Self-improvement by far is the most exploited lie that the seekers of expanded awareness or enlightenment can encounter. This lie has also been used as a marketing tool by a great majority of self-help specialists all over the globe and for quite some time now.
So, let us explore this for the sake of clarity. Once one is clear what is really at play here, one will know where to look within oneself to get results in this area without help of any external "guru" that masses and individuals put on a pedestal of a "spiritual authority" while putting their own awareness out of the picture.
The very idea of Self-improvement is invented by the ego-mind to make the owner of that mind busy and distracted in a new format. Why? Because the very nature of the ego-mind is virus-like. Its goal is to keep your primary attention away from the knowing of how the ego-mind utilizes the resources of your Beingness to run itself through invention of deficient and rather sick identities. This virus is making you believe that you are it (your ego-mind). Are you? It will also make sure that you will never find out.
The ego-mind constantly keeps the local awareness of the social self (or “little self”), locked within various masks and pretenses suggested by the mind archive. The fragmented awareness behind each mask is kept at a distance from the True Self that actually keeps the “little self” alive.
Alternatively, yet just as consistently, the ego-mind makes the “little self” so disturbed (or sick) that the “little self” looses all its remaining awareness of the True Self that animates it.
In either case the awareness of the “little self” gets disconnected and isolated from the total awareness of the True Self and thus available for further ego-mind manipulation. The mind, meanwhile, puts itself in the position of the True Self and starts exploiting resources of the Being to sponsor its own existence and to create even more disturbance and imbalance within one’s social("little") self.
When one decides to “self-improve”, one on some level becomes aware, at least to some extent, that their inner and therefore outer reality is in a state of chaos and imbalance, and that there are more aware, balanced, and harmonious states of consciousness available. But what happens in most cases like this, is that the dominant fake identity of the “little self” manufactured by the ego-mind runs the show. The ego-mind does not promote awareness, as that will dissolve the ego-mind, altogether with all its fake identities through which it’s been able to run the show many people confuse with life. You ego-mind will only promote unawareness in all its disguises and like a good actor it will make its new disguise buyable and believable. And what it will do in this specific case is drag one’s attention away from the before mentioned awareness that was suggested by one’s consciousness, and shift one’s primary attention back into the fake self, which “needs to be improved”. And if one keeps being unaware of the trick, the show will go on. And it usually does.
The truth is, the very idea of self-improvement is based on judgment. And this is what created the ego-mind in the first place. The ego mind functions on judgment. Consciousness functions on awareness. With judgment or through judgment comes thinking, which is the opposite of direct knowing. Since any judgment is based on and functions on polarity and duality, I invite you to notice that the sponsoring statement (belief) of “self-improvement” as such declares that one is not good enough. According to who and what precisely? You are labeled and judged as being not good enough according to which opposite fabricated concept your mind is tricking you and entertaining itself with? I encourage you to finish this part of investigation by yourself because you can and because I am here only to give you some hints that will navigate you to the place of more expanded awareness.
The whole thing about self-improvement is all about mind’s hidden agenda to keep you unaware of what you are, what the ego-mind is, and what this ego-mind is up to. The truth is, as consciousness you are pure awareness and when you are it, everything in you and in your life is in a spontaneous order and healthy balance, which is harmony that allows maximum efficiency and potency of one’s system. So, all you REALLY need to do is to expand the scope of your inner observation which goes beyond the confines, ideas and concepts of the fake identity your ego-mind keeps you narrow-focused on at all times. Once you expand the scope of your inner observation or awareness, you will eventually, in a very peaceful and effortless fashion recognize your own True Self which is a state of harmony that does not need to be improved, it needs to be rediscovered.
Recognition of this True Self and spontaneous merging with it will bring you into a state of alignment with your truth and its various unique expressions. These expressions when are not modified by artificial rules and ideas suggested by a programmed mind, always express your essence in a way, that serves other parts of life in a very effortless, joyful and loving manner.
Your mind will suggest that you do “this and that” to improve the “wrongness and evil” in you. Evil usually takes place when you are trying to be who you are not. That, which you are not, doesn’t come from life and it doesn’t come from your original awareness either. That, which you are not, comes exclusively from your ego-mind. And by sending you on a wild goose chase to “self-improve”, your mind will only improve its own ideas (all of which are fake) about what you are and what you are supposed to be according to your mind.
And the funny thing is, you mind is not really your mind, as it is made up of all points of view, opinions and ideas that you got from other people’s minds. You are only supposed to be what you are according to life, which is coincidentally your original knowing. And this “being what you are according to life” is not done, it is recognized and allowed. In fact this is something that you used to be fully aware of. Your mind however, will send you out there to try all possible and impossible versions of doing, which will keep you away from Being, and yet it is the Being whose awareness you are seeking. This is the one who knows. You are seeking its ever present sense of isness. This is the space of your true identity through which life expresses itself in a way that benefits all its other expressions, and it is so whole and complete that it doesn’t need to be improved, it can only be embraced and appreciated.
Andriana received her formal training in the field of Psychology and holds two University Degrees in Psychotherapy and Counseling, which includes practical training in various modalities and Psychotherapeutic approaches used in modern Psychotherapy.
Her main life and professional activity has always been focused on Consciousness, Human Potential, Personal Development, Evolution, and how one's mind, and different levels of Consciousness manifest corresponding nature of reality.
Andriana has been studying Psychology and Psychotherapy from the age of 11 (since it was a natural extension of everything she already knew innately). She now does it professionally - for more than 10 years while working with groups and individuals all over the world.