Your description of ‘Surface Me’ immediately brought to mind the spiritual definition of ego. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Eckhart Tolle’s work, but his book A New Earth offers a powerful framework for understanding the unconscious layers beneath our polished exteriors. Psychology certainly gestures toward this through ideas like the self-concept, but I’ve personally found the spiritual lens — especially Tolle’s — to be not only conceptually clarifying, but deeply resonant on an experiential level. If it resonates, I’d highly recommend checking out a summary or excerpt sometime.
That’s wonderful to hear — I hope it resonates. If I can offer one suggestion: I wouldn’t worry too much about the more metaphysical aspects. The real gold (at least for me) is in how Eckhart describes the ego in the spiritual-psychological sense. Coming from a scientific background myself, I was struck by how it reads almost like a detailed mechanism of action — not empirically proven, of course, but deeply verifiable through experience. His language points you inward more than it asks you to believe anything.
Your description of ‘Surface Me’ immediately brought to mind the spiritual definition of ego. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Eckhart Tolle’s work, but his book A New Earth offers a powerful framework for understanding the unconscious layers beneath our polished exteriors. Psychology certainly gestures toward this through ideas like the self-concept, but I’ve personally found the spiritual lens — especially Tolle’s — to be not only conceptually clarifying, but deeply resonant on an experiential level. If it resonates, I’d highly recommend checking out a summary or excerpt sometime.
Ooh, I'm not familiar but excited to check it out!
That’s wonderful to hear — I hope it resonates. If I can offer one suggestion: I wouldn’t worry too much about the more metaphysical aspects. The real gold (at least for me) is in how Eckhart describes the ego in the spiritual-psychological sense. Coming from a scientific background myself, I was struck by how it reads almost like a detailed mechanism of action — not empirically proven, of course, but deeply verifiable through experience. His language points you inward more than it asks you to believe anything.
The big question is :
If no one could see your title, your home, your spouse, or your children — would you still feel enough?
Such an important question. Pretty much what I'm trying to figure out.
https://open.substack.com/pub/deepakhenx1176ttst/p/when-no-one-is-watching-who-are-you?r=1t66z&utm_medium=ios
Love this. I suspect there are many of us with that part inside of them.