The higher self is a mode of thinking and feeling where all feelings and thoughts are consistent with love.
This definition would be slightly more compact if there were a word that conflates thinking and feeling. Nearly all thoughts, and perhaps all thoughts, are also feelings. Suspicion is a clear example, but one can detect feelings in any thought if attention is payed to that.
Living continuously in your higher self is unlikely if you have recurring memories that disturb you. Such recurring memories can be purged in the sense that they no longer automatically recur and can be thought about without distress.
Living continuously in your higher self cannot be done if you sometimes have destructive feelings.
The higher self is recognized by spiritualists and virtually all religions. The consciousness of a person's higher self is characterized by emotional associations and implications within every cognitive operation and episode of reasoning. This can be understood as a coherent blending of feelings and thought. In the higher self, feeling and thought are the same. This emotionally sensitive thought is not rare. Many thoughts are inextricably melded with named feelings, even if those feelings are not consistent with love. The higher self can observe, reason, conclude, wish, pray, speculate, and in general, perform any type of function of mind while always feeling the meaning. A person's higher self is never the source of feelings or wishes inconsistent with love.
Thinking may happen without words.
This is not to say that the people who react to disappointment, pain, or alarm by feeling frustration, fear, or anger are not well intentioned. They are not willful perpetrators. They are unwitting victims of their enculturation - victims of the influence of a culture that is both constructive and destructive. With the help of your higher self, destructive reactions can be purged. They do not serve you. You need not identify with them. You are not only human.
Who Has A Higher Self? Everybody has a higher self. Its existence in you does not depend on your religious and spiritual beliefs, although the degree of your belief in goodness affects everything that you do and think and feel, whether you are in your higher self or not.
Anybody can purge recurring recollections of disturbing past events - dismissing them from your life. You can also purge any tendency to feel destructive feelings. In the event that you are asking yourself "Why bother" I would point out that living without resentment is its own reward, as is facing misfortune or threats with tranquility. Tranquility does not reduce the likelihood of rational solutions, but fear does exactly that. If you reflect on all you know about how people get to be the way they are, hatred becomes increasingly inappropriate, even outside of your higher self. Anger solves nothing. Teaching envy by example spoils the culture. It does not enrich it. If you purge destructive feelings, you will soon care about the wellbeing and happiness of everybody.
Purging Destructive feelings and recurring memories does not mean suppressing them.
Purging destructive feelings is a matter of questioning their utility and questioning their presumed advantages. These feelings are habitual. They are conditioned by upbringing - mainly through the imitation of adults. They are everywhere characterized as normal and natural.
Envy is one of the least controversial. Some people learn not to be envious. It can be related to loving humanity and wishing the best for everybody, but it can also be a matter of finding that success in positive goals is desirable in all cases. Envy is a negative feature of one's character. It doesn't take much reflection to dismiss it.
Resentment, dislike, and hatred are greatly reduced simply by reflecting on the way you know people get to be the way they are. A detailed knowledge on that subject tends to make these feeling increasingly inappropriate.
Goodness and love are built into our universe and built into our reality in such a way that even the misled who engage in hurtful acts inexplicably regard their successes as good. The only path to constructiveness, beauty, and happiness is the path of goodness and love. The root cause of goodness is love. Such is our universe.
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Contact
Write to jim@futurebeacon.com (James Adrian)
or ttoths@pm.me (Maureen Kelley).