Yesterday I had a retrieval, it's in this thread -> Ametyst.

I think it was an Aspect retrieval, but not as I recognized it.
My question is if anyone has a good definition on exactly what
an Aspect of Self is?

Does TMI have such a definition?

Hi Pauli,

Aspects are I think thought forms.  They  are like holograms of us, completely like us yet only a part. They split off when some issue, possibly trauma or dramatic, is unresolved.

Google found this:
Explorer Series #4 Multidimensional Aspects of the Self | Digital ...
Feb 21, 2009 ... The Multi-dimensional aspects of the self; how thought forms limit us; the importance of recognizing the limitlessness of the soul.
www.monroeinstitute.org/downloads/explorer-series-4/

According to Wikitionary, a tryst is a secret, so' (I) am a tryst' would fit with what an aspect of self is.   ;) Puns are popular with this level of thinking  :D

What her specific meaning for you is is still for you to figure out  :)

Betson

Bruce Moen also discusses the aspect of self retrieval in his Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook. I was recently given guidance that I have an aspect of self that needs retrieving. I have been hesitant to do it, I don't know why.

Bardo, Aspect of Self retrievals can be scary. :)

I've read Moen's books, which have more limited definitions of
Aspects of Self in my opinion. I got some answers today, but
I'm not sure I want to post them as they were very unclear.

Analogies and symbols can transpose concepts down to simpler form for easier comprehension. Also life has all its greater truths reflected in its smaller truths.
My hand is conscious of itself and of what it does and touches. My other hand is conscious too. But neither one is conscious of me as I reside within the brain; except it has a vague impression of a higher power than itself. But I am conscious of them both (and of my feet as well) and of all that they are conscious of. And neither hand is aware it is connected to the other hand via me, and is not aware that I direct them both. Each hand does not know the inner difference between the other hand and a hand of someone else, except it feels a difference of a sort but does not understand it. All what the hands experience and learn, I too experience and learn through and from them. And I use that knowledge to direct their lives with greater purpose than they are aware of. What one hand learns, I apply and use that knowledge through the other hand as well. My hand may know me as a higher power and greater potential, only when it turns its attention within itself and upward unto me, and tunes itself and what it does, with me. As my hands and feet are to me, so I am to my oversoul/higherself. And as my one hand is to my other hand, so I am to the other extensions (aspects of myself) who extend out from my higher self.       

Wow..crossbow;
That's quite an Analogie, had to re-read it a few time until it sink in...:)
Is this something you came up with or is it something you found on the website; if so would love to read the webpage where you got this.Thanks
PUL



crossbow wrote on Jun 21^st, 2011 at 12:05am:

Analogies and symbols can transpose concepts down to simpler form for easier comprehension. Also life has all its greater truths reflected in its smaller truths. My hand is conscious of itself and of what it does and touches. My other hand is conscious too. But neither one is conscious of me as I reside within the brain; except it has a vague impression of a higher power than itself. But I am conscious of them both (and of my feet as well) and of all that they are conscious of. And neither hand is aware it is connected to the other hand via me, and is not aware that I direct them both. Each hand does not know the inner difference between the other hand and a hand of someone else, except it feels a difference of a sort but does not understand it. All what the hands experience and learn, I too experience and learn through and from them. And I use that knowledge to direct their lives with greater purpose than they are aware of. What one hand learns, I apply and use that knowledge through the other hand as well. My hand may know me as a higher power and greater potential, only when it turns its attention within itself and upward unto me, and tunes itself and what it does, with me. As my hands and feet are to me, so I am to my oversoul/higherself. And as my one hand is to my other hand, so I am to the other extensions (aspects of myself) who extend out from my higher self.

  Aspects of self in this case usually refer to dis-owned, suppressed, repressed self psychological or character tendencies, memories, etc.   

   They are the specific or more narrow parts of self, that the rest of self (especially the consciously determining, choosing part) is largely unconscious to. 

