Your Sacred Self
Living Your Real Life
your purpose
Our purpose
What is evolution?
How do we evolve?
What is enlightenment?
What is the unconscious?
What is the dissolution of the unconscious?
What is our true self – our sacred nature?
Why are we sacred?
Created in God’s image?
For the norm – enlightenment is not life’s purpose
Called to grow
Our Purpose
There is a purpose – it is to evolve life to enlightenment. For humans, the crowning jewel of creation, our purpose is to evolve into full self-knowledge which by definition is enlightenment. We are to bring the light of truth to all the corners of our mind. No matter how enshrouded our psyches have become with ancestral and familial trauma, we must clear the clutter and see true. This profound yearning to know ourselves fully and to know truth is etched in the psyches of our common humanity. We all carry this compelling blueprint.
The deepest drive in human nature is not primitive aggression or sexuality, a vestigial link to our animal ancestry and early primitive human experience. Nor is our life’s mission to conform to the alleged safety and security of the tribe -- the comforts and traditions of family, society and religion. The intense pressure we feel from our parents and culture to conform to their values and traditions, to marry our own, reproduce others just like us, and destroy our neighbors to sustain our numbers and customs is not our deepest purpose.
The force that propels our humanity is more profound than primitive, animal urges or social pressure, and rests at the core of every individual -- it is our urge to evolve, our deep yearning to bring full consciousness to our being which is enlightenment.
We are on this planet with a deep purpose irrespective of the onslaught of evidence to the contrary. We are here to align with truth that runs through all that is-- including our very core. Evolution’s quest is for the sacred self.
What is evolution?
Evolution is the mysterious urge that inhabits all of life to grow into increased and more complex form and ultimately into full consciousness which by definition is enlightenment.
We can no longer define evolution as a biological construct dominated by natural selection and survival of the fittest. With humanity’s enlarged brain and our capacity to seemingly “outsmart” nature at every turn, evolution that once was defined by change that occurred through eons of time is now defined by human choice.
Change that once came from genetic mutations over eons of time now happens in a split second by the choices we make and the thoughts we think. Whole ecosystems evaporate with the flick of a thought, the bulldozing of a continent. Evolution is no longer a physical construct, but a metaphysical responsibility or catastrophe, depending on the choices we make. Now human choice propels evolution. The future of our species and the sustainability of human life on planet earth depend on the choices we make.
The fittest is no longer the species that is most dominant. That is the old paradigm from our animal ancestry. We are the most dominate invading every niche of nature and exploiting it. Now the fittest for our species is not the most dominate, the bully who rules over all – but the most cooperative. For a communal species like humans, the fittest is the most cooperative -- the most loving..
If the earth fails to sustain human life and our species becomes extinct, it will not be a failure of nature, but a failure of human nature, and a crisis of conscience. We will have ourselves to blame for our demise and the blessings of the earth and the greatest blessing of all, the human capacity for self-knowledge, will be lost.
Love your neighbor as yourself -- or we will not survive.
We evolve when we honor the expansive urge of truth at our core. This is our deepest and most natural tendency: to grow beyond ourselves and our families -- to evolve.
In order to grow, we must align with this profound calling. But there is a price. We must leave our families and their limiting definitions of meaning and safety. We must part company with the known and the norm. We must shun the external definitions of identity. We cannot play a role to be true. We must define ourselves by aligning with truth at our core and grow beyond the attitudes and behavior of our parents and the culture that sustain these limits. We must align with truth at our core. We must evolve -- which is our natural urge and capacity.
To not grow is an aberration, a thwarting of our natural propensity. To not grow is a perversion of our natural instincts to be more. This thwarting of our natural urge to evolve is the result of emotional trauma, most poignantly inflicted in the family and by parents. These traumas entangle our life force and inhibit our growth. When we resolve our traumatic past, we begin to evolve quite naturally as life intended . Our consciousness expands and we know and align with truth that runs like a river through all that is -- including us.
We needn’t invent the capacity to evolve – we either allow it or prevent it. For some, to evolve seems farfetched which reveals how far we have drifted from our natural purpose. It only depicts the power of convention and overt or hidden pressure exerted by our families to remain obedient children and conform to their definitions and to their denial of hard to bear truth.
Enlightenment is the dissolution of the unconscious. When repressed traumatic memories and events are acknowledged, felt, grieved and freed – we are enlightened. Our channel is clear for truth to flow through us.
We’ve all have had moments of enlightenment. With unusual clarity, we see truth. The clouds part -- aha! We are at one with it all. Truth is no longer distorted through the filter of the disturbances of our past or the biases of our family and culture. Truth is revealed -- clear as a bell -- at least for a moment.
But to sustain this enlightened state is a more difficult task. To do so, we must do some work. I’m not suggesting tedious hours of repetitive prayers or dissociative mediation. Enlightenment is simpler -- but not easy.
Our task is to resolve the traumas buried in our unconscious that imprison truth and entangle our life force. The disturbing wounds that were inflicted on us beginning in earliest childhood, even in the womb of a troubled mother, must be resolved that we may live fully and honestly. We must see, feel and grieve our traumatic history in order to clear the psyche's holding bin, the unconscious. Enlightenment is the dissolution of the unconscious.
