The Top 10 Concepts of True Self Life Mission Operating System
Bamboo Growth Newsletter #44
Happy 4th of July.
Introduction
One of the most important things I now understood about transforming my life and getting unstuck, especially from my trauma false self, is that there is what I call an entire operating system that needs to be transformed. In our false self, we not only developed our false self but also several other components that form an entire lifestyle and way of living that works around that traumatized false self. This entire lifestyle and way of living are what I call the false self operating system.
Awareness or Dissociation
I have used the symptoms framework below to illustrate and contrast the differences between the true self and the false self. First, under awareness, the biggest thing is that in the false self we believe the chattering mind is who we are. The false self is often dissociated from the rest of the body and emotions. The false self is unconscious, is trauma-uninformed, and normally blames circumstances for their issues. In contrast, under the True Self operating system, we know that the observer is our true self. We are connected to our minds, emotions, and bodies. We are trauma-informed and 100% accept 100% responsibility for our responses to events.
Self-Identity or Negative Self-Image
The essence of the false self operating system resides around our core wound and adaptive behaviors. I am bad; therefore, I need to be a good girl. I am a failure; therefore, I need to be smart. I am not safe; therefore, I need to be controlling or dominant. This is the basis of our self-identity. In addition, we have also created parts of our mind: the most damaging of these is the inner critic, which criticizes us (i.e., You are blank and blank) or makes us feel shame (i.e., I am blank or blank).
Emotional Regulation or Affect Dysregulation
The false self is disconnected emotionally or has emotional regulation issues. The false self is often traumatized and has several unresolved issues. In the True Self operating system, the true self is good at feelings and also has worked to heal its past trauma and other issues.
Attachment or Interpersonal Disturbances
The false self has an insecure attachment and normally significant issues in their relationships. The True Self has an earned secure attachment and has better primary relationships.
Other
There are other differences in other categories between the true self and the false self. The biggest of these is that I have found the True Self has learned self-compassion or other forms of loving itself. The false self normally is low on self-compassion. I normally find taking the self-compassion test is often revealing. The other item that is worthwhile to point out is that I have found that once a person discovers his true self, it is often an empowering process to create their life mission. In addition, there are other beliefs and values that need to be examined outside of the core wound in order for individuals to start to get unstuck in health, happiness, love, and abundance.
The items in bold in the chart above are the more important concepts. We will examine these concepts in more detail below.
The Top 10 Concepts of True Self Operating System
1. True Self
The true self is also known as our authentic self, the observer, the soul, our resonant self-witness, etc. The vast majority of us are not connected to our true selves. Almost always, especially via childhood developmental or shock trauma, we get disconnected from our true self. Getting back to our true self is one of the most important steps to spiritual growth. It is also the most important step to building a new mental and behavioral, or True Self, operating system, also called True Self personality, in order to live our best lives and our life mission.
First, one needs to understand the greatest wound of trauma. According to A. H. Almaas, who Gabor Maté believes is the best spiritual combined with psychology teacher, “the fundamental thing that happened, and the greatest calamity, is not that there was no love or support in childhood. The greatest calamity, which is caused by the first calamity, is that you lost the connection to your essence. That is much more important than whether your mother or father loved you or not.” Gabor Mate explains, “In other words, the fundamental trauma was the loss of connection to yourself. And as I’ll be telling you, when I talk about trauma, that disconnection from the self IS the greatest wound.”
Donald Winnicott, the psychologist who has most been identified with True Self vs. False Self, in the abstract to his book The Person Who is Me, contrasts the True Self and the False Self:
“The development in psychoanalysis has been the increasing use of the concept of the False Self. This concept carries with it the idea of a True Self. A particular danger arises out of the not infrequent tie-up between the intellectual approach and the False Self. When a false self becomes organized in an individual who has a high intellectual potential, there is a very strong tendency for the mind to become the location of the false self, and in this case, there develops a dissociation between intellectual activity and psychosomatic existence. The concept of "a false self" needs to be balanced by a formulation of that which could properly be called the true self. Only the True Self can be creative, and only the True Self can feel real. Whereas a true self feels real, the existence of a false self results in a feeling of unreality or a sense of futility.”
Recognizing and connecting back to your true self is, according to some, the most important step in your spiritual growth. Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul: The Journey to Beyond Yourself: “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you. People go through so many changes in the name of “trying to find myself.” They want to discover which of these voices, which of these aspects of their personality, is who they really are. The answer is simple: none of them.”
