How do we find ourself with others?
Broadly speaking we can say that our interactions with other people will come from personality, essence, or higher centers. When we interact with other people through personality, we relate through the roles we play:‘ I am the doctor and you are the patient,’ or ‘I am the parent and you are the child,’ or ‘I am the teacher and you are the student.’
If we are acting from personality, our experience of essence and higher centers will not be available to us. When we react from personality, there are parts of our being that are not accessible to us.
When we relate to people through their essence, factors like type and center of gravity come into play. A good relationship or marriage is almost always based on essence. In essence we are in touch with our natural sympathies, attractions, and repulsions. So these relationships will be more satisfying, but also more volatile.
When we connect to people through higher centers, we see their possibilities and speak to what they can become. Higher centers bring a world of perception to our interactions with others. We see when they are asleep or when they are awake. In some cases we see what they are hiding from themselves. To see someone from the higher emotional center is to see them and, at the same time, to see yourself.
The Illusion and Reality of Finding Oneself
Though separateness and individuality are illusions, the self does have parameters and responsibilities. The feeling of separateness is a great obstacle to any deliberate attempt (like self-remembering) to connect to higher centers, but necessary. Essence is incapable of organizing itself and following a line of action. It needs something outside of itself to keep it on track.
Direct experience, which is what the expansion of consciousness is all about, does not necessitate loss of self. When the higher self intrudes on an event, it doesn’t only become the event; it adds to the event. Without parameters there would be no self at all.
William Page is the author of the blog BePresentFirst.
This article is an excerpt from his longer article:
https://bepresentfirst.com/on-finding-oneself/
Other recent articles of his include: https://fourthwaytoday.org/we-always-make-a-profit/ https://fourthwaytoday.org/difficult-times/ https://fourthwaytoday.org/freedom-of-the-real/ and https://fourthwaytoday.org/memory-and-higher-states/.