  In a sense, all ones other lifetimes are "aspects of self", unless one is fully conscious of them all, but again it's more often used in the context of retrieval of stuck, disowned, repressed, etc. parts of self.

  A quick example.  My mother, whom i was quite close too, died of cancer when i was 20, and having non physical knowings and beliefs at the time, i thought that i had dealt with the whole thing fairly soon after.  At least i didn't feel like i was grieving at all about a year after.

   Quite a number of years later, i was very surprised to find myself waking up from a dream involving my mother, and sort of replaying the scenario of her getting sick and dying, and i broke down in the dream crying heavily and woke up crying as well. 

   Perhaps i had suppressed or repressed some difficult emotional aspects rather than having fully dealt with them, maybe a part of self retreived another part of self during that dream state and i had to really fully feel consciously the feelings of loss and emotional pain that i had in relation to these memories and moments?

  In any case, i can say that i did feel a bit lighter after this dream remembrance and experience. 

Hi PauliEffect,

Crossbows analogy points at aspects of our selves which are subordinated under an encompassing whole. We can imagine a hierarchy of many levels, coming to a hierarchy of "higher selves" and "lower selves"/ "aspects".

What it makes tricky is, we can't be so certain how solid or "whole" our conscious self really is. When we do a little introspection and think about how we act in different situations, with different people involved, we'll find that we take on quite different roles. Now, this is common and natural, and shows the flexibility of our conscious self. When we take this a little further, we can imagine that we can take on roles which are incompatible with each other. And from this, it's not difficult to imagine that there are roles which don't make it to our conscious self because they are in such degree incompatible with our personality, as we like to see it, and to the circumstances we live in, that these roles remain subconscious. When these are, for whatever reason, quite strong and substantial, they can start to begin a life of it's own, not really, but almost, as if they were actually different persons, but still connected to us. Then things can happen like feeling incomplete, permantly exhausted or disturbed, fuzzy, up to hearing voices and such.

I think it is a permanent process of building up, and reintegrating aspects of our own, while finally the process should go in the direction of integrating and becoming more conscious of incongruencies within ourselves.

It might even be possible that a person breaks apart into several of it's aspects.

A "thought form", in my vocabulary, is not necessarily to be called an "aspect" of our own. If I, for example, in a lonely hour, would vividly imagine my dream-partner, then a decent psychic maybe could confuse this thought-form with an aspect, or even a real person, while it's just a fantasy of mine with no degree of independence. Although I've heard if one invests much energy, one can produce thought forms which to some degree can become independent from it's creator; and if one overdoes it with fantasizing and gets lost in it, chances are that thought forms become aspects and the personality more and more fractioned.

Spooky

If, as many mystics think, ' We are All One', would'nt that ultimately mean that all retrievals are retrievals of Aspects of Self ?!

Romain,

Re: "Is this something you came up with or is it something you found on the website;...(?)"

I am unaware of any websites, books or articles where such an "analogy" is described. Neither did I "come up with it" myself, that is if you mean did I come up with it like someone might come up with a theory or an idea of some sort.

I can leave the body, and have been doing so for several decades. My excursions are generally purposeful and productive, not wasted; that is, I use the excursions to find out how things are - and why they are. Over the years I have investigated most of the common questions we humans have about life and found out the answers for myself, and have found out much more than I ever imagined I would find out. So much that I feel embarrassed about it. I don't like to believe; I want to know. And that is what drove me, and enabled me. I have also been fortunate to have had some pivotal learning experiences in my past which have helped me immensely and which I am very thankful for. I am aware of most of my previous lives over the last three and a half thousand years or so - that ability, amongst others, was learnt along the way. What I wrote is of my knowledge. But for those who do not know it, I do not present it as a truth, but only as information, an analogy, a theory, an idea, that may be stored, examined, correlated with, and possibly verified or eliminated through individual experience. I posted it for others to think about, and do with it what they can. 

