Idealized Self-Image

We have created a portrait of ourselves-a perfect idealized image. We put ourselves on a pedestal and don’t acknowledge our mistakes. If we do acknowledge our mistakes, it’s normally to rationalize them. “Well I know I got angry, but you did this or some circumstance happened which basically meant I had to get angry.” We tend to do that from one side of our lives to the other. We put ourselves on a pedestal and don’t acknowledge our mistakes.

We’ll easily excuse behavior within ourselves that we wouldn’t tolerate for a minute in other people. We easily pass away all kinds of things that we do and rationalize “that it was okay because”, but we won’t tolerate that for a minute from our friends, family, or coworkers. We are hypocritical and have a tendency to hide our own errors.

We create this sense of camouflage and we hide a lot of our errors. So not only are we not aware of them in the first place, we have a tendency to not want to be aware of them; to keep them covered up. It’s almost like a weird state of self-preservation or some kind of defense mechanism. It’s almost like aspects of our subconscious help hide each other by covering each other up. These are some of the things that make it hard to get a sense of who we really are.

When the light of the consciousness illuminates our hidden side we reduce the false image of ourselves to dust and discover our true selves. We have to be prepared to take down that false image, because if we’re not correctly perceiving ourselves, then we can’t perceive the world around us. This is a difficult thing to do and not a lot of people want to do that.

To work on your psychology you have to hold up a mirror and prepare to really accept the reflection that comes back. A lot of people don’t want to do that and would prefer to hide all that stuff. It’s just easier to think everything we do is perfect and continue rationalizing and we can do that indefinitely. But it takes a certain amount of strength and willpower to say “You know what, I’m not perfect.”

We all perceive ourselves to be perfect. “It’s other people that are the problem. It’s other people that need to be judged and condemned and put in the right place and sorted out”. We very rarely want to do that to ourselves. But to work on our psychology, we have to be prepared to look at ourselves, honestly, without judgement, and work towards changing who we are.

Projecting our Errors

This is a difficult concept in these studies of psychology. It may take a while to understand this and do a lot of self-observation and reflection to really understand this concept. Understanding this concept is to understand that we’re not perfect.

We project the unknown unconscious side of ourselves onto other people and then see it in them because we all carry the same aspects of our subconscious. That which we so much criticize in others is the usually same thing which lies in the hidden side of ourselves. We’re all humans. We all have the same psychological aspects.

So next time somebody does something that bothers us, instead of criticizing, condemning and judging them, why don’t we look inside of ourselves to see if we’ve ever done that behavior. Check if we’ve ever manifested that particular action or emotion that they happen to be exhibiting.

We’ll see others as we really are! The errors we criticize in others also exist in ourselves. There are many things that we see and react to in other people, but we’re all humans. We all carry the same psychological aspects. They just manifest in different ways to different levels and different degrees, but we all carry the same.

You know that person that drives you nuts at work, or that friend or co-worker that annoys you, the person that drives you crazy, don’t forget that you’re somebody else’s. We all have somebody that bothers us, a neighbor, co-worker, family member, or in-law. We have to remember that we are that for somebody else. So instead of judging or criticizing that person, we use them to discover things within ourselves. We can use other people as mirrors to see what we are.

Next time you see somebody getting carried away and angry, ask yourself have you never gotten angry before? There’s nothing in your life that’s ever gotten you angry? Have you never lost your temper? You don’t know what circumstances they’re in and what pressures and life challenges they’re under. Instead of judging and condemning them, would it not be more beneficial to really analyze yourself? That’s exactly what we’re talking about here.

We think we are perfect and become offended if anyone suggests otherwise. If someone tells you that you have a temper, if you were really honest you’d say “Yeah you’re right. There’s times that I get angry” instead of “Who the hell do you think you are telling me I get angry? What’s your problem?” But the typical human behavior is when we get any kind of information that doesn’t match our idealized self-image, we have this weird self-defense mechanism; where we immediately spring forth to defend that image.

That which condemns and criticizes others is our own errors, our own subconscious aspects that we carry within! In the end what is it that’s judging and criticizing our fellowman? The subconscious psychic aggregates that we carry within. So we’re using the non-perfect side of ourselves to judge and condemn other people for not being perfect…. That doesn’t even make sense. Yet we do it all the time.

What is it that’s judging and condemning and criticizing other people? It’s the errors that we carry within ourselves, the subconscious psychic aggregates that we carry within. And if you really reflect on that for a while it seems almost absurd or silly, but that’s what we all do. There can be aspects of my subconscious that are reacting to and judging and criticizing aspects of your subconscious.

We should start asking these questions when we condemn or criticize others for:

• Losing their temper, have we not ever been angry?
• Lying, have we never lied?
• Being “full of themselves”, full of pride, have we never been proud? Have we never been excited about an accomplishment and wanted to share it with other people?
• Drinking in excess, have we never had “too much”?
• Driving erratically, have we never made any driving errors? Of course not. We may have, but we had a “perfectly good reason for doing it at the time.”

