How I Awoke: The Story And Dynamics Of My Awakening

[Natasha]

@Toby Abusers do not see their actions/motives as abuse, they are simply driven by low conscious impulses. I studied psychology and if you listen to a psychopath's side of the story, you'll notice how their motives to hurt others are always justified and always tied up to victim mentality.

When a person is relatively healthy psychologically before an awakening, their perspective just gets enhanced by all the good and wholesome emotions they've cultivated during the course of their life prior to the shift... like for example, yours and mine and folks on the forum, was.

On the other hand, when a person who has been severly traumatized in their developmental years and the only way they know to love is through trauma bonding, their awakening may not cure that wounded place. It might take them a long time to even recognise the fact they had a wound in the first place. And those self-realized who recourse from hurting others can sometimes turn that victim mindset onto themselves, thus a monk burning himself in fire. Those people had masters or even were masters themselves, yet they never worked out own self-loathing/ effectively cultivated unconditional (self)love/compassion. That's why they're stuck at the Blue stage of psychological development.

Watching Leo's new vid on Why People Seem Crazy... good insights there too.    

[Toby]

Well, I know these topics very well. My teacher talks about how awakening doesn't mean you are trauma-free and talks about trauma-work all the time. And I also said it myself that you can be awake and be a psychopath and serial rapist at the same time. I was talking about "enlightenment" which for me means more an embodiment of truth and love. I still think you can have patterns going but if there is an interest to live as an expression of love (ok, you could argue that everything is an expression of love) imo it is impossible to rape someone. I don't know about suicide. Might even be the case that even masters kill themselves as happened with Radha Ma for example. I don't know the exact details, might have been "vasanas" that led to this, might not have been.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Toby

[Natasha]

@Toby Yes, unconditional love/truth includes all the 'good', the 'bad', and the 'ugly'. And the rapist would be as much of the embodiment of it as a saint would. Morality is a product of the ego - what hurts us is labeled 'bad', what gives us pleasure is 'good'. This is how duality stuff works. But I'm with you on the fact that we want reality to be our way. Dual reality, however, will never be our way, it's impossible. A character in a movie does not dictate a screen-writer how to write a script.  

[Toby]

I more or less like what Shinzen Young says here: https://youtu.be/i288Lnb7NOk?t=4m48s

[eskwire]

The suit metaphor really is fitting. I have only been able to describe enlightenment experience as being alive with nothing in the way. 

[Leo Gura]

@Pinocchio NTO-Dingu God's way of making sure one doesn't become an astrophysicist is by giving one a low IQ

[LetTheNewDayBegin]

Hi @Azrael

One more question, I hope you don't mind.

What is your approach to entertainment? Do you sometimes seek it? Is it sometimes a subject of your attention? Has it changed at all?

[Azrael]

21 minutes ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

One more question, I hope you don't mind.

No, I don't. That's why I opened this thread. So that you had the chance.

22 minutes ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

What is your approach to entertainment? Do you sometimes seek it? Is it sometimes a subject of your attention? Has it changed at all?

That's an interesting question. Hard to say though. I don't have too much entertainment in my life, I guess. Or let's say in the regular way. I don't watch TV. I am in front of a screen most of the time though. Mostly because I'm a programmer and I study. And I love it and I am addicted to it. That's why I take walks, do meditation, little sport routines etc. to get a balance for that. It's not a problem for me though.

I don't do entertainment to get away from myself. I can sit in the train and just enjoy the situation. I love to be alone with myself and just think about crazy stuff, talk to myself and contemplate ideas and stuff out of my imagination. If you would see how I behave when I'm at home alone, you'd come to the conclusion that I'm a crazy person. For sure. But that's how I like it.

I put some music on, dance. Talk to myself out loud, involve myself in my own dramas. That's my entertainment, I guess. I love watching documentaries though and I limit the amount of series that I binge. Because I very well binge if I watch one. I get completely emotionally invested and it takes away all my time. That's why I just watch the best and not too much.

I'm pretty fine with this. I work a lot - too much probably - because this is my entertainment (as well). Right now, everything kind of feels like entertainment because it feels good. So I cannot really draw the line. It comes very naturally to me what I do and how much I do of it. I don't restrict myself and I consciously go into low-consciousness behaviour sometimes because I love it. I need the balance.

