Visualizing the Higher Self
- “What exactly is the Higher Self?”
- “What is the difference between connecting directly to God — or to Divine Source, or to the Creator — and connecting to my Higher Self? Or are they the same thing?”
- “When I contact my spirit guides am I in essence speaking with different aspects of my higher self, just as I have different aspects of my personality?”
These represent a sampling or common denominator of questions I’ve received from readers. We’re talking about the Mysteries here, and the more abstract the concept, the more likely my guides present me with clairvoyant (visual) information, as opposed to clairaudient (verbal/wordy) explanations. Bear with me as I attempt to translate between the two formats. This is how I see it:
Picture the Source as a flame
Start with a single candle flame — this is the Original Soul, the Source, the Divine. How many other fires can you make from this One?
Picture individual souls as cloned flames
You can light another candle, and then another, and then another… An infinite number of souls. You can replicate them from the First, or from one another. You can clone the Original Parent flame as many times you like.
Are the sibling flames the same or different from the Original Parent?
Are the sibling flames the same or different from one another?
Picture your life, your incarnation, as a candle holder
The qualities of the fire can vary depending upon the material that burns or the material that houses or surrounds the light. Place the candles in differently colored votives, luminaries, lamps, and lanterns — view them through differently hued glass, in different environments, from different perspectives and the lights take on unique qualities.
Your body, your life circumstances, and your environment are filters; the flame itself hasn’t changed.
The Same Flame
When you connect to your Higher Self, you are connecting to a clone of God. Isn’t this essentially the same energy? Your Higher Self is that light existing independent of any material filter.
Your spirit guides as well as other people are sibling flames — perhaps some are closer to you than others. Your spirit guides are like your Higher Self in that they are not filtered by the various material circumstances and conditions of the Third Dimension.
Parents, Siblings, Aunts & Uncles
I like Andrea Hess’s description in Unlock Your Intuition:
“If our Higher Self can be regarded as our parent aspect on the spiritual plane, then our Spirit Guides are the caring aunts and uncles that are deeply invested in our growth and well-being… In the physical, we have many teachers and mentors beyond our parents. Similarly, we are offered a broad range of assistance and information through our Spirit Guides on the spiritual plane.”
Collective Consciousness
Picture all our lights gathered together, illuminating a common space. When I ask my guides to show me what this might look like, they invariably tell me to “Look into the night sky.”
What’s your metaphor? How do you visualize this invisible concept? How do you view your spark of light in relation to others? Please share your understanding in the comments.
Image by Dean Forbes | Flickr via Creative Commons
Comments
8 Responses to “Visualizing the Higher Self”
Leave a Reply
Most Recent Articles
Recommended Links
Slade - thanks for the added clarity that comes through the visual. I’ve asked myself those same questions that you laid out, wondering what the difference was. What I found useful was the distinction you made that our Higher Self, and Guides, don’t have the added “burden” of the filters we have from being in a body.
I’ve learned over the last decade that my 2 preferred channels for receiving Divine/Higher Guidance include the visual, and the kinesthetic, even tho guidance has come through the other 2 channels as well. I’ve learned to trust how my body feels in response to guidance - I like what Doreen Virtue says in her book, Divine Guidance: guidance that comes from that higher source feels positive, loving, has a mature tone/content, is strong, and energizing rather than deflating.
Slade, I love the visual of millions of twinkling flames illuminating the universe
When I communicate with my higher self, I feel like I’m communicating with the purest deepest part of me - my core self, the one that’s “untainted” with any physical/egoic issues… she’s pure energy, I guess! In the same way, I see my guides as pure energy, so the fact that they’re made of the same “stuff” as me feels apparent. Yet, both my higher self and my guides all have distinct individual identities - not so much a personality, at least not in the limited sense that we use the word in an earthly sense, but more of a unique expression of the energy/consciousness from which we come. (Does that make any sense?!
)
xx Mags
Imagine this vast intelligence and that intelligence had a thought. This intelligence we like to call God…when it has a thought the thought has substance, it has life and the thought evolves. So let’s say the original thought was DNA. The DNA has thoughts and those thoughts branch off into plants and animals and eventually us and now we have thoughts…but we also have awareness and so can direct our thoughts to create with the DNA that is embedded in each cell of each of us. The original thought, the intelligence, love, light, God that we came from. Quantum physics has shown this to be true, yes? That our thoughts create?
The DNA that is in each of us and contains the codes to life on earth more closely resembles the DNA of our ancestors than others, therefore our evolution is morely closely related to theirs than others. They have a vested interest in us, so to speak, to keep their love flowing and evolving and creating.
Now we need to look at time, since there is no such thing as time. The universe was created whole and all at once. And each of the gazillion separate thoughts we think of as the universe, stars, angels and all of that exist entirely and always in the mind of God and always will and there is nothing outside the mind of God. In other words, there is nothing we cant experience, nothing we cant do and nothing between us and God. All of creation is simply a banding together of thought in loving cooperation, from the simplest to the most complex and the sum total of all of this is God.
