The Evolving Self: From Instinct to Wisdom
If I asked you the question, “Who are you?” it’s likely you would pause for a moment and then answer with a list of qualities and characteristics. We each have a well-developed sense of self. This sense of self defines our self-image, personality, and the way we perceive and relate to the world and others. It’s the hub of our life experience; its our own little CEO, determining our likes and dislikes, our choices, and basic orientation to self, others, and the world. Its patterns, habits, and attitudes are established and set in place early in life. We give our “self” a name and become quite attached to it, cherishing and protecting it.
It’s a bit strange that this sense of self that largely determines our life experience – our joy and suffering – is rarely examined. In actuality we take far more interest and care in considering a potential life partner, managing our finances, and developing a career than we do in examining this entity we call our self. Although we would carefully select a CEO to run our family business we accept without question inner CEO acquired early in life. It appears to be such a fixed part of our being, perhaps that’s why we rarely question it.
Let’s consider how our sense of self develops and ask two questions” “How did we develop this sense of self, and is there a further stage of development that awaits us?”
The Instinctive “Self”
During the first year of life the sense of self is very instinctive. We can almost call it sensorimotor. We experience through our sense without mental elaboration and then our physiology reacts without the mediating influence of thought. This is a bare or naked awareness, a direct perception of the world unfiltered by mental activity. We experience sensations such as hunger, comfort, discomfort and sleepiness. We similarly experience motion, images, sensations, and then instinctively react.
This non-reflective “self” arises on the basis of a mind and body. It’s simple, immediate, and direct. Life is lived in the present moment unadorned by conceptual knowledge. There is no sense of separateness from others or from the outer world. There is no cognition and thus no sense of time. There is simply the continual flow of sensations accompanied by primitive reaction patterns. We are more like an amoeba than a fully developed human.
The Evolving “Self”
By about the time of our first birthday the psychological or conceptual self begins to develop. This evolving self can now distinguish itself as separate from others and the outer world. Mother is no longer a mere extension of ones own body. Our slowly expanding sense of self soon begins to fill with names of things, thoughts, and feelings. Remember the books we read. We learned about an apple. We learned that it’s edible, comes from a tree, and relieves hunger. We learned that this or that person is safe and comforting and another is not. There is a growing sense of continuity of experience from past to present to future. And, the growing child begins to experience its effect on others.
Yet there is no fixed sense of self. It’s only over time that our world contracts around a frozen sense of self – a complex entity that appears autonomous and independent. Life is still a continuity of flow with a soft conceptual flavor and sense of self that is yet to harden into a frozen self-image.
The Autonomous, Independent, Conceptual-Ego Self
Slowly but assuredly we begin to move away from a fluid and open experience of life. Over time, and with the assistance of parents and educators we create a conceptual identity with fixed attitudes, preferences, reaction patterns, and interpretive templates. This sense of self increasingly becomes the hub of our life, the center from which we live. Out of the fabric of early experience and learning we’ve constructed a personal CEO. We care for it, cherish it, protect it, perceive the world through its filters and defend its viewpoints. It is held together by the designation of a name, our name. It becomes the sense of self that’s familiar to each of us.
With the development of the conceptual-ego self we experience our existence as separate and distinct from that of others and the outer world. This encapsulated sense of self is experienced as autonomous and independent. It appears to exist as a separate thing in and of itself. The once fluid self that moved with the continuous flow of consciousness is frozen and fixed. We freeze our self-image, our interpretations, and our reactions. We freeze our experience of the outer world by assigning unchanging labels and functions to outer objects. Our sense of self and the world is tied up in a neat little package.
This fixed CEO no longer directly experiences the world as it is. The child’s immediacy, naked seeing, and openness are gone. For the adult, that world is lost. Through the filters of our mental self we now define certain experiences as pleasant and others as unpleasant. We desire the former and push away the latter. We seek to control our world, seeking to assure comfort and security while avoiding anxiety and fear. The natural unfolding of the conceptual-ego self leads to self-centeredness, disconnection from others and the outer world, and the host of related mental afflictions and mood disorders.