But yeah, I don't know.

[Dragallur]

On 19. 6. 2017 at 9:48 PM, Azrael said:

That's an interesting question. Hard to say though. I don't have too much entertainment in my life, I guess. Or let's say in the regular way. I don't watch TV. I am in front of a screen most of the time though. Mostly because I'm a programmer and I study. And I love it and I am addicted to it. That's why I take walks, do meditation, little sport routines etc. to get a balance for that. It's not a problem for me though.

I don't do entertainment to get away from myself. I can sit in the train and just enjoy the situation. I love to be alone with myself and just think about crazy stuff, talk to myself and contemplate ideas and stuff out of my imagination. If you would see how I behave when I'm at home alone, you'd come to the conclusion that I'm a crazy person. For sure. But that's how I like it.

I put some music on, dance. Talk to myself out loud, involve myself in my own dramas. That's my entertainment, I guess. I love watching documentaries though and I limit the amount of series that I binge. Because I very well binge if I watch one. I get completely emotionally invested and it takes away all my time. That's why I just watch the best and not too much.

I'm pretty fine with this. I work a lot - too much probably - because this is my entertainment (as well). Right now, everything kind of feels like entertainment because it feels good. So I cannot really draw the line. It comes very naturally to me what I do and how much I do of it. I don't restrict myself and I consciously go into low-consciousness behaviour sometimes because I love it. I need the balance.

But yeah, I don't know.

Amazing, you just described so many of my days! You still meditate right? You said that you want to continue with your formal practice. What about self-inquiry though? If you know the answer what do you ask? Do you just feel it and dive in it? Or try to deepen the experience? Would you say that there are some things that you still do not understand that your favorite spiritual teachers talk about (especially about enlightenment)?

[Azrael]

29 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

You still meditate right? You said that you want to continue with your formal practice.

Yessssss.

29 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

What about self-inquiry though? If you know the answer what do you ask? Do you just feel it and dive in it?

I don't do self-inquiry formally. I always did and do "Do Nothing" + "Strong Determination Sitting". I did contemplate a lot and did self-inquiry throughout the day. But I don't do it any more. Self-Inquiry especially is a tool that looses its power when it succeeded. It is there to get in and get in only.

BUT, there is a but. Remember that self-inquiry is one special case of contemplation in general. And you'll not run out of things to contemplate for a bizillion life times. I still do that. I love that. I live that. I contemplated from the first very minute I was alive. This is me. A azzy L. So, this'll never go. I'm curious and naive like a little child. I'll always ask: But what is ... about?

33 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

Would you say that there are some things that you still do not understand that your favorite spiritual teachers talk about (especially about enlightenment)?

Yes and no. When it comes to the mere realization and recognition of who you are, then I would say no. This is a binary step. In or out. But, as I said in the post, this'll then throw you into a big fucking ocean and away from your path. So it's a different level in a different world. Lot's to find out here.

My understanding will never go to an end state, it'll always re-arrange itself and find more suitable models to understand the world. My experience will also never get to the point where I am done with this. Everyday I learn and experience new stuff. But the main difference is, that I don't seek for understanding or experience any more. I don't sit down to meditate to get somewhere. I don't think about a concept to hold the moving fish in my hand. This is more like play now, like a very good play though.

[Afonso]

What's still worthy to do in our life? What will you do with your life?

[Azrael]

11 hours ago, Afonso said:

What's still worthy to do in our life? What will you do with your life?

Everything that was worthy to me before. My life purpose (talked about it in more detail in this post), my friends, family, travelling, my hobbies you name it. Why shouldn't it be worth while doing?

[JustinS]

@Azrael Is your state of being very much like a low-medium dose of psilocybin? 

Timeless, egoless, pure state of being. I can very much relate to most of what you're saying on shrooms. 

[John Iverson]

On 6/5/2017 at 5:53 AM, Azrael said:

Well, yesterday night I got a message from @Leo Gura - while watching the 5th season of House of Cards - in which he asked me how much 5-MeO-DMT trips I needed to wake up. After answering his question I shared with him a short version of the story how it all happened -- how I woke up. He suggested then that I should share this with you guys to inspire and educate you. And although it's still strange for me to talk about it in detail, it's the right thing to do. Just a year ago I had one wish and one wish only: To know exactly how it is like. And I will give my best shot in trying to articulate it.

