~The False Self vs The Real Self~

A Message To The Reader from Teal Scott Swan

My Dear Friend,

A child is born.  Shortly thereafter, it is molded by society into something that is needed by society.  The child becomes a utility, more like a part of a machine.  Our society is a society of ignorance and cowardice.  It is a society of ignorance because it fails to see that every person is born with a destiny and that by molding him or her into something, we prevent that destiny.   Our society is cowardice because it does not want to take the risk of seeing what people would turn into and what society itself would turn into, if people were allowed to let that destiny unfold within them with no external interference.

You were born to be an expression of your soul in the physical dimension.  You were not born to use this life to refine or improve yourself.  You were born to use this life as a canvass to paint yourself across.  You cannot be certified to do this.  You do not need a college degree to do this.  You were qualified from the day you first drew breath.  We do not understand that we came into this life qualified to live it.  We wait for society to put us where it wants us to be, just like our parents did and our grandparents did and our great grandparents did.  And it will put you exactly where it wants you.  It will create for you a false identity; a false identity so thick that you won’t recognize that the deep emptiness you feel is the feeling of missing your own soul.  This is why the junkie shoots up.  This is why we must stay busy.  In the emptiness of solitude, there is no one to reinforce the false identity and so cracks appear in it’s foundation and the soul begins to leak through.  Who am I?  We start to ask.  It makes us feel crazy, being alone starts to feed an identity crisis.  There is no one there to project an idea of who you are…onto you.

The dark night of the soul is nothing more than the space between the false self and the real self.  It is a groundless space.  It is a space where you learn that to find yourself, you must first be lost.  You cannot be who you have believed yourself to be.  But you also are not yet aware of who you really are.  There is nothing to hold on to.  You are “being”, but that being is void of meaning.

Other people have given you this identity that you have owned and identified yourself by.  This is why in the absence of other people, you feel like you start to lose yourself.  If we let ourselves sink onto the blackness of the dark night of the soul, what we will find is that the pure, unpolluted true self (which is the direct manifestation of your soul) will arise on it’s own with no help whatsoever.  You cannot DO anything to become your true self.  Rather, you must simply step out of the way of your true self.  Stop restricting it.  All that has to happen for something real to surface is for that which is false to be taken away.  But do not worry, the only things you can lose, are things that are meant to be lost. The only things you can lose are things that you have to lose in order to find something infinitely more valuable.

Society scares you into maintaining the false identity.  It threatens you with pain and death.  Pain and death if you don’t pay your taxes, pain and death if you do not buy a certain product, pain and death if you do not follow instructions.  But if you heed those threats, you will die before you ever experience your authentic being.  A life lived out behind the mask of the false self is no life at all.  It is the shell of a life.  Anyone who has been able to live in authenticity and die in authenticity knows that pain is temporary and death is fiction.  It cannot be.

Today’s blog entry is brief.  But it is crucial.  There are a great many people who are feeling lost today.  I can feel you as you consider returning to the false identity because of how scary it is to be in that dark transition between false and real.  I can feel you wanting to return to the solid shore you came from because of the fear of forging forward to new shores.  I am urging you to keep going forward and not return to what is familiar.  That familiarity is a poison you’ve grown used to.  And within these words, is the voice of your suppressed soul.  A dark night of the soul is not a defeat.  Everyone should be so lucky as to have one, or many of them in their lifetime.  Everyone should hope to get lost enough to find themselves.  And there is only one way to put this… If you aren’t asking yourself “who the fuck am I?” you will never find out.

With love always,

TEAL

The Spiritual Catalyst