The Higher Self

In contrast with our lower self, our higher self, or intent (what William Butler Yeats termed "Mask"), has nothing whatever to do with our body. Most people in their daily lives rarely operate with higher self. This is the purpose of magical training: to operate with higher self in one's everyday existence.

In most people's lives higher self only surfaces now and then, in response to emergencies and sudden, unexpected events. Higher self surfaces to save our lives; to pull us back from the brink; and to warn us away from certain people, situations, and places. Higher self sees an opportunity and grasps it without hesitation or doubt of any sort.

When we operate with our higher self, we are mentally clear, coldly efficient, pitilessly detached, and utterly determined. We no longer feel like our(usual, lower)selves – trapped in our petty little moods and concerns. Rather, we are exhilarated and free; we become one with the Spirit.

When our higher self surfaces it brushes aside all our doubts and fears. We no longer fear death, and we never say die. Indeed, it is our higher self which survives the death of the physical body. This is why we don't fear death (or anything) when we act with our higher self.

In a manner of speaking, our higher self is actually the same thing as our death. When society teaches us fear of death, what it is teaching us is fear of our higher self. Our higher self is a state of unfettered limitlessness, just as our lower self is a state of crabbed dissatisfaction and torpor, symbolized by the prison of the body.

Our higher self acts from the gut, not the mind. Indeed it often befuddles our thinking minds. Higher self doesn't operate on social conditioning – at least not in our decadent, self-indulgent society. Higher self was the basis of conditioning in warrior societies which existed on this earth in ancient times. Even as recently as a century ago humans were more robust, self-reliant, and daring (closer to higher self) than we self-coddling, citified moderns are.

Our higher self acts on our true feelings, not on our thought forms. It acts on inner certainty rather than on the way we have been taught to act by our parents and society. As a result, when we act with our higher self, our own behavior often surprises or embarrasses us.

Our higher self can be quite audacious: sexual, defiant, or disruptive and contemptuous of social consequences. When our higher self takes command it takes our breath away. It numbs our lower self – our thinking mind – which feels somehow left out, embarrassed, guilty, or puzzled by our own actions. Our lower self may try to backpeddle, or make amends, or undo whatever social damage our higher self has perpetrated. It is at these moments that we can become conscious within ourselves of the division between our lower and higher selves, since at such times they are both operating at once, at cross-purposes.

(Copyright © 2009 by Bob Makransky. All rights reserved).