Making oneself familiar with or revisiting William Arkle’s core thoughts concerning the true self and false selves (A Geography of Consciousness) has never been more urgent.
The more the world and the West in particular descend into chaos, the more pressing Arkle’s insights become. I will defer to Dr. Charlton to provide a summary for those unfamiliar with the true self/false selves:
One of William Arkle's core insights is that - in normal, everyday life - people act from a multitude of false selves. The true self, which is of divine origin and potentially able to become a god, is what makes us what we are - but it may be completely buried beneath false selves; the true self may be utterly ineffectual.
These false selves are of many types. Some are the collections of traits - hereditary and socialised - that constitute our 'personality' as described and measured by psychology. Others are that mass of automatic, robotic skills and responses that we learn to deal with the problems of living; including skills like typing or driving, small-talk and routine social interaction.
You can see that false selves are the totality of what a person presents to the world; and usually also everything that a person is aware of in himself, insofar as he is aware of anything. So, our consciousness is not the same thing as our true self, because it may be unaware of the true self, may even deny the reality of any such thing as a true self.
False selves are therefore necessary but a problem, because whenever we make an effort to change ourselves in any way, the probability is that this will be a matter of one or more of the false selves trying to change us in a superficial and false direction.
The last paragraph above is vital. A small but increasing number of people are beginning to sense that they need to change themselves in some way; however, more often than not, the changes they attempt or implement emanate from false selves rather than the true self, entailing that the attempts or implementations take them in false or specious directions that end up maintaining or increasing the distance from the true self.
Discovering and bolstering the true self through consciousness and intuition is predominantly a matter of looking inward and self-observing. Yet this introspection and self-observation do not happen in the vacuum of space or somewhere out there in the ether but within a dynamic and changing world. This is as it should be given that our experience of mortal life in this world is indispensable to the further development of the true self.
The bulk of our false selves are external in their orientation. Some of these are useful and necessary for us to live in this world. Other false selves comprise the ones we intentionally or unintentionally pick up or absorb from our experiences, primarily within the context of society.
Unsurprisingly, most people consider one or more of these entirely socially oriented false selves to be their true selves. The most common expression of this kind of true-self substitution is the full identification with some vocation or other — i.e., I am a doctor; I am a writer — but it can also appear in forms like political affiliations and so forth.
Now, I imagine that these socially/externally oriented false selves serve a purpose in spiritual learning in the same sense that the ethnicity, sex, or nation we are born into serves spiritual learning goals that are of potential benefit to the true self; however, I suspect such externally imposed or socially-acquired false selves can only benefit the true self if we recognize them as false selves. These false selves will not support the true self if they are mistakenly identified as the true self. On the contrary, I suspect such false selves do more to hinder and obstruct the true self than help it, particularly when making changes.
In another post, Dr. Charlton adds the following concerning Arkle’s problem of false selves:
So, a basic problem is that most people, most of the time, do not know their true selves, and are not living from their true selves; but are instead (more or less unconsciously) simply doing and thinking whatever the process of these superficial selves are churning-out.
It is this which makes it counter-productive always to ‘do what comes naturally’ – since what seems ‘natural’ to us in this modern world is very often artificial, inculcated by propaganda or malicious intent, evil, terrorising, despair-inducing…
The last bit about propaganda, malicious intent, evil, terrorizing, and despair-inducing is of the utmost importance in this time and place.
On the one hand, I sense that the growing chaos within the external world may help some people recognize and come to terms with the false selves they have regarded to be their true selves. Some may even draw closer to their true selves during the process.
On the other hand, many people are likely to swap one of their false selves for another or intensify or reinforce the false self with which they most identify and regard as their true selves.
The demonic powers behind the System will continue to use this to their advantage by stimulating, prodding, encouraging, inflaming, stirring, and provoking people to magnify and amplify such false selves.
Such developments offer the demonic powers a veritable win-win situation. The more amplified and magnified the false selves become, the more they hinder the discovery and bolstering of true selves.