One more thing: I am just a normal man. Certainly not what people would call a good man or a "spiritual" man. I mess up just like every other man. But I pray and meditate, worship truth, account for myself, and try to live by love to others. And along the way, made lots of mistakes, but tried to learn from them. That is basically it. If I can do what I can do, then I think others can do it to. 

Justin, Spooky thanks for sharing your thoughts, very interesting read.

Crossboy;
Thanks you, for the explanation and putting it into context much appreciated.
Being aware of most of our/your previous lives is quite an achievement, it  take lots of work/time; i'm sure one day will all get there one way or another. :)
PUL

Heisenberg,

You stated my thought perfectly.  I find retrieving aspects of self to be a troubling concept.  Essentially, you can splinter off many different experiences and possibly lifetimes, and then go on an endless search and recover mission, with the idea being that in the end, you will be able to progress and be at peace after integrating these "lost" aspects of your personality.

Yet in some ways, much misery comes from the misunderstanding - a fundamental misunderstanding - that we are all isolated and apart from everything else.  This great experiment in individuality and polarity is, at times the main cause of spiritual angst and stagnation. 

To my mind, the path toward evolution in the direction of love involves maintaining your own individual awareness, but giving up on egotistical thinking and behaviour.  The idea that we would spend our time retrieving fragments of ourselves that are "out there" somewhere and have to gather up these fragments before moving on in spirit seems to be an impossible task, reminiscent of Sysiphus (a character from greek mythology who, as punishment for his trickery was sentenced by the gods to roll a huge boulder up a hill with great effort, only to watch it roll back down and have to start all over again - for eternity).  It also seems quite opposite toward turning away from egotistical behaviour.  Those who go after countless aspects of self appear to me to be cultivating the exact ego-oriented thinking that caused the misery in the first place.

For me, spiritual evolution is related to our conscious mind moving toward love in thought and action.  It is an emotional state.  It is our state of mind.  For myself, my deepest instincts tell me that to overanalyze the past or dwell in it is not necessary, though it may give insight to some people and help others break through blocks and barriers.

Matthew

I concur with both Dave and Matthew. I have always had this feeling that the retrievals had more to do with me than with the retrievee. I feel certain that they are aspects of self and that if one is not kind of careful it could turn into a tail spin. That said I don't think it is a useless venture either. And perhaps if you do it close to the moment of the departed's separation it may actually be an aspect of self that is so far from your own consciousness that it may be as close as we can come to retrieving something separate from ourselves if there could be such a thing.

The use of the body in analogy to other things is a time-honored tradition and certainly dates from the time of the ancient Greeks if not earlier. It's a good analogy.

Bob Monroe in the video "Wednesday with Bob" spoke of having many lifetimes over a much longer time period than is usually given. But then he said go find out for yourself.

What woul dbe interesting would be to experience one's self as the way one is now, then experience the higher self, then have an experience of another lifetime.

Romain,
I can see that it might seem like "quite an achievement" to some people who aspire in that direction, but it doesn't seem quite and achievement to me. I wouldn't call it luck either, more like I have been lucky enough to have made a few right decisions along the way, and to learn a few good basics. Riding the wave of Christianity and rational Western thought has been a great help. Most Western souls have ridden this wave through history but many now rubbish it and prefer to disassociate themselves from that which has brought them so far, thus disabling the potential for them within its teachings. But this digresses from the subject of the thread.   

betson, thanks for the Explorer Tape link. I 've listened to tape #4 and # 29
about Aspects. At the same time interesting, both tapes are difficult to understand
and get out solid info from. If anyone has a condensation of those tapes
I would be most grateful, as re-listening to the tapes wears me down.

I got the advice to look up Seth material too, which is on my to-do list.

I wonder if anyone else has any other sources for Aspect of Self info.

I start to wonder if my view of Aspects have turned into a belief, which locks me.
It's strange that Monroe never wrote anything about Aspects of Self in his books.
Maybe even TMI doesn't have a definition of what Aspects of Self are?

Pauli,

I wouldn't so much focus on the image of a soul, as a well-defined piece of matter like a scupture, from which pieces can split off to the effect that the bigger piece of it is now incomplete and the smaller part is "lost".

