What is a Restored Sense of Self?
Is a Restored Sense of Self the same Sense of Self you would have had if you hadn’t grown up in a situation where the development of a Natural Sense of Self was thwarted? Probably not. Developmental time frames are specific. What develops later is never the same as what would have developed on Nature’s schedule.
Now, as far as I can remember, I never had a Natural Sense of Self so I can’t compare the two types of Sense of Self very well. To be able to better describe in this work what a natural Sense of Self is, how it is experienced, I would like to get input from readers who feel they could help with this. [To communicate your thoughts and comments to me, do this……..] In this theory the focus is on the implications of the absence of a healthy natural Sense of Self and on the end result after having healed: the Restored Sense of Self.
In this theory, the term Restored Sense of Self doesn’t mean something which was there, then taken away, then put back again. The term indicates that in the first place there wasn’t a Sense of Self but that through awareness and training (re-conditioning) a person has created, implemented in her ‘being,’ a Sense of healthy and appropriate boundaries to the outside world as well as actual filling on the inside of those boundaries. The filling that I refer to here concern her experiencing certain phenomena such as the body in general and in all its detailed aspects: heart-beat, breath, circulation, warmth, energy radiation, the psyche and all its detailed experiences such as thoughts, feelings, needs, desires and own those sensations as belonging to her ‘Self’ as a sort of non-material property.
A newly-gained Restored Sense of Self develops later in life, than a Natural Sense of Self does. Also, on the one hand it is more vulnerable to life circumstances than a Natural Sense of Self is, yet on the other hand we have by then created so much more conscious awareness around Sense of Self than would have developed in case of a Natural Sense of Self.
As stated earlier, I myself am just over the threshold of having successfully implemented this Restored Sense of Self in myself. It is my hope and reasonable expectation that this Sense of Self will grow stronger through the accumulation of experiences based on it. But that implies I actively maintain a strict and never-lessening awareness of the ‘I’ in everything I do or feel.
In this early phase it is necessary to keep a continuous awareness of the ‘I’ in your daily life but eventually I suspect a true sense of individuated Self will replace the entire Substitute-Sense–of-Self-oriented System. That is the moment as well in which former addictions and dependencies will have been eliminated; my life will be truly mine. Your life will be truly yours! No more dependency of ‘I’ on someone else’s responses!
So in the long run the Restored Sense of Self does become ‘natural’ in the sense of being normal, accepted, automatic, ordinary. But it can never be as ‘natural’ as your Natural Sense of Self would have been, if that had had the chance to develop in your infancy and childhood.