The following is Deepak Chopra contrasting the true self and the everyday self (or false self).
“The qualities of the everyday self and the true self are actually very different:
1. The true self is certain and clear about things. The everyday self gets influenced by countless outside influences, leading to confusion.
2. The true self is stable. The everyday self shifts constantly.
3. The true self is driven by a deep sense of truth. The everyday self is driven by the ego, the unending demands of "I, me, mine."
4. The true self is at peace. The everyday self is easily agitated and disturbed.
5. The true self is love. The everyday self, lacking love, seeks it from outside sources.
Look at the qualities of the true self: self-reliant, evolutionary, loving, creative, knowing, accepting, and peaceful. Whenever anyone is in crisis, whether the problem is a troubled marriage or difficulties at work or over money, they will make the best decisions if they utilize these qualities.
Read more: https://www.oprah.com/inspiration/deepak-chopra-the-difference-between-the-true-self-and-everyday-self#ixzz6zfXQG4lD"
2. Trauma Framework
The wisdom of trauma is that our trauma can lead us back to ourselves, our true selves. By following the path of how we became traumatized, we are able to find out that we are disconnected from ourselves and how to reconnect to ourselves. As Dr. Gabor Mate says, “The wisdom of trauma means that our traumas, how they manifest, and how we relate to them can teach us to be ourselves and can restore that connection that we lost in the first place.”
“Trauma is the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love, and the way we see the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds. In a trauma-informed society, people will “seek to understand trauma and its sources, which often are the causes.” (From the Wisdom of Trauma, the movie)
Trauma is much more pervasive in our society than we think. When we think about trauma, we mostly are influenced by our thinking of shock trauma, i.e., PTSD caused by war and people having flashback memories. However, trauma is not an event that happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside of your body and mind. As such, there are many traumas that society is now understanding, such as developmental trauma, complex trauma, attachment trauma, and intergenerational trauma. Trauma probably personally affects 95% of all of us. We just don’t know it until we understand what trauma is and why it’s important to understand the disconnection to ourselves and how we fix it.
Neurobiology of Trauma
There are several main findings from neuroscience that are generally accepted. Six of these were listed in Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation by Bruce Ecker et al.
The most important concept from neuroscience is lifelong neuroplasticity. The brain can always rewire itself. Because of this, human beings can change at any age and at any time. It is also the foundation of a growth mindset.
Just as important to psychology is that the brain’s neural circuits are changed therapeutically via new experiences and not only through cognitive insights.
Interestingly, imaginal experiences are just as effective for creating new neural circuits and new responses because the emotional centers of the subcortex (limbic brain) hardly distinguish between perceptions arising externally versus internally.
Different parts of the brain handle different functions, and there is great plasticity in the integration and sharing among the subsystems. The brain, for simple explanation, is often divided into the triune brain: cortex (thinking), subcortex (limbic or emotional brain), and the brain stem. And then the left and right brain.
The unconscious (the Freudian unconscious) consists largely of implicit memory of emotional learnings formed and stored in the right cortical hemisphere and the subcortical limbic system (amygdala). Implicit emotional learnings, the unconscious learnings, create responses that are independent of conscious awareness, which is based primarily on separate parts of the cortical region.
Early life experiences within primary attachments create issues, i.e., developmental trauma that remains in implicit memory, and these can later lead to issues in brain system integration, interpersonal issues, personality, and moods.
Understanding the neurobiology of trauma gives us a way to understand how the brain operates and why we are the way we are. Trauma gives an explanation for a host of mental issues, from anxiety and depression to addictions and also many physical ailments. Trauma has also allowed us to understand somatic or body memory, attachment theory, and Polyvagal Theory. It has also provided us an understanding of the default mode network and its role in being our inner critic.
A very good example of why neurobiology helps us is the understanding of trauma and implicit memory. We understand that many trauma memories get “trapped” in implicit memory, and with self-compassion in a revisit of the incident, we can get the prefrontal cortex (PFC) connected to the implicit memory and move it to the hippocampus. This understanding is very important because while the memory is trapped in implicit memory in the amygdala, it is not “time-stamped,” and the memory lives in the present moment even though the incident could be decades old. It is why to this day, when I hear a noise that even sounds like a car “backfire,” I think it is a gunshot (trauma of living in Jamaica), and I duck automatically even if I am 10 stories up in a building in a tux at a cocktail party.
