Who Are You, Really?

Belief.

Left to its own devices, it is a flawed, unthinking algorithm for experience; inflexible, fixed, other times loosely held together; but mostly transient.

It serves as a measure for truth, whether or not the thing being assessed happens to be "true" or not and often modulates our experience of Reality in its image (if we let it). Entire cultures are even characterized by the beliefs specific to it, and sometimes we don't even notice that the things which we believe to be personal beliefs are actually those that are shared by that culture itself!

Western countries, for example, endorse a mostly materialistic worldview- one which suggests that the world operates on the basis of predictable physical laws, independent of any influence of God/Divinity. This is the perspective advocated by science today. And as a result, most westerners share the beliefs suggested by scientific inquiry. Furthermore, let's look at mainstream culture: It is as though that which is "trending" at any given moment is almost unquestioningly adopted (and perpetuated) by the general public.

So how is it that we adopt certain beliefs or "preferences" over time? By process of conditioning! You can think of conditioning as synonymous to imprinting. In the same way that the young in the wild take up habits and ways of their parents, so too do we embody aspects of the environments in which we live- whether we are doing so consciously or not.

Some time ago, I began to understand that our identification with our conditioning can actually deter us from formulating a worldview far greater than that of our culture alone. Worldview becomes belief and may become so at the exclusion of a worldview that transcends culture and embraces the possibility of a greater perspective. I was also beginning to understand that the realms of our subconscious and unconscious minds are actually portals to greater self-understanding and a broader sense of self- one that absolutely transcends identity as it is known. In what followed, I began to grasp that the sub/unconscious aspects of mind are a portal into an experience of a transcendental identity- one that everybody and everything in existence are by default connected to. This sense of self is not usually included as a part of our self-image, yet it is the light within the spaciousness of the sub/unconscious mind.

The most common block to merging with this aspect of ourselves is over-identification with the world of form.
And the catch remains that we are actually conditioned to anchor our sense of identity into form, as per culture's instruction (covert, through instruction no less). It is from the latter instruction that the basis of illusion is established. But who you do not start or end with mind or body.

There is a difference, see, between identifying with something because you believe that you are that something (again, the identification creates the belief and the belief is self-reinforcing) and expressing the essence of something which happens to be an expression (aspect) of the essence that you are already. Hence, the illusion cannot be something that happens to us, lest we first indulge in identification with form. If we recall our attention from the appeal of form and our identification with it, and begin instead to look instead within ourselves, the illusion cannot persist!

Our sub/unconscious aspects of mind are far from insignificant. Nor are they simply a Freudian-type dumping ground for suppressed energies, tendencies or self-expression. Instead, they are quite capable influences in both our waking and dream states, as well as (again) being akin to gateways into an expanded experience through the merging of the conscious aspect of mind with our transpersonal identity.

Our complete identity awaits integration with the conscious mind. This process is called self-actualization. My aim (amongst many) with Visionary Evolution is to facilitate the awesome process of self-actualization within you.

Belief, conditioning and cultural perspective need not ever misrepresent the totality of who we are; and nothing can ever be the same once we've committed to remembering and living who we are.

And why would we want it to be?

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