Thursday, June 29, 2006

Your Inner Self

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.” - Richard Bach (author of 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull)

All of us have this inner self that we listen to and argue with. Yes, you can have an argument with yourself. It is your inner attempt to reconcile or deal with information. One may think that we are of a single mind so therefore no conflict should exist. Yet it does and some may call this self actualization. This is the process of understanding oneself more completely and being aware of issues affecting one's life.

From The Conscious and Unconscious Mind by Kendra Van Wagner, according to Sigmund Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts:

1. The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious.

2. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.

Two parts of us at conflict with each other. It is this inner-self that you must attempt to deal with in order to better handle what life sets before you. I'm not certain any of us fully reach a point in which we completely understand our inner self. But we all need to reconcile ourselves to that inner voice. Once you have done this, it releases you to move forward in life to go after your dreams.

"Believe in your vision, act upon your vision and realize your vision." - Joseph Primm

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