Before I start though, I will give you some perspective where I'm coming from at this. What my background is, because that's utterly important if you want to understand how my journey took place and how the dynamics of the awakening worked.

+++ My Background: How I Got Introduced To Self-Actualization / Enlightenment +++
So let's go back two years. I'm 19 years old, sitting in my old room in my parents house in the night watching Leo's first video on enlightenment. At that time, I moved to Berlin, began my studies and I felt completely fucked up. I mean, my life in general worked out. My studies were going great, I moved to the city that I wanted to live in, ... . But I was feeling just shitty and insecure. I got bullied when I was 12-14 years old for making crappy rap music and it seemed that all that fear and insecurity from that time started to bubble up. I had a chronic feeling of being overwhelmed with my life, being anxious because of that and I didn't have the courage to speak about it to someone because I was deeply convinced that it would make me seem weak and like a victim - and I could not allow that.

So, if you asked a friend of mine at that time, he would've described me as this charismatic, confident dude whose life is going pretty well. That's what I pretended to be on the outside. I am pretty charismatic and confident - so that's not a lie - but I used it as a shield so that people wouldn't notice what is going on with me. Coming back to the night in my parents house where I watched the first enlightenment video, I'm just like: "That's my last chance. I have to try this, if this works (and I just believed Leo at that time because I resonated with his style of teaching) I can live in peace." I hated myself at that time, hated who I was and how my life went, so it seemed like a good idea to kill this guy called Azrael. Also, I was fascinated by the idea that this could be possible. I had never heard about the concept of enlightenment before and although I was deeply interested in psychology / philosophy and naturally way too curious about this world, I had kind of given up on ever really knowing what is going on here. This seemed like a solution to that as well. So, I started to meditate the next day.

+++ My Journey: How I Made It Happen +++
I have one big advantage over other people and that is: I get fascinated with stuff pretty deeply. Like, when there is a topic that I'm interested in I melt into that. I will research everything that there is about it, look at all the experts in the field, fall platonically in love with them, mimic how they talk and think, what they are interested in. I will live in that dream of that fascination. I will think about it all the day, associate everything that I do with it and make it my thing. That's basically me. That's why I am so young and so old at the same time. Because I live that shit. 

And as you can guess, I did the same stuff with my journey. I meditated, self-enquired, contemplated and tried to wrap my head around it. In the first year I was just very motivated and tried to get it all in. I knew nothing about it and I wanted to "get in there". So what happened? I actually began to feel better. I had my first realizations, I had cool meditations, began to experience my first mystical experiences and started to do psychedelics - mostly LSD and DMT.

So, a year goes by and I'm sitting at home. I moved a few months before that to a new apartment and Leo just released his video on "Free Will". Still, one of my favourites of all time. After I watched the video I meditated on the question "What is going to happen next?" for an hour. In that meditation a very strange thing happened. It felt like something cracked in my head and a lot of thoughts came up. I finished the meditation, began to cook something and noticed for the first time that I am able to listen to my thoughts while knowing that I don't say them myself. Looking back at that, I think it was the point at which my unconscious opened a gateway to my conscious awareness and started to really process some shit.

After that, the most horrifying year of my entire life started. My anxiety increased to a top, my unconscious thoughts increased to a top and just hypnotized me all day long. I just couldn't stay mindful. I was scared to leave the house because I was hyper-sensitive about everything. I was a mess. I was so fucked up that I doubted that this is still purging and I sometimes assumed that I am just mentally ill. That I'm a schizophrenic, with PTSD, anxiety disorder and paranoid. That's basically a good description on how I felt for most of the days.

At that time, I had probably the deepest realizations. Funnily, if you are in such a bad state you grow a lot and pretty fast because you are meta-analysing yourself all the time (because you are so fucked up) and through that you naturally have a lot of realizations and crazy experiences. From time to time it would stop for 1-2 weeks and I would have deep moments of bliss and clarity. Then the roller-coaster would start all over again and it would get worse. Just a big fucking mess.