When you’re driving on the highway a common conclusion is anyone who’s driving faster than you is a “maniac”. Anyone who’s driving slower than you is an “idiot”. That’s what we do. We look at ourselves as the perfect scale and we use that to measure everything else. The problem being is we are not perfect. That’s not the scale to hold the rest of humanity towards.

Instead of criticizing all these things in other people, use other people as a mirror in which to measure ourselves. When we see other people, use them as a lens to measure ourselves. Be honest and ask yourself “have I ever done this?”

Improving our Relationships

When we know the hidden side of ourselves, our own errors, we then see our fellowman correctly, without projecting our own errors onto them. When we really get to know who we are, and we’re able to know that hidden side of ourselves, then we’re actually able to see our fellowman correctly. We’re no longer in a state of consciousness where we react to other people.

Remember a large portion of our life is spent reacting to other people and other people bring out all types of thoughts and emotions and manifestations of various problems within ourselves. When we’re able to correctly relate to ourselves then we’re able to correctly relate to other people. When we illuminate the hidden side of our psychology and see ourselves in the correct light, then we see other people in the correct light.

This allows us to basically not identify with somebody else’s manifestation of their subconscious. If we truly comprehend an aspect of our psychology, we no longer react to the manifestation of it in other people. We can than accept and tolerate this behavior in other people without reacting to it.

For example, if we know and comprehend our own anger – be aware it exists, become conscious of its causes and effects- then we will understand the manifestation of anger when we see it in others. If you truly comprehend anger within yourself, you know longer react to anger in other people. Normally when we see people getting angry there’s a reaction there. We have a reaction, then they react, and we react, and the situation escalates.

We can avoid reacting to the manifestation of the subconscious in other people because we truly understand it within ourselves. When somebody gets angry, if we truly understand anger, we can almost take a “sympathetic” view like “I’ve been there, I’ve been angry too. Anger is a tough one. It really gets you going and gets you to say stupid things, lash out at people, like you’re doing to me right now, but hey, it’s an emotion. You know. It’ll pass, and I’ll come back and talk to you when the emotion’s passed and we can resolve the problem.” Rather than reacting and getting offended and lashing out etc.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

By changing yourself you then change other people around you. Think of a situation between 2 people about to get angry and start a fight. An argument or fight needs 2 sides. If you’re trying to be angry with me but I’m not going to be angry back, then my subconscious isn’t going react to your subconscious and escalate the entire situation. So, one person choosing not to identify with that anger is going to change something in the other person as well. It’s about being the change you want to see, which reflects in those around us. We change the influence we have in the world, which then improves the lives of those around us as well.

One must receive with gladness, the unpleasant manifestations of others.

Samael Aun Weor

We must learn to be PASSIVE and not reactive. Being passive doesn’t mean being a push-over, letting people walk all over you. It’s about having a passive psychology as opposed to a reactive psychology. Remember a reaction is a manifestation of the subconscious. To be passive is to use the consciousness, to stay in the present moment with awareness. We’re not simply reacting to the other person automatically or mechanically. We’re not allowing them to push our buttons and control us.

If you say something that offends me, and I react in anger, I’ve identified with an aspect of my subconscious. I’ve allowed that aspect of my subconscious to manifest and then perhaps it’s making me say and do things. When we react to something and identify with an aspect of our subconscious, we sustain and strengthen that part of our subconscious.

Anytime we’re not reacting, we always have a fork in the road available to us. The subconscious wants to go left, and if we react then we go left, but if we remain in the present moment and work with the consciousness, there’s a fork in the road. The subconscious wants us to go left, but now we have another route, the route of the consciousness, which is right.

Conclusion

When we start to create a realistic portrait of ourselves, we change the way we view the world and others around us. It all begins with the self. We got so many people trying to make the world a better place by telling other people what they’re doing wrong. But if everyone just took a different point view and made themselves better, then we’d make everyone else better in the process.

We must self-observe constantly and before criticizing others, criticize ourselves. Instead of using that time and mental effort and energy to criticize other people, direct that internally and take an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. It is more useful to stop criticizing others and use the opportunities for self-discovery.

So if someone makes us angry, remember that at some point we’ve made someone else angry. We carry the same things inside all of us. We just don’t really see them and don’t observe them in ourselves to the extent that we can observe them in other people. We want to work towards changing that. Use other people as a mirror to search deeper inside ourselves.

We need to examine ourselves to varying degrees and varying extents. We all have the ability to get angry and jealous etc. Some people will take those emotions to different extremes, which we may not go that far. But we all carry the same root of that behaviour within ourselves. By working to eliminate that root within ourselves, then we’re going to be slowly changing all of humanity a little bit at a time. Just like Gandi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

This is what leads us to be able to tolerate unpleasant behavior in other people and just live in harmony. If everyone were able to understand this concept and work with it, we’d probably make the world a completely different place.