Symptoms Framework to Look at Trauma
The Symptoms framework used in ICD-11 for complex PTSD has given us a diagnostic framework in order to be able to diagnose and eventually treat trauma.
Mark’s True Self Life Mission, Evolved Mind Solutions Framework
Using the trauma diagnostic framework enabled me to place everything I knew about trauma into this framework. Essentially everything belonged to one of the symptoms. As you can see in the above chart, affect dysregulation was one category, and I could fit all the emotionally related issues, such as anxiety, depression, anger, safety, etc., into this category and then figure out what tools I could use to help people to work with these issues. In this way, I could focus on solving the main issues.
It is via this method that I ended up understanding and focusing first on solving how to get back to consciousness or the True Self. After this, I then needed to know how to dismantle the false self-operating system, heal past wounds, and create the skills and tools needed to use a true self-operating system.
3. Core Wound and Adaptive Behavior
Understanding my core wound and adaptive behavior was fundamental in helping me to understand my behavior and make sense of my life. Why did I make the choices I did in my life and the resulting patterns in my life? In all my clients and friends who have reached a better place in their lives, understanding our core wound and adaptive behavior was germane to changing our behavior and our beliefs and transforming our lives.
I have found that uncovering this core wound and adaptive behavior is one of the first steps to creating a True Self operating system. It is often the part of my coaching work that is the most valuable because it is often so difficult to find unless you have a good process to follow. For me, this was the last step that made the difference for me in creating a True Self operating system.
Our core wound, such as I am bad, I am not enough, I am not lovable, or I am not safe, created adaptive personas such as good boy/good girl, working hard to prove I am smart, taking care of others to the detriment of oneself, or rebellious or nihilistic attitudes. These false self-identities then become traits and create the choices and behaviors that create our lives.
The trauma framework best explains what happened to us to create our false self and our false self operating system, or false self personality. When we understand what happened to us, we are better able to forgive ourselves, which calms the inner critic and also enables us to make the changes in our lives, especially our beliefs around our core wound.
In my case, instead of having a core wound of I am damaged" or I am a failure, I have been able to create a core belief of I am a child of God" and I am connected to myself and the universe. Also, I am amazing just the way I am. And finally, I am a powerful and successful creator of magical legacies. Just think of how different my life will be in having these as my core beliefs versus the former core wound beliefs. What will happen to you when you change yours?
4. True Self Operating System
Many of us have been able to become conscious via meditation or other forms of consciousness. However, we have been living with a false operating system and not knowing we need to transform it into a True Self operating system. A false operating system consists of our core wound and adaptive behaviors and limiting beliefs (see above introduction) that have taken us throughout life.
A simple example is a person who grows up with a core wound of thinking they are “bad.” And she develops a good girl persona, which is always helping other people to prove that she is not bad. She listens to her parents and goes to university and takes courses in business instead of her love for music or art and then gets a job. At her core thinks she is a bad person and gets into bad relationships trying to save the “bad boy.” Eventually, she will discover that her belief of being “I am bad” was as a result of childhood issues of her mother just not being able to cope with 6 kids and telling her constantly that she is “bad.” When she becomes conscious, she now has a choice of being her true self. Who is that person? What does the true, conscious person do, and how do that person's thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviors change?.
Gary Zukav, in his newly released book, Universal Human, has made the discussion of the soul (I use the psychological term true self) and the human personality that goes with it, which he calls the multi-sensory personality (i.e., in my parlance, the true self operating system) vs. the 5 senses personality (which I term the false self operating system), the subject of the book.
Zukav states that authentic power is derived when the soul is in alignment with the multi-sensory personality. Zukav states that what is required is emotional awareness (i.e., get good at feelings), responsible choice, and intention (work with the intention of creating from love versus fear). While a spiritual perspective of learning to live with love versus fear, Zukav clearly outlines the formation of the false self operating system (5 senses personality), which is formed from fear, versus the true self operating system (multi-sensory personality), which is formed from being your true self (the soul) and from love. According to Zukav, when we create authentic power, we are able to live a life that is filled with joy, passion, love, vitality, and creativity.
