“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When and if the dominant personality becomes aware of this situation, it automatically expands. It consciously contains experience that was previously subconscious. Now. The inner ego is quite familiar with the existence of the physically-oriented ego, but the physically-oriented ego is not usually familiar with its inner counterpart.

When through training the ego becomes more aware of this inner self, the whole personality benefits. The whole self as it exists at any given time can be glimpsed through studying the actions of the physically-oriented ego, as seen in physical manipulation, and in studying the activities of the inner ego as seen in dream experiences. Obviously some training is necessary before this can be achieved.

Later you may be able to follow this inner self even while the physical ego operates in its normal manner, but this is much more difficult if overall personality balance is to be maintained. It should be fairly obvious that identity hardly resides exclusively within the physically-oriented ego. In one sense, identity is always a becoming, and it can never be a static, finished thing. For it knows itself through change, and that which is finished cannot change.

Our material on the nature of action will be helpful here. The ego, the physically-oriented ego, is a convenient figurehead. It represents only an imperfect glimpse of a given momentary appearance—the portion of the self that happens in any given instant to show itself.

You do not know the self as it is within physical existence, and until you do you cannot hope to know what survives physical death, or what part of you is awake while the ego sleeps. When I refer to the ego I do so for simplicity’s sake, since the term has meaning to you. There are obviously portions of the self that never operate directly within physical reality.

Consider this analogy: The self as a moving circle, such as a Ferris wheel. A tree in front of the wheel will represent physical reality. The whole self, or the whole wheel, is composed of many selves in various positions, as the many people who sit on the Ferris wheel. As the wheel turns you call the person or the self who faces the tree the ego, simply because this is the portion that faces physical reality, represented by our tree. But the self who faces the tree one moment is not the self that faces it the next moment, and the operator of the wheel is never in evidence, you see.

The selves who ride the wheel therefore also provide some of the power that runs the wheel. It is only because you stress similarities rather than differences that you do not realize that the self that you call the ego is but the appearance, in one particular perspective, of many quite different aspects of the personality.

The inner ego is the self who drives the wheel with purpose; at the same time there are many other wheels and many spokes… Our moment point analogy will also help you here. The sleeping self will of course be considered the primary self from the standpoint of its own reality. I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that all of these portions are self-conscious. They may not be conscious of the other selves however. The inner senses connect all the selves, and the movements of consciousness are far more complicated than that of a Ferris wheel.