Needless to say that this was also the time in which I tried everything. Every kind of meditation you know, every kind of teaching that is out there, any psychedelic that I could get my hands on. I was on it. I tried it, analysed and tried to use it to get me out of that horrible state. As I will later state, this time was the time in which my mind began to awaken. I just wasn't really aware of that because simultaneously it was flooded by so many disturbing thoughts and my body was fucked up with so many tensions and bad emotions.

This cycle basically kept going for the whole year, intensified and lowered, intensified and lowered. In the summer I got tired of it. I got tired of feeling so bad. I even had suicidal thoughts sometimes (which then freaked me out even more). So I stopped seeking. I still committed to the practice, still did my thing but I just gave up that this would ever stop. I just couldn't see how.

In the autumn and winter of that year I started fucking around with 5-MeO-DMT and shrooms. I also started using HoloSync. At that time I had some interesting changes happening. After my first 5-MeO-DMT sessions the tensions in my head completely vanished. That was nice but I was still in pain, still in fear. I also didn't have the nice blissful phases any more, I just felt mostly tired and sick of this shit.

That was basically my journey. A big fucking mess. A lot of trial and error, a lot of dedication and fascination.

+++ The Awakening of The Mind +++
In the summer of this horrifying year my mind awakened. I had a few awakening experiences before that but non that lasted. In the summer I had one Kundalini awakening. I just sat on my couch, was pretty exhausted and tired that day and thought about a girl that had rejected me at that time. Suddenly this ball of energy came shooting up my spine and into my head where it exploded. The first thought I had was: "Fuck, am I going to die right now?" It was pretty intense. After that I took a walk and was just completely shocked and fascinated with what happened and how I felt. All the anxiety and attachment was gone for this evening. And I could recognize the source. I could recognize where everything is coming from and who I am. I went to a buddy later that evening and it felt like he was a creature - not a human. It was crazy. 

The days after that experience the state completely vanished and I went back into my fucked up mode. However, my sense of self was now completely rooted in source. I could - if I wanted to -  know who I truly was. It was clear. But at that time, I still thought that this cannot be it, because I still felt so damn bad. I didn't know that my body had to awaken as well to be completely rooted in it and to feel the peace and calmness of the awakening.

+++ The Awakening of The Body +++
The awakening of the mind is basically realizing who you really are. Being able to recognize source. That's great, but only half of the deal. You can be able to recognize that with your ego still intact raping you like nothing changed. And you won't be able to realize what really happened because your ego is still there. The daemon is still there. Now, here is the story of how my ego integrated and how it brought me into total balance.

Roughly two weeks ago, I'm laying in my bed waking up (normally). It's a regular morning in Berlin. I'm still a little bit tired and dreamy, thinking about my daily meditation. And I'm like: "Ah, I don't wanna meditate. I just wanna sleep today." I'm pretty grumpy in the mornings btw. This is not the first morning that I think that way and so I begin to think a little bit.

Why do I don't want to meditate any more? This is my favourite and most intimate thing I do every day. And then I'm thinking about the last couple of weeks. How do I feel? How do I feel? I feel pretty good. Wait a minute, I felt good for a pretty long time now. Why am I not thinking about spirituality any more? I used to think about this every day 24/7? Why am I not thinking that much any more in general? I'm pretty relaxed all the time. Where are my chronic tensions in my abdomen? I haven't felt them now for ... Wait a minute.

And it goes on like this. That morning I realised that I had awakened. It was the strangest thing. I wasn't able to tell for some days what really changed, I just knew that I didn't feel bad any more and that all my motivation to do my practice just disappeared. (I still did it of course - gotta be disciplined with this and not listen to your thoughts.) After some time I began to think about myself again because I wanted to know what changed.

A few nights ago I skyped with my good friend @Huz and I came up with a metaphor that describes it pretty well.

+++ The Metaphor: How It Feels to Wake Up +++
So, in the normal non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - wow that's a phrase that sounds pretty evil just writing it - it's like you have an invisible suit that you wear at all times. This suit has one property and one property only. It makes it hard for sensations, emotions and feelings to get out of your body.

So now with having this suit on, when you have a sensation or an emotion that goes through your body it will naturally be resisted by the suit and so ping back into your system. It's like there is a resistance through that invisible suit. So that sensation or emotion will go another time through your body and by that amplify the effect it has on you. Because it cannot get out easily. It might get out after some time, depending on how strong your suit is, but it's hard for the poor little thing. Through that you tend to "attach" to what is going on with you. Even more, you begin to identify with what is going on inside yourself because the effect is so strong and always repeats because of the resistance.