There are several things a person needs to do to create their authentic power and to be their true self with a True Self operating system. For the person with the true self (soul), they need to improve their awareness, learn to be more loving and compassionate to themselves, integrate their various parts, get good at feelings, and take responsibility for their actions, give their new overflowing love to others, and use their gifts in service to others in creating a better world. There are many things to learn that were stunted in their development during childhood and the creation of the false self personality to evolve their brain’s neuroplasticity to create an evolved mind that can be calm, kind, and creative. This new True Self operating system is one that will be able to provide increased presence, happiness, better health, authenticity, meaning, feeling fulfilled, vitality, and creativity when we are being our true selves.
The first place to begin being our true self is to excavate our true self. Once our true self is found, then we need to increase our mental, emotional, and somatic (body) awareness. Almost immediately, once we become aware, we are also aware of our default mode network, also called our inner critic. This is the monkey chatter in our brain that is constantly running in our minds. It is automatic until we learn to control our attention. The inner critic can be very cruel and harsh.
Often, in order to control the inner critic, we need to learn to give ourselves self-compassion or learn to love ourselves. This is a missing skill that is critical to reclaiming our true self and dismantling the false operating system or false personality. There are numerous ways to love ourselves. These include sending energetic love, self-compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and self-care and doing things that will keep us physically, financially, and emotionally safe and belonging to a community.
In addition to the part of us that we call the inner critic, I have found that other parts of us need to be reclaimed. The inner child, the part of us that is responsible for our play, joy, and spontaneity, needs to be rescued, as it often feels like it is trapped in our childhood. There are also defenders who seem to hold us back from taking risks or firefighters that make us prone to addictions, etc. These parts need to be understood, the roles they played in our false self operating system, and what changes need to be made in creating our new true self operating system.
Once we learn to be more aware of our thoughts and we are able to love ourselves, we also need to be aware of our emotions and body sensations. One of the easiest survival mechanisms is to dissociate from our bodies and emotions. This is how we originally became disconnected from our true selves. We lost our connection to our feelings and to our body (sentient feelings) because the pain of feeling bad was as hurtful as the pain from being hit repeatedly on our fingers with a hammer.
We need to become good at feelings. Often our brain networks are underdeveloped or maladapted, and we end up with anxiety, anger issues, and a proneness to depression and addiction. We also have emotional events in our childhood that need to be resolved in order for us to move on with our lives and change our false self operating system.
So by getting good at feelings, we get reconnected back to our bodies and emotions. We become aware of our body and our emotions, and we learn how to process these emotions and sensations in our body.
I have generally found that self-compassion helps to earn a secure attachment style from an insecure attachment. Once these steps are completed, the person is able to operate in the world with vitality and creativity to be the person who they need to be in order to create the life of their dreams.
5. Self-Compassion or Love
When I learned to love myself and give myself self-compassion, I created an environment of safety and peace in my mind. With my clients, I also noticed that self-compassion was a missing ingredient for many of them.
When I did research, I noticed that compassion was the foundation of many trauma-based therapies. In somatic experiencing by Peter Levine, the compassionate witness is paramount. In Gabor Mate's Compassion Inquiry, the name itself gives you the importance of compassion in healing. In Sarah Peyton’s Resonant Self-Witness, resonance is another word that is used for self-compassion. In NARM, Laurence Heller’s developmental trauma healing modality, compassion is one of the fundamental values. In Clear Beliefs, appreciation is an important quality for the facilitator. In RIM, neutral witnessing is an important quality. In psychoanalysis, the therapist develops a form of compassionate witnessing. In Ho’ oponopono, forgiveness is the key. In Reiki, giving yourself and others “universal energy” is the key healing element. I have written that gratitude is the fastest way to create health, love, happiness, and wealth.
The “healing” in all these modalities is some kind of love. Self-love, self-compassion, appreciation, forgiveness, gratitude, love, and universal energy. These are all forms of love.
We don’t need to receive this healing from others. We can actually give ourselves this love once we are in our True Self. With our True Self, we are able to learn to love ourselves using all these various tools of love. Self-compassion and forgiveness are great tools, and we can use them to learn to quiet the inner critic. We can be our own compassionate self-witness when we re-examine past events in our lives and heal ourselves. I can hear in my head the Beatles singing, “Love, love, love… All you need is love.”