There are those that will point to this conceptual-ego self and claim that it’s the main source of worldly achievement and outer success. No doubt a certain sense of self is essential to successfully navigate the day-to-day world. However, if we are honest we must acknowledge that in its ambitious striving to manipulate and control the world for personal satisfaction our ego self expands and expands way what’s need to live a simple and good life.
It appears on the surface that if we calm down or let go of the excesses of our ego self then our world and effectiveness will diminish in proportion. But this is not so. If we take a look at the most extraordinary, effective and powerful individuals of our time – for example, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela – we will note their humbleness. They have not arrived at their achievements through an ever-striving puffed-up sense of self. Their confidence, abilities, peace, and joy come from a far deeper source. They are in fact selfless. And in that selflessness, the defining characteristic of the essential self, there is far more confidence and power than in the puffed-up ego.
The Essential Self
Fortunately, there is still a further level of development. When we have reached a stage or moment in life when cracks appear in the conceptual-ego self – cracks that may be catalyzed by illness, frustration, or suffering – we may be forced to stop and re-evaluate our life. The recognition that our efforts have not taken us towards authentic happiness, love, and personal fulfillment open the door for the final stage in the growth of self. This can be a precious and pivotal moment in life. If we turn away from this opportunity we will live out our years under the guidance of our conceptual-ego self. We will have an ordinary life, an ordinary health, and an ordinary death. We will have missed the greatest possibility of existence – the discovery of the essential self.
If we walk through the door of transformation and thereby seek the essential self we will uncover the final stage in human development that leads to the perfection of human existence.
The essential self is a simple unelaborated presence in life that experiences life moment-to-moment without a conceptual overlay. We experience what is as is – the naked and uncontrived suchness of life. At one time or another we’ve all touched this aspect of self, but have missed its meaning. We may have had a glimpse when in communion with nature, through dance or the arts, at the peaks of athletic activity, at the moment of sexual orgasm, or in the early moments of romance.
Can you remember this brief glimpse? It has a sense of openness, timelessness, spaciousness, ease, well-being and connectedness? For a brief moment you lost your ego self and dropped into your underlying essential self that has no name, no label, and no content. This self lives in the present moment experiencing what is as is without an ongoing mental commentary. There is a very deep sense of self, but it’s not a cognitive and frozen identity. It is a simple presence and being – an immediacy of living, a profound aliveness.
There is no suffering in the essential self. In the fully developed and stable essential self there’s an authentic happiness, a peace that surpasses understanding, a selfless compassion and love, and a natural wholeness and connectedness. When we stabilize the essential self we taste the peak of human perfection. We bring an end to all suffering and distress. We’ve finally taken our human journey to its complete fulfillment.
It’s not our destiny to stop at the fearful and frozen conceptual-ego self, our own little contracted CEO. It is not our destiny to be falsely charmed by the illusion of an autonomous and independent self that brims with an over-inflated and disconnected sense of confidence and capacity. It is our destiny to complete the human journey that leads to the re-discovery of the essential self and its precious qualities.
These are the four steps in the full development of self. Taken to the end it is an extraordinary journey described in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
As the poet says the end is the same as the beginning with the one single exception – we know it. The connectedness and unadorned present moment experience of the early self is the same as the final experience of the essential self. However, the early instinctual self abides in ignorance. The adult who has re-discovered through inner development the simple essential self abides in wisdom. And that makes all the difference.
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths blowing out stress on the out-breath and taking in peace and ease on the in-breath. Completely relax your mind and body, letting go of all effort or striving.
Place the image of a newborn infant in front of you. Observe it. Notice how it instinctively relates to the environment. It experiences comfort, discomfort, and hunger, and reacts according with sleep, distress, or the feeding reflex. Watch this through your image. Recognize the instinctive nature of this earliest self.