The same thing is happening with your thoughts. You have a thought and it cannot get out because of your suit. It gets back. Makes another round, triggers other thoughts that cannot get out that trigger even more thoughts. Through that a constant chatter of thoughts is made possible.

As you start your practice you begin to unconsciously work on your suit. As you purge more and more shit its resistance gets weaker and more thoughts can go out of your system at first. Then, as this happens a lot of the repressed thoughts are now able to release themselves and your system is flooded by them. Because your suit is weaker they can get out but because of the volume of the repressed thoughts that are now set free it seems like you are regressing - although you are not.

Through that process you might be able at some time to recognize who you really are because so much changes inside of yourself. That's great and that's what happened when my mind awakened - however the suit was still on - although weakened. When the body awakens what basically happens is that the suit looses its last resistance and falls off.

Through that your body is now able to think and process emotions naturally without unconscious resistance of the suit. This of course implicates that you loose most of your inner tensions and that the volume of your thoughts go down, because they are not amplified any more. It also implicates that you are able to recognize who you are much easier because the strong identification with your sensations, emotions and thoughts is released and really everything that you are aware of finds a perfect balance.

This also explains why I did not instantly recognize what happened to me. My meta-analysis, my pain, my tensions, my thought stories just left like a daemon that raped me and through that I just was and am in a state of peace that is not questioning itself all the time and is not trying to get away from itself.

I hope this makes sense.

+++ The Aftermath: What Now Then? +++
Well, I don't now, to be honest. Right now, I am pretty relaxed. I still do my normal day to day shit, I still have all my preferences, dreams and desires. I don't want to get away from myself any more and I know who I am. I am quite empty. I guess that's a phase in the beginning. I will see where it takes me. I will commit to my practice and see what comes next. I hope that I am able to find a lot of more metaphors in the future about this and I'd like to write more about it to help you guys and make me understand it on an intellectual level.

One thing that is very important to understand here is the following: In all my seeking, non-seeking and whatever I did I always made up this picture in my head of "how it would be if I'm there". And that's natural in the non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - oh I love this phrase. I think that this transition took place because when I chased this picture of "how it would be" I was at the same time doing all the work that unconsciously set up all the dynamics and mechanisms to transform my whole being. It took the time that it needed and it didn't give a fuck how I felt about it. When it was time it first awakened my mind and then later awakened the body and when that happened and both came into balance it was just like the picture dissolved and I was shot from my path into a big fucking ocean in which I have to now find out how to swim. It's like I just completed this level and am now at square one again - just in a different world.

Well let's find out what's going on in here, right? Because the levels never stop. That's the fun of the game, I guess.

I'm thankful to all the members on this forum that I had and have great conversations with. Especially I'm thankful for @Leo Gura who introduced me to all of this and is a constant inspiration, source of education and a fucking pain in the ass to be more committed, @jjer94, @Ayla and @cetus56 who made me realize so much with their beautiful writing and lastly @Huz my great good friend from the UK with whom I have the best conversations about all of this and who is always listening and responding to my crazy voice messages.

Cheers, Az

P.S. Feel free to ask me whatever is on your mind about all of this. I'm happy to help and to further clarify what I stated here. I will - in the future - post a lot more about the techniques that I used, about more of the dynamics of the process, new trip reports and all the other good shit that we all love to talk about.

Visit my profile read my topics there.. i want to here an answer from you...

[Azrael]

On 27.6.2017 at 8:25 AM, Outer said:

Can you spot self in others, or ego in others? Are ego and self the same thing, or is there a reason for why there are two different words?

What is capital 'S'elf in your opinion? Is it relatable to my question regarding difference between ego and self?

Yeah, I can spot that in others and myself, too. I've spotted it yesterday in @Huz when we skyped to elaborate on what the ego really is and how it works. But more importantly I can spot and differentiate it in myself from my normal self.

The "Self" with a capital "S" is your authentic character. It is the way how you are. What you like, how you speak, how you think, etc. This is not bad at all. This is your expression in this world. Don't try to get rid of that. I see a lot of people confusing that with ego. The ego is the suit that I talked about in my post. It resists parts of your authentic, spontaneous arising character to keep it in place. It's like a guardian that makes sure you don't get too crazy.