Love vs. Fear
In spiritual-based circles, we often hear about love versus fear-based systems. A false self operating system was created out of fear—fear that we would not belong to the tribe, so we developed a fear-based, false self operating system. What is needed to enable our authentic power is then to get back to our True Self, which is love, and create a love-based, True Self Operating System. Then we can also make decisions based on love versus fear.
6. Inner Critic
Using the trauma diagnostic framework enabled me to place everything I knew about trauma into this framework. Essentially everything belonged to one of the symptoms. As you can see in the above chart, affect dysregulation was one category, and I could fit all the emotionally related issues, such as anxiety, depression, anger, safety, etc., into this category and then figure out what tools I could use to help people to work with these issues. In this way, I could focus on solving the main issues.
It is via this method that I ended up understanding and focusing first on solving how to get back to consciousness or the True Self. After this, I then needed to know how to dismantle the false self-operating system, heal past wounds, and create the skills and tools needed to use a true self-operating system.
3. Core Wound and Adaptive Behavior
Understanding my core wound and adaptive behavior was fundamental in helping me to understand my behavior and make sense of my life. Why did I make the choices I did in my life and the resulting patterns in my life? In all my clients and friends who have reached a better place in their lives, understanding our core wound and adaptive behavior was germane to changing our behavior and our beliefs and transforming our lives.
I have found that uncovering this core wound and adaptive behavior is one of the first steps to creating a True Self operating system. It is often the part of my coaching work that is the most valuable because it is often so difficult to find unless you have a good process to follow. For me, this was the last step that made the difference for me in creating a True Self operating system.
Our core wounds, such as I am bad, I am not enough, I am not lovable, or I am not safe, created adaptive personas such as good boy/good girl, working hard to prove I am smart, taking care of others to the detriment of oneself, or rebellious or nihilistic attitudes. These false self-identities then become traits and create the choices and behaviors that create our lives.
The trauma framework best explains what happened to us to create our false self and our false self operating system, or false self personality. When we understand what happened to us, we are better able to forgive ourselves, which calms the inner critic and also enables us to make the changes in our lives, especially our beliefs around our core wound.
In my case, instead of having a core wound of I am damaged" or I am a failure, I have been able to create a core belief of I am a child of God" and I am connected to myself and the universe. Also, I am amazing just the way I am. And finally, I am a powerful and successful creator of magical legacies. Just think of how different my life will be in having these as my core beliefs versus the former core wound beliefs. What will happen to you when you change yours?
4. True Self Operating System
Many of us have been able to become conscious via meditation or other forms of consciousness. However, we have been living with a false operating system and not knowing we need to transform it into a True Self operating system. A false operating system consists of our core wound and adaptive behaviors and limiting beliefs (see above introduction) that have taken us throughout life.
A simple example is a person who grows up with a core wound of thinking they are “bad.” And she develops a good girl persona, which is always helping other people to prove that she is not bad. She listens to her parents and goes to university and takes courses in business instead of her love for music or art and then gets a job. At here, she thinks she is a bad person and gets into bad relationships trying to save the “bad boy.” Eventually, she will discover that her belief of being “I am bad” was as a result of childhood issues of her mother just not being able to cope with 6 kids and telling her constantly that she is “bad.” When she becomes conscious, she now has a choice of being her true self. Who is that person? What does the true, conscious person do, and how do that person's thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviors change?.
Gary Zukav, in his newly released book, Universal Human, has made the discussion of the soul (I use the psychological term true self) and the human personality that goes with it, which he calls the multi-sensory personality (i.e., in my parlance, the true self operating system) vs. the 5 senses personality (which I term the false self operating system), the subject of the book.
Zukav states that authentic power is derived when the soul is in alignment with the multi-sensory personality. Zukav states that what is required is emotional awareness (i.e., getting good at feelings), responsible choice, and intention (working with the intention of creating from love versus fear). While a spiritual perspective of learning to live with love versus fear, Zukav clearly outlines the formation of the false self operating system (5 senses personality), which is formed from fear, versus the true self operating system (multi-sensory personality), which is formed from being your true self (the soul) and from love. According to Zukav, when we create authentic power, we are able to live a life that is filled with joy, passion, love, vitality, and creativity.
