is in you right now at this moment in time.
Why should we care?
As humans, our default state is to be connected to the higher self. We do this naturally when we are infants. This is why babies feel comfortable with some adults and not others – they can sense our feelings, intentions, and resonance at an energetic level.
This is sense and ability to feel is hard wired in to us, not learned or taught.
However, as the collective consciousness of humanity has developed over millennia, so too has its Ego and as such, the way of thinking of society has shifted towards an ego centric mode of teaching and learning which is structured around our collective socio-metaphysical agreements rather than an objective individualistic view of reality shaped by our senses.
It is not that we don’t have the ability to connect to our higher self, it is just that we don’t prioritise and train it. We have forgotten how to do it.
Much like becoming overweight from lack of training and poor diet, this process is reversible. To foster our motivation and ability to commit to the task, we must first look at the value of learning this skill.
Our Higher Self in Action
The second law of thermodynamics states that: “in all spontaneous process, the entropy of the universe increases”.
The energy of the oneself (our vitality and higher self) is just another form of energy in the universe, so is subject to these same laws of thermodynamics.
When we connect with other humans through acts of love and compassion, this is ours and their vitality interacting in a process where the resonance of the energy is shared and then increases.
Increasing the resonance of our vitality is increasing its entropy. This is fundamentally what our higher self wants to do – connect with more energy from the oneself temporarily stored in other humans to then increase the entropy of the whole.
You know that warm and fussy feeling you get from interacting with love and compassion. That is what this process feels like. When we are in this state, we feel like we can accomplish anything, we feel like the universe if conspiring to help us.
This is the evolution of life energy which I spoke about in the “Why Are We Here?” post.
It is the reason that conscious life exists and it the driving force behind all of our actions.
We are now going to explore four examples of our higher self in action.
Empathy
Empathy is the purest form of compassion. It is true caring and love manifested from the higher self. When we have a world view that is founded on empathy this unlocks our ability live authentically and apply the wisdom of the oneself.
This means being first empathetic towards yourself, then and only then, towards others.
“As you find the light in you, you begin to see the light in everyone else.”
– Ramm Dass
Wisdom
Whilst all humans physiologically are all fundamentally the same, we have unique nuances as a result of our DNA. Our higher self knows what equilibrium we personally need to thrive.
Vitality knows vitality and knows exactly what is needed to increase the flow.
When we practice empathy, we frequently feel the flow of our high self during our empathetic thoughts and interactions, this enables us to then learn to feel fluctuation in our vitality. This is our higher self “speaking up”.
It will always let us know when we make the wrong choice. i.e., a choice that does not increase our vitality.
If we cannot hear or worse, can hear but choose not to listen, this will result in energy becoming trapped in our system. This trapped and unspent energy will act much like cholesterol in an artery. Initially it may not make too much of a difference, but over time it will give rise to adverse health effects.
The negative effect of trapped stale energy is much more wide ranging though as it will influence both psychological and physical processes.
Learning to transcend our ego and connect with our higher-self lights the path to a life where we are able to take corrective action and increase our vitality. It is never too late.
Intuition
The voice of the higher self also manifests as intuition or gut feeling.
This is where we are able to perceive the energetic unfolding of events (it is our way of seeing in to the future). Everything does indeed relate to everything and we humans can sense that – or you could say we are able to sense the thing that senses that.
The oneself has experienced every moment of existence since the dawn of the universe. It knows the energetic trajectory of everything and can predict the cause and effect of energetic interactions. How it does this is beyond our comprehension, what I can tell you though is that we don’t need to be concerned with how the calculation is made, just that we are being given an insight in to what will unfold.
One day two yeast cells were discussing the possible purpose of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.
– Kurt Vonnegut
It might sound a bit grandiose, but your connection to your higher self (the oneself) gives you access to this limitless pool of wisdom and knowledge. When you learn to listen to your higher self you unlock your full sense of intuition. This is an innate ability.
Call it intuition, a hunch or a gut feeling – you just know something is right but you cannot explain it.
This is the ability your higher self offers you.
Know this ability is real.
Listen with confidence attentively.
Trust in the process.
Trust
Imagined fear is the currency of the ego.
I specifically state imagined, and real fear (like if you were to walk around a corner and come face to face with a lion) would result in action – fight or flight.
Imagined fear manifests as rumination over the past and apprehension of the future.
When we learn to trust ourself and other fear is dissolved. Trust is the antidote to fear and the two cannot coexist.
As you developing trust in your intuition, you learn to trust yourself. As you grow and trust yourself, you then have the ability to trust others.
This happens for two reasons:
- You cannot give what you have not got
- Trust in yourself breeds confidence in your ability to handle any situation that unfolds. This means you can then trust others freely as even if your trust is misplaced, you know you will be able to handle the situation.
The path to connecting with your higher self is the path of dissolution of fear.
Dissolution of fear enables you to transcend your ego.
Transcending your ego enables you to connect with your higher self.
So completes the feedback loop which is your route to enlightenment.
Enjoy, for now.