Step Eighty-Eight

Genuinely Authentic; The Journey to Becoming Heart-Centered

Step 88. My Higher Self Is Not An Individual.

There is often confusion concerning your higher self and your Spiritual Teachers. This is very hard to resolve from the point of view of separation. But when you think of life as an inclusive network of evolving relationships, you then begin to experience and recognize that your Higher Self is indeed part of a greater fabric of relationship. It is the part of you that is not separate but is meaningfully bonded with others. Therefore, your Higher Self is bonded to the Higher Self of your Teachers. They are without duality now, for they have no other self. You have two selves: the Self that has been created and the self that you have created. To bring the self that you have created into service to your True Self joins them together into a meaningful marriage of purpose and service and ends internal conflict forever.

Today upon the hour repeat your affirmation and feel its impact. In your two longer practice periods, use your affirmation as an introduction to your practice in stillness and receptivity.

Practice 88: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.

Here you will find the entire book free for download http://stepstoknowledge.com/

Here you will find pointers for getting started if this is your first encounter with this practice: Taking the Steps to Knowledge.

March 8, 2013 Round One: This is a profound concept to fathom. At the level of the deeper mind, I can sense it better, but how often am I engaged at the level of the deeper mind? Not on a constant basis, that’s for sure! However, this statement that my “Higher Self is part of a greater fabric of relationship” is very potent and something I want to experience and recognize. It is very easy and almost automatic to endow my Higher Self with personal qualities, giving it the characteristics of an individual, but I understand at a deeper level that my Higher Self is indeed not an individual. This is an affirmation that I need to repeat over and over and really feel and experience with my deeper mind. Not easy, but something I feel a deep need to strive for and recognize.

I resonate with what Douglas, my fellow traveler, said in relation to this Step: “My individuality is a thread in this greater fabric of relationship. It touches other threads in many places.”

October 10, 2014 Round Two: What I wrote the first time I did this Step still holds true today. However, I think I am beginning to take this concept further and am understanding it at a deeper level. My attention is particularly drawn to the sentence, “It is the part of you that is not separate but is meaningfully bonded with others.” I am beginning to experience what this means.

"To bring the self that you have created into service to your True Self joins them together into a meaningful marriage of purpose and service and ends internal conflict forever."

I am trying to understand this. How am to accomplish this service? In my first meditation practice, I saw how I dissolved into the light and became one with the great eye that overlooks the world. My Higher Self is not an individual. This is true, for if it were an individual it would serve no valuable purpose. Only as part of an inclusive network can anything be accomplished. In separation, this is a hard concept to fathom, because things look differently, the perspective is different.

I get the idea from this Step that my Higher Self and my Teachers are sort of the same thing. Maybe not, but maybe so. In Secrets of  Heaven I read:

"Students have strange ideas about the Teachers. Therefore, often it is better that the Teachers remain unknown until such a time that the student is well enough matured to use this awareness productively."

I am waiting for the time that I am well enough matured. I am content at present to realize that while I am in the world I have a limited view. I could not be in the world and understand this. All I can do in my separated state is receive, be open and receptive.

Joyanne, another responder to the New Message, spoke directly to this Step today: "It is encouraging when you recognize that it is not just the mind that is joining and uniting with other Students of Knowledge, but it is the Soul of us all that is joining and uniting also." 

To me, this is what it is all about, the Soul/Higher Self of us all joining and uniting. This became clearer during the second meditation practice – feeling the bonding, this joining into a meaningful marriage of purpose and service.

September 23, 2018 Round Three: My Higher Self is bonded to my small self, the self I created, it is integrated and also joined to the Higher Self of my Spiritual Teachers, so we are part of an intricate network and a meaningful marriage of purpose and service. My Higher Self is not separate from the fabric of life, my small self serves my True Self and they are joined in a greater fabric of relationship.

I understand this more this time. We are all made of the same stuff as the heavens and galaxies. Again I became one with the ethers during my first meditation practice - 4.40 - 5.10 in the “closet” (the outside toilet cabin) - quiet, dark, wood smells, warm, protected. Second meditation inside, lying on bed - 15.40 - 16.10 - after doing more pear juice with Sasha, hopefully the last.