Well, there's always a cost of having that kind of 24/7 security.  

[Azrael]

18 hours ago, JustinS said:

@Azrael Is your state of being very much like a low-medium dose of psilocybin? 

Timeless, egoless, pure state of being. I can very much relate to most of what you're saying on shrooms. 

Well, yes it surely feels like a low dose of shrooms trip on a day to day basis, but that's a symptom. As your thoughts go down, it'll naturally be like that because your awareness now shines more on different things. The main difference is that if I look at the shelf e.g., I can honest to god not feel or recognize a difference to what we would call myself. And that comes with a lot of implications. And the low shrooms trip state of being is one point of that. But keep in mind that states are only temporary. I might feel that way as a basis, but for example when I'll get into an argument or a fight, or if I do something very different, I will feel and perceive the world differently. As you wake up, you tend to not want to be in one state or another any more, because it really doesn't matter. That's the beauty.

[Azrael]

3 hours ago, Outer said:

So your day is like a blank canvas letting any paint come on, without trying to filter anything from sticking?

Yes. But the point here is that I don't try not to filter anything from sticking, but that the one who once did disappeared. So I'm not even aware of any fight or disturbance or resistance, because it is not present any more.

3 hours ago, Outer said:

I hhave a question regarding planning, goals. What would you consider your terminal goal? Since it guides your actions,even if you have instrumental goals.

When I feel inside as I read this question nothing comes up. I'm not fixed any more to any specific goals. I don't try to make one side of myself buy into some concept. To give an illustration of this. You always try to sell your opinions to yourself like "I will really work on my life purpose", "I meditate for the rest of my life", "I'm a good kid" etc.

You do this to a very large degree. This mostly stopped for me. I have an intuition and a strong feeling of my way. I personally "believe" that there is a way laid out for me that I'll just go. And that this will happen independent whether I'll fight it or don't. I "know" this to be true for me because it felt like that from the very beginning of my existence. But that's a belief, a strong one.

So, to answer your question. I don't have a terminal goal that drives me that I know of consciously. I have a way that I go and that way follows certain patterns and routes that make me learn stuff that I should learn. I don't decide on that consciously, but I do "super-consciously."

[Ananta]

On 6/27/2017 at 2:25 AM, Outer said:

Can you spot self in others, or ego in others? Are ego and self the same thing, or is there a reason for why there are two different words?

What is capital 'S'elf in your opinion? Is it relatable to my question regarding difference between ego and self?

I know this wasnt directed to me, but thought I'd give my take, if you don't mind.

The self (lower case) is the false-self, which is the same thing as ego. It's the "I-thought" that arise with reference to the body, to experience (subject-object) and prior to "enlightenment" falsely identifies itself with awareness/consciousness. Which makes it (ego) think its an independent, individual, "person".

Where as after enlightenment you know you "are" awareness/consciousness which is the background/foreground, permeates everything and from which everything is created, including the apparent person you think you are. So, that "one" aspect of ego dissolves, because there is a switch in identifying as the "limited person" as self, to identifying with "awareness" as Self.

The other 2 aspects of ego (I-thought) continue to arise after knowing/realizing your true nature, as awareness.

Now, in the spiritual community, the Self (with a capital S), means Brahman or pure Presence or pure Awareness, or Consciousness. This has been my experience. 

 

Edited July 7, 2017 by Anna1

[Ananta]

9 hours ago, Outer said:

I'm not sure I want enlightenment anymore. Because I think I am want other goals

It's a switch in "identification", knowing/realizing the truth of who you are and priorities/behaviors can change over time (or not), but otherwise, you still have thoughts, feelings, emotions, issues/challenges, sickness/health, job/career, family, vacations, ect. You know that although that these things exist, as you experience them, they ultimately aren't real. What's real is what never changes, you, pure awareness.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2017 by Anna1

[Ananta]

On 6/28/2017 at 4:07 AM, Azrael said:

The "Self" with a capital "S" is your authentic character. It is the way how you are. What you like, how you speak, how you think, etc.

Most would consider one's defining characteristic combination as one's ..."personality".  

To my knowledge, Carl Jung made some kind of reference to Self (capital S), but that's psychology, not spiritually.