Awareness of My Higher Self
By: Shirley Willett
Tags: Invisible, Spirituality, Love, Higher Self, Awareness

Awareness of My Higher Self

“Awareness is the key to living well; Loving all you see sustains it” Shirley Willett, 1985

Ron Ranere’s Liquid Light, from Shirley Willett’s collection

A Higher Self has come and gone at various moments of my life. The first experience was at age 19 in 1952. I certainly didn’t call it a Higher Self then, and I didn’t believe in a Christian God. I had moved away from home to make it easier to get to college (MassArt in Boston). It was a hot summer night with windows wide open, and friends had just left.

I was asleep on the bed sheets, when suddenly I sensed a man next to me. I froze with fright. But, out of my mouth came this deep masculine voice that calmly asked, “Who are you?” The man answered, “You don’t know me but I have been following you.”

This strange calm voice asked, “Why didn’t you make yourself known to me?”

“Because I am ugly,” he replied. That calm inner voice replied, “That would not have mattered if you were nice to me.”

In a short time he left without ever touching me, and went out the window and down the fire escape. I, Shirley, cried and shuddered, and ran to the window to close it — and did not think about this strange voice that seemed to prevent my getting raped.

I told a few friends but their response made me keep quiet, until a spiritual awakening in 1975. I plunged into a kind of scientific study of books, conferences and personal experiences from meditation. I began questioning and discussing about a Higher Self and the path toward enlightenment. Now, I could also talk with these people about my experience at 19, and heard from others who had similar experiences of a kind of “Higher Self” intervening in different ways to help them. My learning is that the Higher Self does not come when you want it; it comes when you need it — and when you are ready for it.

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Exploration of my inner self in the 1980s

There were many books and personal experiences I studied. But the most important book that guided me on my inner soul was Rudolph Steiner’s “KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLD AND ITS ATTAINMENT” p 95: “The inner soul state … in those moments of life at which he confronts the super-sensible world — he develops this state as a second being within himself. “

Steiner discusses throughout the book about “being ready” to explore and learn about this “Higher World”. Just as one develops faculties for existing in the physical world, he explains, we must develop special faculties for the Higher or super-sensible world — “giving oneself up less and less to impressions of outer world, and to develop instead a vivid inner life.”(P 10) “Every human being bears a higher man within himself. “ (P 14)

By the 1990s, with the mental and business acumen I attained from owning a design and manufacturing corporation, and the added confidence from meditation, I decided to go after and win some engineering design grants from the National Science Foundation. My outer world was working with academia. But my inner world was devoted to my gradual awareness of that second inner being — my Higher Self.

With the dawning of the 3rd millennium I now had the art I started with, the science I developed, and a wonderful inner world to sustain me. I had learned to love myself, love my body, love nature, love the whole of humanity — without being controlled by any of its rules, morals, etc. Steiner shares this on page 91: “The gift he receives from the higher regions of the supersensible world is nothing that comes to him, but only something that flows from him, that is, love for the world and for his fellows.”

Beginning to know my Higher Self

There is no measurement system for the Higher Self, higher consciousness or higher worlds. We are all at different levels of understanding, and there is no path right for everyone. It is unique for each to explore and find their unique path to a Higher Self.

Bridget Webber, Medium, wrote, “Is the Concept of the Higher Self an Illusion? … “I’ve wanted to hook up with my higher self ever since I can remember. Sometimes, I imagine I’m almost there. Wisdom streams, and I think, “this is it! The smartest part of me is awake.… Later, of course, I’m back at the start of my journey and just as unenlightened as ever.”

My Snake bag designed in 1985

I replied to Bridget with a comment from Alan Watts, “Once you become aware of the sense of ‘I’, the snake has begun to become conscious all the way around. Eventually, it will know its tail is the other end of its head, and you will have come full circle to see that “I” can do nothing at all.” The snake eating its tail was a common circular analogy in the New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s. This is when I became active and I made a snake bag to represent it. It shows the in and out of the Higher Self, as well.

Christopher Morency in Front Page 4.15.20, says, “Welcome the ‘New Age” of Spirituality”. He talks about the New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s with the theosophist David Spangler and the late Ram Dass. But by the mid-1990s the New Age was dying — just about the same time I left it. “Then came the Internet”, he said. With it, a new New Age spirituality began and is present today, but in smaller segments of society. I am hoping for more realization that humanity is sustained by Love — which starts with self-love and continues for each to find their Higher Self in Higher Worlds.

From Deepak Chopra I learned more than just being aware of breathing. As you release your breath, you follow it out to the Universe, sending love and energy. It is the most peaceful and wonderful feeling.

From Zat Rana’s Invisible Strings

Quotes from @Simona, Medium, “Exploring the Quantum Science Behind the Mind-body Connection”

“Atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.” ― Werner Heisenberg (Nobel-Prize winning physicist; pioneer of quantum mechanics)

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” ― Niels Bohr (Nobel-Prize winning physicist and also a pioneer in quantum theory)

Thank you for reading. I send my love out to all of you.