The amplification and magnification of false selves parading as true selves will also expand and compound the demonically-motivated chaos and destruction.
The more the world and the West in particular descend into chaos, the more pressing Arkle’s insights become. I will defer to Dr. Charlton to provide a summary for those unfamiliar with the true self/false selves:
One of William Arkle's core insights is that - in normal, everyday life - people act from a multitude of false selves. The true self, which is of divine origin and potentially able to become a god, is what makes us what we are - but it may be completely buried beneath false selves; the true self may be utterly ineffectual.
These false selves are of many types. Some are the collections of traits - hereditary and socialised - that constitute our 'personality' as described and measured by psychology. Others are that mass of automatic, robotic skills and responses that we learn to deal with the problems of living; including skills like typing or driving, small-talk and routine social interaction.
You can see that false selves are the totality of what a person presents to the world; and usually also everything that a person is aware of in himself, insofar as he is aware of anything. So, our consciousness is not the same thing as our true self, because it may be unaware of the true self, may even deny the reality of any such thing as a true self.
False selves are therefore necessary but a problem, because whenever we make an effort to change ourselves in any way, the probability is that this will be a matter of one or more of the false selves trying to change us in a superficial and false direction.
The last paragraph above is vital. A small but increasing number of people are beginning to sense that they need to change themselves in some way; however, more often than not, the changes they attempt or implement emanate from false selves rather than the true self, entailing that the attempts or implementations take them in false or specious directions that end up maintaining or increasing the distance from the true self.
Discovering and bolstering the true self through consciousness and intuition is predominantly a matter of looking inward and self-observing. Yet this introspection and self-observation do not happen in the vacuum of space or somewhere out there in the ether but within a dynamic and changing world. This is as it should be given that our experience of mortal life in this world is indispensable to the further development of the true self.
The bulk of our false selves are external in their orientation. Some of these are useful and necessary for us to live in this world. Other false selves comprise the ones we intentionally or unintentionally pick up or absorb from our experiences, primarily within the context of society.
Unsurprisingly, most people consider one or more of these entirely socially oriented false selves to be their true selves. The most common expression of this kind of true-self substitution is the full identification with some vocation or other — i.e., I am a doctor; I am a writer — but it can also appear in forms like political affiliations and so forth.
Now, I imagine that these socially/externally oriented false selves serve a purpose in spiritual learning in the same sense that the ethnicity, sex, or nation we are born into serves spiritual learning goals that are of potential benefit to the true self; however, I suspect such externally imposed or socially-acquired false selves can only benefit the true self if we recognize them as false selves. These false selves will not support the true self if they are mistakenly identified as the true self. On the contrary, I suspect such false selves do more to hinder and obstruct the true self than help it, particularly when making changes.
In another post, Dr. Charlton adds the following concerning Arkle’s problem of false selves:
So, a basic problem is that most people, most of the time, do not know their true selves, and are not living from their true selves; but are instead (more or less unconsciously) simply doing and thinking whatever the process of these superficial selves are churning-out.
It is this which makes it counter-productive always to ‘do what comes naturally’ – since what seems ‘natural’ to us in this modern world is very often artificial, inculcated by propaganda or malicious intent, evil, terrorising, despair-inducing…
The last bit about propaganda, malicious intent, evil, terrorizing, and despair-inducing is of the utmost importance in this time and place.
On the one hand, I sense that the growing chaos within the external world may help some people recognize and come to terms with the false selves they have regarded to be their true selves. Some may even draw closer to their true selves during the process.
On the other hand, many people are likely to swap one of their false selves for another or intensify or reinforce the false self with which they most identify and regard as their true selves.
The demonic powers behind the System will continue to use this to their advantage by stimulating, prodding, encouraging, inflaming, stirring, and provoking people to magnify and amplify such false selves.
Such developments offer the demonic powers a veritable win-win situation. The more amplified and magnified the false selves become, the more they hinder the discovery and bolstering of true selves.
The amplification and magnification of false selves parading as true selves will also expand and compound the demonically-motivated chaos and destruction.
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