The best to benefit from the aspect-model is to look at it psychologically, as traits, beliefs and habits together with suppression and incongruencies.

I once in a meditation had a very uncomfortable (to say at the least) experience. It was like I was torn apart, torn into pieces, causing the greatest amount of fear, the fear of death, extinction. But I'm still here, and this taught me something: I, as a physical person, exist as a lumped-together conglomerate of conditioned parts. It is the very core of meditation to become aware of it, and to go deeper and explore what is behind this surface.

In this sense, I echo Doc's statement. But Beau's is true as well I find. In my retrieval experiences I, too, had the impression that they had much to do with myself. I'm not certain if I actually retrieved aspects of myself, but nevertheless, through this work I became more aware of how my own mind is conditioned through my life here on the earth.

Seen from a far distance from physical life there is no reason to be concerned about "missing" aspects. We usually just don't have this perspective on a regular basis, unfortunately.

Spooky

spooky2 wrote on Jun 26^th, 2011 at 11:13pm:

I once in a meditation had a very uncomfortable (to say at the least) experience. It was like I was torn apart, torn into pieces, causing the greatest amount of fear, the fear of death, extinction. But I'm still here, and this taught me something: I, as a physical person, exist as a lumped-together conglomerate of conditioned parts. It is the very core of meditation to become aware of it, and to go deeper and explore what is behind this surface.

  I had a somewhat similar experience.  I remembered a very vivid dream wherein i was outside meditating while looking at the Sun.  As i looked at the Sun, but also went deeper inside myself during the meditation, i felt myself merging with the Sun.

   At first it was downright almost scary because i felt myself expand so much that in a way it felt like i was being torn to pieces so to speak.  There was primarily the fear of the loss of self/individual self awareness.

  Rather it was that i was expanding so much and so quickly.  In the dream, i decided to just go with the flow, and to my pleasant surprise realized mentally the above expanding process, and realized i still had a sense of self awareness, but was just a much more expanded awareness than the "previous" self.   With that, there was intense feelings of a lot of joy , at peaceness, and sense of great power (power to co-create i guess).

  (i think the dream was both a learning and preparatory message/experience)

   

The best to benefit from the aspect-model is to look at it psychologically, as traits, beliefs and habits together with suppression and incongruencies.

Fascinating, and well put. When I first read Bruce's take on it I thought it was something to apply personally and then to perhaps to work with other people to use it as the most tailored tool for them.

But having read other authors take on aspects, it all gets a little complicated. Should we really bring together other aspects of ourselves from this life and other lifetimes, or is it better to let them go. Why did they go in the first place?

It seems as if lots of experience of this type of exploration is the only way to discern between aspects of self/others and their purpose/nature.

From my own experiences, and from much what I've read, to become aware of aspects of one's self is a byproduct of meditation (and every practice similar to meditation). One might view scenes in which there is one person who the viewer suddenly identifies as him/herself (and might call it a past-life), or is engaged in a retrieval with lots of emotions, showing some parallels to his/her own life, or one finds oneself confronted with memories or imaginations of/concerning the own present life, showing typical examples of specific roles. All these are, of course, problematic, as they are a challenge to our ego.
   Curiously, meditation and similar practices do have effects which are seemingly the exact opposite, like the experience Justin told of; I, too, had an experience which started at night with an immense feeling of expansion. I had become free of any worries, concerns, anxieties etc. The next day I saw my surrounding as truely MY surrounding, being a part of me. This experience is one which could be characterized as integrative, while the other is one of explicative, which naturally brings about the possibility of exclusive tendencies.

   The second, integrative experience is traditionally called Samadhi (India) or Satori (Japan) (in my case a minor one); from what I've heard, in these traditions this enhanced awareness of these opposites is known as common during/after every meditational work, until the mystical step has been taken whereafter these opposites are seen through and no longer are recognized as opposites, but appearances of one and the same.

Spooky