What is the unconscious?
The unconscious is a mental repository that holds repressed feelings and experiences too painful to feel or know at the time they occurred. These troubling experiences usually occur in childhood when their implications would overwhelm the emotional capacity of the child. They are held for a later time when we are strong enough and authentic enough to bear their emotional impact -- hardest to process are the betrayals of our parents. The ones who should have loved and protected us the most -- failed us the most. Only a person who has experienced enough adult autonomy and separation from parents can withstand the emotional onslaught repressed feelings and memories inflict when they emerge -- and not be overwhelmed.
This holding bin of repressed experience and feelings saves us as children but destroys us as adults. If repressed and denied events and feelings remain unacknowledged and unfelt in the unconscious, they will make their presence known through symptoms – physical or mental.
Even though symptoms are often painful, symptoms are really our friends for they tell us that something went wrong. We begin to realize that our version of a perfect childhood, or our family’s version of a perfect family, is not true. We begin to suspect that something occurred in our history that hurt us. Eruptions from the unconscious are really seismic helpers, painful though they may be, an emergence of repressed material that needs our healing attention.
What is the dissolution of the unconscious?
When repressed material is brought to consciousness and grieved – the holding bin of the unconscious is emptied. This is the dissolution of the unconscious. It is also the definition of enlightenment.
Enlightenment means filled with light. In psychological terms, every chamber of our psyche is brought to our conscious attention. All of our story, all of our past with its traumatic episodes, is brought out of the unconscious to consciousness. We know ourselves fully. What was tragic in our childhood, the brutality dealt us, is known, grieved, and integrated. When we are fully conscious, nothing is hidden – the unconscious holding-pen has been emptied and is no longer necessary. This is the dissolution of the unconscious.
When this arduous and cathartic task is completed, nothing repressed in the unconscious will block our innate divinity, our true self from shining forth. Our life's purpose will no longer be distorted by familial or social biases, but revealed and lived. Our life-force is free to energize our gifts and talents.
We are a clear channel and the life force and the river of truth are free to flow through us to animate our life's purpose and gifts.
And so, enlightenment is the dissolution of the unconscious
What is our true self – our sacred nature?
At our conception, we are immaculate.
At the core of every human is a true and sacred self. This is one of the mysteries of life. It is also one of the saving graces of human existence. No matter what traumas we have endured during our childhood, even during our troubled days in the womb, or collectively from our violent ancestral history, our core remains inviolate, untainted, sacred, and pure. At our core is a true self, which carries a spark of divinity, our sacred self.
Why are we sacred?
Our humanity is sacred because of our capacity to interface with truth – with God. Our true self is that juncture where our human limits interface with the expansiveness of truth. This juncture is not just a connection with the expansiveness of the collective unconscious, the combined, generational experiences of our common humanity that has also settled into our cellular knowing. Our sacred self is greater than this. At our core, we connect with something deeper and more profound than human experience – we interface with truth.
The site of this intersection of humanity and truth is sacred -- it is our sacred self.
Created in God’s image?
We are all made in the image of God. We are all perfect at our core. Though our origin is a mystery, at the core of every being is a true self, animated by a spark of the divine.
Yet, until we differentiate from our parents and their limits and live out of our true and sacred selves, our true self is buried and unknowable. For an undifferentiated adult, the statement “made in the image of God” remains an empty platitude -- its meaning unknowable. Until we become our own person, living consonant with our true and sacred selves, we are not made in God’s image at all, but in the image of our limited and often traumatizing parents.
If we remain subject to the damning, fearful, and coercive parental voices housed in our psyches since childhood, we are not made in the image of a dynamic God, but in the image of our troubled parents and we remain haunted by their damning and distorting voices. To embrace the truth that we are made in God’s image, we must break from mother and father, individuate, and become our own person -- our true self which is made in the image of perfection, the image of God.
For the norm – enlightenment is not life’s purpose
To the average person, enlightenment is not life’s purpose in any realistic sense. Rather avoiding this arduous undertaking is life’s focus.
For the average person, family life, married with children (or remaining unmarried and still having children) fulfills life’s obligation, insures a modicum of immortality through the next generation, and usurps any need for deeper investigation into meaning. Career is a close second giving life meaning. The rewards of money and status in the community confirm a valid life. Enlightenment is a pipe dream, pursued by a rarefied few, and not taken seriously by the average person.
return to top of page
Called to grow
We are called to grow.
But for only a rare few, this compelling urge becomes life’s primary concern surpassing other more normative concerns. In a very real sense, these rare few are spiritual mutants called to evolve beyond the norm’s definitions of God and truth and to find a deeper connection to these profound dynamics.
Some of these spiritual mutants avoid this call and hide in conventional pursuits, but suffer from depression and addiction.
When we have this profound call to truth, we must honor our destiny with all the energy and courage we can find. We must live true even if we pay a great price, forfeiting the comforts of conformity and the approval of family. As we forgo these comforts we align with God and truth and find a peace, fulfillment and satisfaction in our existence that is beyond conventional understanding.
return to top of page