There are several things a person needs to do to create their authentic power and to be their true self with a True Self operating system. For the person with the true self (soul), they need to improve their awareness, learn to be more loving and compassionate to themselves, integrate their various parts, get good at feelings, and take responsibility for their actions, give their new overflowing love to others, and use their gifts in service to others in creating a better world. There are many things to learn that were stunted in their development during childhood and the creation of the false self personality to evolve their brain’s neuroplasticity to create an evolved mind that can be calm, kind, and creative. This new True Self operating system is one that will be able to provide increased presence, happiness, better health, authenticity, meaning, feeling fulfilled, vitality, and creativity when we are being our true selves.
The first place to begin being our true self is to excavate our true self. Once our true self is found, then we need to increase our mental, emotional, and somatic (body) awareness. Almost immediately, once we become aware, we are also aware of our default mode network, also called our inner critic. This is the monkey chatter in our brain that is constantly running in our minds. It is automatic until we learn to control our attention. The inner critic can be very cruel and harsh.
Often, in order to control the inner critic, we need to learn to give ourselves self-compassion or learn to love ourselves. This is a missing skill that is critical to reclaiming our true self and dismantling the false operating system or false personality. There are numerous ways to love ourselves. These include sending energetic love, self-compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and self-care and doing things that will keep us physically, financially, and emotionally safe and belonging to a community.
In addition to the part of us that we call the inner critic, I have found that other parts of us need to be reclaimed. The inner child, the part of us that is responsible for our play, joy, and spontaneity, needs to be rescued, as it often feels like it is trapped in our childhood. There are also defenders who seem to hold us back from taking risks or firefighters that make us prone to addictions, etc. These parts need to be understood, the roles they played in our false self operating system, and what changes need to be made in creating our new true self operating system.
Once we learn to be more aware of our thoughts and we are able to love ourselves, we also need to be aware of our emotions and body sensations. One of the easiest survival mechanisms is to dissociate from our bodies and emotions. This is how we originally became disconnected from our true selves. We lost our connection to our feelings and to our body (sentient feelings) because the pain of feeling bad was as hurtful as the pain from being hit repeatedly on our fingers with a hammer.
We need to become good at feelings. Often our brain networks are underdeveloped or maladapted, and we end up with anxiety, anger issues, and a proneness to depression and addiction. We also have emotional events in our childhood that need to be resolved in order for us to move on with our lives and change our false self operating system.
So by getting good at feelings, we get reconnected back to our bodies and emotions. We become aware of our body and our emotions, and we learn how to process these emotions and sensations in our body.
I have generally found that self-compassion helps to earn a secure attachment style from an insecure attachment. Once these steps are completed, the person is able to operate in the world with vitality and creativity to be the person who they need to be in order to create the life of their dreams.
5. Self-Compassion or Love
When I learned to love myself and give myself self-compassion, I created an environment of safety and peace in my mind. With my clients, I also noticed that self-compassion was a missing ingredient for many of them.
When I did research, I noticed that compassion was the foundation of many trauma-based therapies. In somatic experiencing by Peter Levine, the compassionate witness is paramount. In Gabor Mate's Compassion Inquiry, the name itself gives you the importance of compassion in healing. In Sarah Peyton’s Resonant Self-Witness, resonance is another word that is used for self-compassion. In NARM, Laurence Heller’s developmental trauma healing modality, compassion is one of the fundamental values. In Clear Beliefs, appreciation is an important quality for the facilitator. In RIM, neutral witnessing is an important quality. In psychoanalysis, the therapist develops a form of compassionate witnessing. In Ho’ oponopono, forgiveness is the key. In Reiki, giving yourself and others “universal energy” is the key healing element. I have written that gratitude is the fastest way to create health, love, happiness, and wealth.
The “healing” in all these modalities is some kind of love. Self-love, self-compassion, appreciation, forgiveness, gratitude, love, and universal energy. These are all forms of love.
We don’t need to receive this healing from others. We can actually give ourselves this love once we are in our True Self. With our true self, we are able to learn to love ourselves using all these various tools of love. Self-compassion and forgiveness are great tools, and we can use them to learn to quiet the inner critic. We can be our own compassionate self-witness when we re-examine past events in our lives and heal ourselves. I can hear in my head the Beatles singing, “Love, love, love… All you need is love.”
Love vs. Fear
In spiritually based circles, we often hear about love versus fear-based systems. A false self operating system was created out of fear—fear that we would not belong to the tribe, so we developed a fear-based, false self operating system. What is needed to enable our authentic power is then to get back to our True Self, which is love, and create a love-based, True Self Operating System. Then we can also make decisions based on love versus fear.