Know Thy Self.
“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Being true to one's Self. It's an idea that has endured the test of time.
There is a Greek maxim that can be found inscribed at the Temple of Delphi, supposedly instructed by the God Apollo himself - roughly translated as "Know Thyself". This is one of three maxims that can be found etched at the entrance to the Temple . Clearly, to the Greeks, understanding oneself was the highest of virtues. But how does one 'Know Thyself" without first clearly defining what the nature of the Self is? What is the Self to you?
At first glance, the "Self" can be construed as the reflection of the personal and social identity that we create - the "I". It allows us to see ourselves as conscious entities, distinct from the rest of the animate and inanimate world, built over time through a collection of personal experiences and mental hardware that we possess. For the large part, this is how the Self is understood by the scientific community, as science can only address what is observable and measurable.
However, I believe there is a more nuanced distinction to be made here. I propose the idea that what we think of as the "Self" is really three manifestations of our Being, lying on a continuum that ranges from the inner depths of our Being to the image that we create of ourselves to the outside world.
These are: The Subconscious Self, The Conscious Self and The Ego.
The Subconscious Self is the engine that drives our Being. It lives in the darkness, rarely visible or accessible to the Conscious Self or the Ego. It exists, at birth, as our natural instincts (something Freud referred as the "ID"). The drive to hunt or gather food when we are hungry, the lust that arises from sexual arousal, the need for affection from a mother. These are all behaviours that we naturally exhibit without any control. But as we move through life, every conscious experience we have had in the past - joyful, traumatic or even the neutral ones, leave imprints on the Subconscious - creating learned instincts. The involuntary reflex of pulling away from fire because it burnt you once, the fear of abandonment that arises because a parent was never around during your childhood or the strive for perfection as an adult because you were taught that your value as a person is determined by the social success you achieve. These are all examples of learned instincts created by our Subconscious Self.
Inherently, the Subconscious is highly resilient and it takes a lot to affect it (i.e., high impact, low frequency events like the death of a parent, or low impact, high frequency events like a child getting bullied throughout its childhood). But this resilience also means that it takes a lot to make conscious changes to the Subconscious Self. For most of us, the Subconscious plays the role of a Master of Puppets, subtly pulling at the strings to manipulate the way that we live our life, while convincing us that we act on our own free will.
The Conscious Self, on the other hand, is the awareness of our existence in the universe. To be clear, this awareness is not the 'I'. This awareness comes through the sensations we feel, the perceptions we have, the emotions that move us, the connections we feel to this universe. Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you are the only object in the Universe. Imagine you are the Universe. You would feel a oneness with everything around you without the need to create a Self identity that distinguishes you from everything else. You simply feel. You simply are. This feeling is the awareness of your Conscious Self.
The Conscious Self is visible to all of us, but we are rarely attuned to it. Practices such as meditation are short-cuts to expose and understand it - we become aware of our thoughts and the interferences that are created from the Subconscious and the Ego. The fully attuned Conscious Self is able to distinguish and observe the noise created from both external and internal sources such as the Subconscious and the Ego. And it exists only in the present as we can only be aware of our existence in the present. And the further we float away into the past or the future, the less we identify with our Conscious Self.
Finally, at the other end of the continuum, is the Ego, the mechanism through which the Conscious and Subconscious Selves interact with the outside world. And to exist in the outside world as a distinct entity, we created an identity, the "I". And with this distinction comes the ability for us to reference and compare against other entities - resulting in emotions of the Ego like shame, guilt, pride, confidence, anger, pleasure, righteousness, and so on. The Ego is also responsible for the creation of memories and personal experiences through our interactions with the outside world. These memories and experiences feed back into the Subconscious, thereby closing the loop of the continuum.
Ultimately, the nature of the Ego is to seek validation of our existence from the outside world, through the imprints that we leave on the outside world. A writer cannot merely keep his ideas in his mind; they must be transferred onto paper and shared with the world in order for him to identify himself as a writer. Hence, the Ego seeks to validate the identity that we create. This quest for ever-increasing validation from the world grows into the Ego's hunger for power - "I must be all that I can be". And as such, the Ego always works toward the future - it dreams and it desires - moving towards what is sees as its 'potential'. The Ego is never satisfied with the present, because its potential can only be realized as long as there exists a differential between the Future and the Present.
So, which of these three manifestations of the Self is the true Master, then? This depends on which part of the continuum you exist in. There are people who are instinctual, allowing their life to be driven by their Subconscious or their "gut", but not truly knowing why they do what they do. There are people driven by the Ego, who exist "out there", fully engaged in the physical world with a purpose to distinguish their individuality from the others around them. Then, there are those who are more aligned with their Conscious Self, mindful that the present is all that truly exists and able to filter out the noise surrounding them.
It is only when we are fully attuned to our Conscious Self that we can be in complete harmony with our Subconscious and our Ego. Without that, there will be constant tension between the three forms. We will be consumed by our Past or our Future, and not be able to fully engage with our Present. The path to freedom requires the Subconscious Self and the Ego to be clearly understood and controlled, leaving the Conscious Self to simply be.