Or not…
~ Carol
Slade, from one flame and filter to another, I see the filter as instrumental in allowing us (as flames) to experience ourselves (and each other) as filters and as flames, which in essence means getting caught up with ourselves as filters (i.e., separation) so that we might experience ourselves more fully as flames (i.e., integration). As filters, we might, on occasion, experience ourselves as flames, but as long as we experience ourselves as filters, we can never be flames. And perhaps this is as it should be. We are all, always and forever, ocsillating between our experiences as filters and flames, sometimes more filter than flame, other times more flame than filter - a natural dynamic between separation and integration that forever gives us all a taste of both.
Slade - I love the candle analogy! Mind if I steal it?
To me, the Higher Self is our Divinity. I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to actually “visualize” it, but then, I’m not that visual a person! Our Soul is a piece of God - thus it is creative and expressive across the various dimensions of its existence. To create and to express its essence is its job and its path back to God … even though I don’t think that it has truly ever “separated” from God.
Thanks for mentioning the quote from my book!
Blessings,
Andrea
Slade - Hope everything is good with you and yours, been a while
I’ve been lurking in the background while I undergo a transfomration from ’seeking’ to being’ but have been inspired to step into the fore by this post.
I understand your traditional image of the Godhead structure with breakaway of the spark, reconnaissance of experience on the elemental plane and then return to Source for integration and absorbtion of knowledge.
But my perception of the Divine is more like a a Light trapped within a crystal of amny facets - that shines through those facets to create physical emanations that manifest in this, the physical realm - those emanations manifest as you. me, the animal and vegetable world.
Therefore there is no reincarnation, only duplication of each emanation in each age - we are all the One and we are all part of the One.
The crux comes in the acceptance - do we live it or do we avoid it - that’s the ultimate choice of free will and we all have a lifetime to decide.
Thanks Slade for being an important connction on my journey - a waypoint to the Source.
Much Love,
Damian /|\ x
I took a nap a little while after reading this post and before I fell asleep I had a mental image of a wheel with Source at the center and all of us as spokes.
For the spoke that I call “me” I saw my higher self as being at the end closest to the center, while this human body I generally see as “me” was at the outer rim, the end that gets all dinged up and caked with mud.
Just two ends of one whole, which is also part of a larger whole.
I’m feeling a little jealous of my HS right now, but I wonder if the feeling is mutual and she wishes that she could play in the mud.
BTW Slade, I’ve been lurking here for a little while and I have to say that it was the “83% fewer hearts and flowers” tagline that reeled me in. I thought to myself, “OK, now I gotta hear what this guy has to say!”
I come from a very buttoned-down spiritual background and this is the first New Age-y site where I felt like the material meets me where I am and your gently irreverent style has a lot to do with that. Almost every article has given me some serious food for thought and even more importantly, a desire and willingness to act (I know the “shelf help” problem all to well). Thanks for all your hard work!
Wow, you guys! Thank you for all these excellent comments — I learned so much from your responses. I wish I had put this question to my readers sooner — your answers are thoughtful, compelling… I can’t help but feel that those who originally wrote to me seeking answers to the perspective on Higher Self will find a better answer in the synergy produced by this conversation.
It’s very fulfilling for me when the comments rival the prompt of my post.
Deb Call,
Your kinesthetic channel fascinates me. Could you elaborate — dance, yoga, cardio? What kind of movement?
Mags,
Untainted and pure energy — yes!
Carol,
You’ve written a post that’s been on my drafts list for a while! I don’t believe there is any such thing as supernatural — there are the Mysteries we don’t yet understand, but the optimal word is yet. Think of how little was understood of DNA only ten years ago… I believe that much of what we experience as psychic or metaphysical is still physical — that what we call extra-sensory is meta-sensory. There are physical, cellular, biological mechanisms at work — our miraculous future is a matter of revealing the very real codes and blueprints for consciousness that we have carried for millions of generations of cellular evolution.
Christos,
Oscillation — excellent word choice; and a natural dynamic between separation and integration that forever gives us all a taste of both — I love this image of balancing, dancing… Very nice.
Andrea,
There are so many great, practical gems of explanation in your work that make me say “Yeah! What she said!” I’d be honored if any of my words are similarly borrowed or stolen — let’s call it co-creation!
Damian,
Facets and emanations — your words evoke a sophistication — very cool!
Emily,
Your invocation of the Wheel in this context is a welcome addition to the abstract graphic… And I must tell you that your critique of my blog, generally, including where you’re coming from and your response — what “reeled” you in — very useful for me — thank you for that!
Reeling and wheeling… The comments here have given life and movement to my static description. All your collaboration is much appreciated.