Throughout our lives we are defined by our achievements. After schooling we become doctors, artists, accountants, architects, brick layers, teachers etc. With each occupation comes a certain set of predefined personality traits which formulate what we wear, our behaviours, language, tone, communication style and social status. We can (and quite often do) eventually become our occupation.
How we are defined
In our western, highly materialistic world, it seems the way we value ourselves is derived from what we own and how our status is perceived within the community. Overtime, our identity is forged by our past and we become an image that our peers, associates and society have defined us to be. We are taught to build our identity externally. Read Article: If you're trying to lead, then you're still following
Awareness
If by chance we get to see the importance of looking within for answers rather than externally, we have the opportunity to filter through the societal illusion, Read Article: Success: Societies Illusion, whereby our existence, purpose and everything we have done can become much less significant, or perhaps, as gloomy as it may first sound, somewhat meaningless. Society's version of happiness starts to unravel and the pursuit for what society portrays as success, the desire for for materialistic things, money and fame not only becomes irrelative, they become trivial.
By delving further into ourselves with more awareness and no judgement, many questions start to arise.
What was once a given starts to seem pointless and the gap between ourselves and society slowly starts to widen. We begin to see our authentic self. Not just us from another's perspective. By understanding and being more aware of 'self' we naturally become more aware of our environment and others. Simultaneously we disconnect from society, but ironically we become more connected to everything on a much deeper level, like we never experienced before.
As the door keeps opening to self discovery and you begin to accept yourself on a deeper level, the good and the bad, the light and the shadows, the most amazing transformation begins. We start to see who we really are and the word around us in a whole new light. We start to see our 'authentic self'.
Catching the ego
Money, fame, power and societal success is driven by our ego. It's the rogue side of ourselves that tries to bluff, contradict and manipulate everything in both our minds and our environment. It's our ego that stops us from seeing our authentic self by continually distracting us from seeing our darkness... But it's in our darkness where our brightest light shines. If we accept ourselves in our darkest moments along with our weaknesses, then no one and nothing can bring us down - we have already accepted our worst.
In our darkness is where our brightest light shines.
Our ego is responsible for creating competition, righteousness, insecurities, conflict etc. Any time our ego is challenged it seeks to make it right by exploiting others weaknesses, trying to feel better about itself.
As the world becomes more superficially connected, we are exposed to more and desire more, which elevates the ego. You could say our ego is responsible for our lowest personal vibration.
Tapping into your higher self
When we seek our higher self, that part of you that is less judgmental, open, curious and creative, we can then see our own authenticity. The more we see in ourselves, the more we see in others. But here lies the problem, after we have accepted our darkness with love and no judgement and we begin to peel back the layers of the ego and our past. We become like a clean shell with no identity. Beckoning the question, who am I?