Jump a year in time. Place an image in your mind of a one or two year old. Notice the emerging sense of self. There is an emerging identity and the slow appearance of a personality. But there is not as yet a well defined and fixed sense of self. The young child still maintains an immediate and largely unfiltered relationship with the outer world, flowing with what is as is.
Now jump to your present life. Notice the existence of a fixed sense of self with definite views, clear preferences, and a distinct self-image. Now, for the first time, you can answer the question, “Who are you?” Notice how this self appears autonomous and independent, and how it has become center of your life. It conveys predictability and constancy of experience. Notice the tendency of this fixed conceptual-ego self to cherish itself, feel distinct from others, and harbor hope and fear.
Leave these images and through your breath and meditation return to the stillness and silence within. Notice the stillness, openness, and spaciousness of experience. Be present in the moment – an open and flowing awareness. Sensory impressions, thoughts, and emotions arise and fall but you don’t attach to them. You remain in the underlying awareness that has no name. This open and choiceless awareness and presence is who you are. It is your essential self.
This essential self experiences life with a directness, immediacy, and freshness that is unfiltered and unmediated by mental content. Experience this state of being. You’ve now returned home to where you started but know it for the first time. The infantile instinctual self has matured and evolved through the stages of development into the wisdom-based essential self. It now knows radical freedom, peace, authentic and enduring happiness, and non-dual wholeness.
Take Your Choice
The center of our adult life is our conceptual or ego self. It’s the source of all of our acquired qualities and identities. It guides our life – determining our likes and dislikes and how we interpret and respond to the world. As noted before, the conceptual self defines and freezes the world we live in – our possibilities, limitations, moments of pleasure, and suffering. We take this self as the only self that’s available to us. After all, that’s who I am. So we live with it, honor it, and protect it from harm and threat.
Beyond this encapsulated sense of self and world lies another self that is usually hidden from us like clouds that obscure the sun. The essential self is obscured by the conceptual-ego self. It’s open awareness and presence is free of fixed perspectives and habitual reaction patterns. It’s a state of radical freedom. It does not develop on its own. It requires personal choice and intention. The essential self opens new horizons and takes us toward the fullness of life.
Let’s take a detailed look at some of the differences between the conceptual-ego self and the fully evolved essential self. Understanding these differences helps us to further undermine the dominance of the ego self.
The conceptual self is our day-to-day CEO. It’s highly vulnerable to change. And life is change – constant change. That’s why, regardless of its seeming strength and stability it’s easily wounded in a world of constant movement and change. In reality we cannot control people or circumstances. As a result, the conceptual self is easily knocked about.
Look carefully at your life. Examine your attitudes and perspectives. Examine your likes and dislikes. Look at your reaction patterns. Can you allow entirely new responses to the same circumstance? Or, do you always draw from the same reservoir? If you look carefully you will see the rigidity of the conceptual self. Nothing new happens, although it may seem otherwise. Don’t take this personally. It’s a characteristic of the self-cherishing ego. And that’s not your ultimate self.
The essential self is invulnerable. There’s no fixed sense of self in the essential self, just a simple presence and suchness It flows with the moment, responding naturally, directly, and appropriately to what is as is. Wisdom replaces information, compassion replaces self-cherishing, peace overcomes anxious guardedness, and wholeness resolves disconnection.
“So,” you ask, “how do we function without a conceptual self or ego?” No doubt this can be confusing at first. But in time you discover the feel, ease, and delight of flowing and moving with life. You discover how to be skillful and appropriate in your responses. You discover the joy of living with an open undefended heart. You become carefree. Everything still goes on but you meet it with a stronger, more confident, open, patient, and flexible self. You will continue to use aspects of your conceptual self to navigate the world. But it is no longer an illusionary CEO. We are guided by the wisdom and open-heartedness of our essential self. This self is invulnerable.
