The First Insight to the MORE that I Am, the MORE that We All Are and the Enemy of that MORE

I was quite young, single, only in my twenties. This was the early part of my journey as an agnostic/atheist. God, spirit, mysticism were all completely off my radar. But the insight I was about to learn positively affected the rest of my life, both in practical, career decisions as well as on my spiritual path.
A few years earlier I had left my boyhood home after finishing a technical degree and moved a few hundred miles away to take a job at a large aerospace company. As a teen, and until I left home at age twenty, I had exercised regularly, but when I moved away from home I stopped doing anything to stay physically fit.

After a few years of inactivity, I didn’t like how I felt. My energy level was low and I felt lethargic much of the time, so I decided to move my barbell and weights out of storage and up to my apartment. So, one weekend I decided this was the day I would start working out again.

The barbell with weights was setup and sitting there in front of me on the floor. I was sitting on the floor in front of it. I said to myself, “Ok, let’s go. Let’s start.” But I didn’t do anything. My mind wandered. Something in the room would catch my eye and distract me. This happened over and over again: “Let’s go”, followed by inactivity and delay again and again. I realized at one point that I had been sitting there for half an hour and hadn’t done anything. I heard myself blurt out loud, “Wait a minute. Who is in charge here?”.

“Who is in charge here???” I realized that for me to ask that question meant that there had to be more than one of me, or at least more than one distinct aspect of me. There seemed to be a higher-self that was prompting me to make an effort to take charge of myself, to take command of my body and do something good for myself. But then there was this lower-self that quite forcefully (and effectively) worked to delay any immediate action and then prompt me to indulge myself in some distraction to keep me from acting – to keep me from taking command over my body. And finally, there was this third “self” who seemed to be right in the middle of this tug-of-war between my higher-self and lower-self. I saw this self as the “decider”. But I noticed it wasn’t always conscious. In the unconscious state it would just go along with the lower self that seemed louder, closer, more powerful and more convincing than the higher-self. When the decider was unconscious, it allowed the lower-self to keep me from doing what I had earlier consciously decided to do.

For me, at the time, this was a true “Ah-Hah” moment. Again, at the time I made no connection to anything spiritual about all of this. I thought it was just all a completely secular, psychological phenomenon. But now I was aware of this phenomenon and saw how important it was to keep this in mind when I made a conscious decision to do something, that I needed to remain consciously aware of this force, this lower-self that always, always would attempt to keep me exactly where I was, to keep me from striving to be a little bit more, than I was at the time.

This insight, this lesson made an enormous difference over the course of my life. My entire life was changed simply by the awareness that there would always be a negative force attempting to thwart me from doing more, or becoming more than I was and the awareness of the necessity to make a conscious decision and continue to reinforce the decision to reach for that higher self.

This manifested in my practical, every-day life as well as later in life when I became open to the spiritual side of life. There was one particular instance that I recall that had a major effect on my professional career. I was a senior engineer and group leader of a small group of people. My director wanted my group to write a formal company technical report on an important project that we had successfully implemented. The person on our team to which this task was assigned, was, after multiple attempts,  not able to produce a report that was concise or could meet the high standards of a formal report that would be distributed company-wide. I had other important responsibilities and it would have been easy and not career damaging to just let the report go and let the individual assigned muddle through until the idea just died on the vine. But that higher-self stepped up and whispered in my ear, “You can do it. You should do it”. Immediately, that old, reliable lower-self responded with a litany of “good” reasons why I shouldn’t do it: “Are you kidding, your plate is full already! This is a major undertaking, if it comes out bad, then you look bad, and you just don’t have the time to do it right.” And finally, “You will go and do all this extra work, much of it on your own time and even if it comes out decent, a month later, no one will remember or care – it will be a complete waste of your time and effort”. And then…from a smaller, quitter, calmer voice came this powerful truth that came that I never forgot and serves me even to this day. It was this truth: “Nothing done with pure motives and done to the very best of your ability, is EVER a waste of time.”

For some reason, I had a feeling that this was right. On sheer blind faith, I followed that advice of my higher-self. The report was completed and released. The exposure it provided within the company across multiple disciplines allowed us to make changes to processes that otherwise would not have been possible, saving the company many millions of dollars. I was asked to present the paper at a national convention. From that point on, my career just seemed to take off leading to positions of ever increasing responsibility, joy, satisfaction… and compensation.

One last anecdote to show how broad and encompassing this negative force to becoming MORE can be. This was maybe thirty years after my initial discovery that whenever I am inspired to be more than I am or do more than I have been doing in some positive direction, there will be a force opposing that inspiration and I (the decider) must make a conscious effort to recognize and oppose it, if I am to move beyond stagnation and grow beyond what I might be at the moment.

I was at a large, local craft-fair with my wife when I noticed a booth with beautiful hardwood jewelry boxes. Some had drawers. Some had sliding trays. I was immediately attracted by the natural beauty of the wood, the feel of the wood and the fine workmanship. The joints were so perfect, the moving parts moved with such precision. I had some basic wood working tools and had built some crude objects but I had never even attempted to make anything like this, but I thought to myself: “I think I could probably make something like this… if I tried.”

One night after a day’s work, I was down in my workshop and I had the conscious thought, “I’ve got some scrap wood here. I’m going to make a box. It won’t be perfect, but It will be a start”. And sure enough, there it was again. That negative lower self. This time more forceful than ever to where I not only had the thought but I could actually feel something that was saying: “NO. NO. This is stupid!! You DO NOT want to do this. It will be a complete waste of time. You put in a long, hard day. You have another long, hard day tomorrow. Relax. Watch some t.v.. Have a bourbon on the rocks. You deserve it. If you make a box, you’re going to have to sketch out plans, that’s going to take time and effort before you even start to cut wood. And you know, even if you go through with it. Whatever you end up with will suck compared to the stuff made by real craftsmen. You will do nothing but embarrass yourself. It will be a complete waste of time!!”

Man, that lower self was compelling. I almost gave in to it. But because of the prior experiences I had with it, I knew that the key was to make a conscious decision right now to either give in to that lower-self or to ignore it and move forward – to strive to reach beyond what I was, even for something seemingly so trivial as to whether or not to make a silly box.

Now at this point I had opened myself to the spiritual side of life. This time I had a deeper insight, a deeper revelation.  It occurred to me this time that it wasn’t the box or woodworking, or writing or not writing a report was the issue with the lower self. It was that the lower-self consistently, with NO exceptions opposes anything and everything that constituted in any way any step in the direction of MORE. It didn’t matter what it was because it seemed that this lower-self would take any and all measures it could to oppose ANY striving to become more than I was at the time. This self-loved and worshipped stagnation. Stagnation was safe while striving for more was dangerous, or if not dangerous then for sure a complete waste of time. A strong sense dawned upon me that the fear of this lower-self was that if I listened within and followed that inspiration and strove to become more than I was, even on one seemingly harmless choice like exercise or not exercise, write a report, make a box then where would that lead? Where would it end? And it dawned on me that the existential threat to the lower-self (the ego), was that it would never end, which would eventually mean the total and complete demise of that ego/lower-self. If it failed in stopping me from taking a step forward, then I would feel joy; I feel good about myself for having taking dominion over myself and making the effort to become more. That would show me that it is always well worth the effort to strive to become more, whether in every day, practical life or in spiritual matters and that would put me firmly on the upward spiral to continuous self-transcendence – the certain death of the ego-lower self.