What is the true self and false self?
The world defines you through your name, surname, tax id, occupation, nationality, religion, qualifications, or character traits.
You define yourself through your interests, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, achievements, relationships, and the value of your bank account.
However, none of these things are permanent.
In this article you will learn:
- The difference between the true self and the false self.
- When you react from the ego level and when from the soul level.
- How your false personality arose.
- How to get away from your own ego.
All these identities change over time, evolve, appear, and disappear. Once, you are a daughter, once a wife and mother, and once a pensioner. If so, they can’t be you.
Who are you then?
I am:
- Agata
- a woman
- a daughter
- a student
- an economist
- a worker
- a single
- Silesian
- Pole
- European
- an emigrant
- a blogger
- ?
The only thing that never changes is your consciousness. It is the common denominator for you and this little girl who you were over 30 years ago. It has experienced every event in your life and it is the essence of who you really are – your soul.
The soul directs your life (intuition) by interacting with the world through your thoughts (mind), emotions (heart), and actions (body). It experiences life directly through consciousness and indirectly through your thoughts (mind), emotions (heart), and senses (body).
| Component | The Perceptual Side (Yang, Male) | The Expression Side (Yin, Female) |
| Soul | Consciousness | Overlays |
| Mind | Thought | Cognitive Thinking |
| Heart | Emotion | Emotional Expression |
| Body | Sense | Will, Action |
Your mind is home to your thoughts, concepts, and beliefs (ego). Your heart is the home of your love, emotions, and desires. And the body is home to your instincts, impulses, and actions.
Each of them has its place in your physical body: mind – head, heart – chest, body – belly (it is even said that the gut is our second brain), they are so-called awareness centers.
Each of these awareness centers operates through three secondary awareness centers called chakras. They help integrate awareness centers with the body’s energy meridians and the nervous system.
Your personality is a mix of your authentic, unlimited true self (soul) and ego (false self).
How do you know which one is the true self and which one is the false self?
Your true nature (soul overlays) is expressed in different proportions depending on your level of development, energy, health, and circumstances. Usually comes to the fore when you are relaxed, present, honest and talk straight from the heart. You are expressive, expressive, radiant, compassionate, and loving.
Your true nature and authenticity you express in yours:
- cognitive qualities through wisdom, creativity, insight, clarity, and curiosity.
- emotions through: love, compassion, joy, courage, connection.
- In your body through will, vitality, stillness, grounding, peace.
Ego, on the other hand, prevails when you are tense, shallow, superficial, and selfish. It makes it egocentric, greedy, fearful, and critical. So you are not always in harmony with your own soul.
| Soul | Ego |
| Seeks to serve others. | Seeks to serve itself. |
| Seeks inner authenticity. | Seeks outward recognition. |
| Sees life as a gift. | Sees life as a competition. |
| Seeks to preserve others. | Seeks to preserve self. |
| Looks inward. | Looks outwards. |
| Feels abundance. | Feels lack. |
| Is eternal. | Is mortal. |
| Drown to love. | Is drawn to lust. |
| Is wisdom. | Seeks wisdom. |
| Enjoys the journey. | Enjoys the prize. |
| Cause of healing. | Cause to pain. |
| Embraces god. | Rejects god. |
| Is eternal wholeness. | Seeks to be filled. |
| Is we. | Is me. |
Although the soul designs your whole life, it never imposes your will on you or replaces your choices.
The level of your authenticity depends on the number of ego structures you have.
Each ego is different and uses different strategies to help you survive and function in the world. It can, for example, introduce defensive strategies that will manifest itself by blocking something, suppressing or forgetting something, distracting your attention, compulsive or addictive behavior.
And also a “coping” strategy – built on the false conviction that you have lost some part of your soul. It involves diverting your attention from the real cause of your internal pain and masking it with something else, e.g. looking outside for the cause of your true suffering.
All ego strategies come from fear.
Your ego finds expression in the negative poles of your soul overlays, as well as in your Achilles heel, which is your greatest defect in character.
Ego makes decisions and choices motivated by fear, which usually makes life more painful and limited.
The true self, while making decisions and choices motivated by love, which usually makes life seem more free and expansive.
How is your false personality formed – the ego?
English psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, a pediatrician, and thinker Donald Winnicott created the concept of false self by observing the deep relationship between mother and child and the consequences of this relationship.
He noted that in the first year of life, the mother and child are a truly inseparable whole. This is because the child’s consciousness is not yet thoroughly educated. So they treats the mother as a whole universe, and therefore also as themself. They looks at their mother like a mirror and learns to identify others through them. They builds their image of the world based on their interactions with their mother.
The child gradually begins to wake up from this illusion and enters a stage of relative dependence. They begins to realize that they is a separate entity, and learns that their expectations can not be always met.
The child’s true self is inherently antisocial and amoral. They is not interested in the feelings of others. They wants to express themself where and how they wants. Over time, however, the child gradually develops their false self, i.e. the ability to behave in accordance with the requirements of external reality. It inhibits or blocks their natural self-expression. They ceases to be themself in order to please their parents and the environment in which they lives. They begins to hide and mask their spontaneity, creativity, authentic feelings and ceases to experience deep integration with life. Thanks to this, the child may submit to the rigors of school and later also of their professional life.
If the child was allowed spontaneity in expressing themself, then their relationship with their true self – the soul is closer.
Unfortunately, most of us have been deprived of the ability to truly feel ourselves. So we start to exist rather than live, we look, but we don’t see, we listen, but we don’t hear. We’re acting like a zombie. We feel an inner emptiness.
The idea of a false self is to push away growing anxiety, danger, denying problems, and maintaining a sense of security. You create them in your childhood to please and calm the family system. You hide your true self so effectively that in time you cannot find it yourself. And sometimes you even create your idealized self.
You begin to identify with the false selves that you have created yourself during all these years. The danger is to confuse the false or idealized self with your true self.
How can you get away from your own ego?
The journey to liberation is not an external journey. True freedom is inside, in your soul, and consists of discovering yourself. You must know your soul and realize that you are and have always been her. This process is like waking up from a dream or even a nightmare. It is like coming out of the virtual world into real reality, from darkness to light.
Internal work does not require any effort from you, on the contrary, it consists of cessation. Cessation of efforts, trials, searches, leaning, grasping, reacting, and acting. Just be. Be a human being, not an active being.
Source:
Lee Bladon „A – The True-Self, The False-Self and the Ego”, evolvingsouls.com https://evolvingsouls.com/book2/articlea/
Lee Bladon „A – The True-Self, The False-Self and the Ego”, evolvingsouls.com https://evolvingsouls.com/book2/articleb/
„The True and the False Self”, theshooloflife.com https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-true-and-the-false-self/