The conceptual self divides the world into self and others. In a world of self and other there is no true connectedness. For moments we may be fooled. But when two “selfs” meet their meeting is always on the surface. It’s based on mutual satisfaction. My needs and your needs are satisfied. You feel good and I feel good. True connection can never arise when there is duality of self and other.
The essential self goes beyond the limits of the conceptual self, way beyond. There isn’t the hard distinction between self and other that characterizes the conceptual self. There is a penetrating wisdom that knows that all is interconnected, that all of life is an inter-related whole. The world is not split into me and mine, this and that, I and other. The sense of interconnectedness and interrelationship that characterizes the essential self is how things actually are.
When we are connected at the level of oneness our heart embraces everyone and everything. Helping another is helping your self. Understanding another is understanding your self. Healing another is healing your self. The essential self transcends the disconnectedness of our conceptual self.
Self-cherishing is a characteristic of the conceptual self. First we establish an encapsulated and seeming autonomous independent self. Then we cherish, protect, and defend it. We grasp at pleasure. We focus on “my and mine.” Seeking pleasure leads to desire, craving, attachment and in its final stage addiction. The ego self becomes possessive, jealous, defensive, and at times arrogant and aggressive in its efforts to care for itself. What we don’t like we push away. We do so with aggressiveness, judgment, anger, and even hatred. All of the afflictive and disturbing emotions can be trace to the self-cherishing conceptual self. Suffering is a quality exclusively associated with the conceptual self.
The deeper self transcends our ego and resides in the present moment, with all its vividness and beauty. There is no fixed self and none of the associated mental afflictions, so there is no suffering. The essential self is characterized by peace, connectedness, and happiness. And its happiness begets happiness rather than suffering
Above all, the conceptual ego self is in love with itself. It views the world through this lens. It adores and chases after people, objects, and experiences that bring pleasure, comfort, and security. Ambition, success, approval fame, prestige, power, and control are all sought after for the sole purpose of supporting and inflating our ego. Underlying every action of the conceptual self is a calculation of the benefit and gain to the ego. The world is seen in terms of me and mine. The basic self-centeredness of the conceptual self leads to disconnection from others and afflictive emotions.
The essential self knows the false and afflictive nature of the self-cherishing ego. To arrive at this ultimate and freeing sense of self is to have lived through and seen the contracted and suffering world of the encapsulated self. The essential self knows that the end of suffering and all happiness comes from valuing others. The essential self sees the world as an opportunity to serve others.
The conceptual self cannot see beyond itself. It’s enmeshed, enslaved, and blinded by its habits, interpretive templates, and rigid protectiveness. As a result, we are trapped in a room without an exit. In this way the conceptual self obscures and obstructs the final development of the self.
It is only when the enclosure of the conceptual self is ruptured and cracked by suffering, disease, aging, impending death, or profound love that a door opens. If we can see the doorway and step outside, like the movement out of Plato’s cave, we discover a world beyond our ego.
As Plato describes it, when leaving the cave we leave the world of darkness and illusion and enter the world of spaciousness, openness, and luminosity. We see for the first time the contours of the prison we called life and the illusions we called truth. This transcendent perspective is irreversible. We cannot go back to what was. We can now see the conceptual self from the vantage point of a larger truth.
The emergence of the essential self affirms that we have gained a radical freedom and profound knowing. We have traversed each of the stages of the development of self to arrive at the ultimate self which is no more than a presence, spacious awareness, and lightness of being.
Finding the Exit
The way that we evolve from the limited conceptual self to the essential self with its radical freedom is by slowly undermining the false sense of autonomy and independence claimed by the conceptual-ego self. Because the ego self does not exist the way it appears to exist – autonomous and independent – careful and repeated examination of this seemingly solid personal CEO will deflate this false sense of self. We begin by analyzing the conceptual-ego self to see if it actually exists as it appears to exist, and then we further explore the nature of this false self through meditation. Using both these approaches we slowly undermine its dominance and come closer to recognizing and actualizing our authentic essential self and its qualities – radical freedom, peace, wisdom, compassion, and wholeness freed from suffering.
