About: The part that wants to stay stuck

At some point in this work, we will find the place that really doesn’t want to change—that doesn’t want to give up negativity. This is the Big-L Lower Self.

It is made up of frozen, blocked and distorted energy, so it vibrates at a lower frequency than Higher Self energy. And it holds a great big “No!” to life.

In this part of ourselves, we actually like our faults. Further, the Lower Self has the capacity to inflict cruelty on ourselves and others: “I’ll hurt you and I’ll hurt me.”

This cruelty is the main reason we try to escape ourselves. We need to find the pleasure in our destructiveness if we hope to tame this beast.

The origin of our faults

In retaliation for having our desire for 100% perfect love rejected, our Lower Self now demands love. But it refuses to give anything. It digs in its heels, saying, “I won’t.” More specifically, it says, “I won’t give and I won’t ever give in.”

This is the basis of our Lower Self’s negative intention to stay stuck.

Further, our Lower Self intends to have its way without paying any price for it. This “self-will run riot” acts in violation of spiritual laws.

Part of us refuses to let our parents off the hook for the pain they caused us and the humiliation that went with it. For it is humiliating to feel that we are unlovable. Even though it’s also not true.

This fear of humiliation underpins much of the fear of our Lower Self.

To cap things off, we compensate for our hidden feelings of inferiority by attempting to prove we are better than others. With our pride in hand, we face the world in a spirit of competitiveness.

Then we build cases against others, gossiping and maligning them in an effort to take them down. Our goal is to rise above, to counter these deep-seated feelings of inferiority.

Through the combination of these three main faults of self-will, fear and pride—all other faults cascade from these three—the Lower Self serves separation instead of connection.

Separation, in fact, is the Lower Self’s signature move.

How the Lower Self hires the mask

It is a trickster, our Lower Self, the way it hides itself behind a mask. The Mask Self is the false version of ourselves we create, believing this is what we must do to get love.

The mask, then, is essentially a strategy to win at life.

In addition, rolled into our mask are our defenses. Each type of mask—a Love Mask, a Power Mask and a Serenity Mask—is an attempt at defending against further pain.

But because they are fake—they are not the truth of who we are—our masks effectively keep us separated from our own inner divine self.

This makes them ineffective strategies, certain to sabotage any chance for real connection. In this way, our Lower Self wins.

In other words, the Lower Self hires the mask to do its dirty work.

A key part the Lower Self plays is to withhold itself, instead of giving out. Perhaps we seduce others, then reject them. By holding back like this, the Lower Self hurts others.

When the resulting vicious circles lead to more pain and lack of fulfillment, the Lower Self will judge others—highlighting their faults and justifying our own—to avoid taking responsibility.

This traps us in feeling like we’re a victim, causing us to circle back and shore up our mask.

Becoming more real

Early down the path to self-knowing, we need to become willing to take off our mask. Because our mask is not real. It’s just a strategy for avoiding “death”—or in other words, pain—and for hiding our true selves.

Our fear is that without our mask, our Lower Self is what others will see. Worse yet, we fear that this is who we really are.

First, behind every Lower Self distortion waits the Higher Self that has been covered over. Second, it is important to learn how to expose these dark aspects without acting them out.

That said, when we see these darker places in others, we often find it easier to connect with them and accept them than when we are only allowed to see their mask.

The Lower Self may be unpleasant, but at least it is real.

Exposing the inner critic

There is a common pitfall to watch for when we start doing this work of self-discovery. We begin to see with much greater clarity the many ways in which we fall short.

Then we turn the flashlight we have been holding into a club and start to attack ourselves with it.

The Pathwork Guide cautions us to look for this and to call a halt to it when we see it. It doesn’t help, and it makes following a difficult path even more challenging.

The source of this critical inner voice is a perpetual little tyrant that continually and silently beats us up. Now, it intends to make us stop exploring.

We know that it comes from the Lower Self because it serves to keep us separate from our own self. Until we slow down and get quiet, we may have no idea what kind of cruel things this unkind inner voice has been saying to us.

We torment ourselves

Here is how the inner critic gets created. When the child did not receive the perfect love it craved, conclusions were drawn such as “I cannot be loved as I am,” or “They will never love me,” or “I can’t win.”

These conclusions are unique to each person, and at the same time, they are all the same. They basically say, “I’m worthless, I don’t matter, I’m not enough,” making the child feel inferior.

This creates deep resentment for which a fear of punishment builds up.

Around the early school years, a child can project into the future. So the child begins to anticipate the parents. Based on these mistaken conclusions, the child chooses a defense intended to save it from ever being hurt again.

As the child grows, this defensive behavior becomes a habit, and the conclusions that drive it sink into the unconscious. From there, they have the power to create, and they create nothing but problems.

At about the age of seven, the Big-L Lower Self creeps in and starts attacking—or punishing—the self. It is the internalized voice of a parent, and it uses the wrong conclusions of the child to justify itself: “You’re worthless, who do you think you are,” or “They’ll never love you, why do you keep trying,” or “You’re a loser, you’ll never succeed.”

The specifics will vary for each person, but the harsh tone will be the same.

This inner critic—or really, inner tyrant or tormentor—is a perpetrator of cruelty to the self and it needs to be uncloaked. When we won’t see it inside us, we will turn it on others and become a bully. Or we will attract bullies to us, and we will see it there.

Where there is a victim, there is also a victimizer.

How we set the stage

Don’t underestimate the Lower Self.

As brilliant and amazing as our Higher Self is, that’s how “good” our Lower Self is. It is a crafty, convincing and sabotaging trickster that is highly creative and highly charged.

As a negative creator, it will undermine our good intentions, cleverly setting others up to behave in a way that confirms our negative beliefs.

For example, the Lower Self might take the idea “I’m inferior” and use it to undermine our ability to express ourselves clearly. When we realize we’re being inarticulate or babbling, we actually feel inferior, confirming our belief.

We may then turn around and judge the one we’re talking to as being uncaring because they lost interest in what we were saying. The Lower Self may then lash out, to “get them back,” perhaps by ignoring them or sulking.

But our Lower Self unconsciously set the whole thing up due to our misunderstanding that we are somehow inferior. 

What we need to realize is that these hidden parts of ourselves are immature, distorted and lost in untruth.

But that doesn’t make us bad.

So often, in our childish and ignorant ways, we trip over these undeveloped aspects of ourselves. But these parts don’t yet know how to behave any differently. So they cause us to stop our flow in life, fabricate stories and manufacture walls.

To unwind all of this, we need to get to know ourselves better. That means we must get to know our own Lower Self.

We know that whatever we fight against gets stronger. Which is why we want to dismantle the Lower Self slowly, step by step.

It cannot be transformed by harshly judging it, or by judging ourselves for being caught in its tentacles. In doing that, we get further tangled in its web and the knots get tighter.

Instead, we need to expose the script the Lower Self is following. Awareness and acceptance are what’s needed here for healing.

Once we see the damage we are doing to ourselves, we can wake up from this trance.

It’s time to snap out of it.

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