Close your eyes and quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then ask yourself, “Does my sense of self, the ego self, have a specific color?” Resolve this question by searching for its color. When you have arrived at the resolution you will discover the truth. Your ego self has no color.
Again, close your eyes and quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then as yourself, “Does my sense of self, the ego self, have a specific shape or form?” Resolve this question by searching for its shape. ? Take your time exploring this. When you’ve arrived at the resolution you will discover the truth. Your ego self has no shape or form.
Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then as yourself, Ask yourself, “Is your conceptual self inside or outside your mind and body?” Resolve this question by searching for its location. Take your time exploring this. Certainly it is not outside your body – somewhere down the street! The only alternative is that it must be within mind and body.
Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Search throughout the mind and body to see if you can find the location of the self. If you lost one arm would you still have this self? If you lost both arms and legs would you still have this sense of self? If you had your organs transplanted would you still have this sense of self? Perhaps it’s located in the brain.
If so, where is it located in the brain? Is it located in the gray or white matter, in the front or the back of the brain? Is it located in the brain cells, the nuclei of the cells, the electrons that are the basis of matter? Or, is it located in the space between protons and electrons? Can you find the location of the ego self in the mind? When you have resolved this question your will have successfully determined that the ego self cannot be definitely located in either mind or body. If it’s not located in the mind and body or outside the mind and body then where is it located?
Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Search throughout the mind and body to see if the ego self has any matter, any physical substance? Is it possible to see it, touch it, or experience it through any of the five senses? When you have resolved this you will successfully discover that this self has no matter and cannot be detected through any of your senses.
The Conclusion
If the ego-conceptual self has neither distinct location in mind or body, nor shape, form, color, or matter can it be said to truly exist as an independent and autonomous personal CEO? Consider this question. When you have fully resolved it you will realize that this self has no substantial independent existence. This does not mean that there is no conceptual-ego self, but rather that it’s a fluid aggregation of life experiences rather than a fixed, independent, autonomous, and unchanging self. We use it when it is helpful, but we do not let its habitual patterns and perspectives run our lives.
But, you might ask, “If this self that’s so near and dear to me and appears to be the essence of my existence does not exist as it appears – what is self, who am I? This question is easy to answer once we let go, even a bit, of our attachment to the conceptual-ego self. Our authentic self is our essential self. It has no fixed location, matter, color, or so on. It’s pure open awareness.
This self arises on the basis of our living mind and body. It’s a simple awareness of life as it is happening. It has an immediacy and directness. It is unadorned by conceptual knowledge. It’s connected to others and the outer world. It’s a timeless awareness, a timeless self. There is simply the continual flow of experience. We are aware and know that we are experiencing moment-to-moment, but we do not elaborate, conceptualize, or freeze the continuity of flow. We are in life rather than in a commentary about life.
It takes time to be reacquainted with our essential self – to live in each and every moment with a complete presence unmediated by the conceptual elaborations of past experience or future anticipation. But we begin to move towards this larger self by practicing the analysis above gaining a certainty of the dream-like nature of the conceptual-ego self. Simultaneously, we verify our findings in meditation where we directly encounter the open spaciousness of the essential self.. This essential self is awareness itself. It’s always with us. It is no one thing. It has no name. It’s our direct experience of life.
As we slowly grow into our authentic essential self we also move away from suffering and towards the preciousness of human life with all its gifts. We move towards human flourishing – the fullness of our potential. And this is characterized by a deep and sustaining health, happiness, and wholeness.
That’s the journey from and instinctive self, to an evolving self, to a fixed conceptual-ego self, to the fully actualized essential self. It is the maturation of human life. It’s the fulfillment of our human potential. It’s our divine spark brought to life.
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