infinite awareness

The 5 layers that make up your current reality

Who you are at your core is consciousness, however for most people there day to day reality will be made up of their identity, beliefs, capabilities (skills), behaviour (action) and environment, people live their lives by way of what follows ‘I am’.

Your identity is at the top of the tree it governs much of what falls below such as the beliefs you hold and the skills you acquire. To use religion as an example, a Buddhist will call themselves a Buddhist (their identity), resulting in a set of beliefs that will cause a certain way of behaving.

Reality is built this way for many (or rather they create a reality this way). But whatever happens at these different levels doesn’t change the fact that who you really are or perhaps what you really are is beyond them all. Because as can be seen from the above diagram the real you (Consciousness, possibility, potential, energy) lies above your identity. You are not your mind, consciousness sits beyond mind, however you create an identity and form beliefs with your mind, and these are what govern and dictate your reality and current life situation.

The ‘I’ is not who you are it is simply what you are choosing to experience. We are all born as babies with absolutely no identity, beliefs, attitudes or thoughts about ourselves and the world around us. As we get older we form an identify (which of course changes over time), along with beliefs, initially from our parents and also the world at large . As we grow older we attempt to make sense of the world and our place in it based on what we have learned, or been told by those closest to us.

As adults we may have beliefs that have been with us for years, we also have job titles and responsibilities, we use the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ to describe who we are, but the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are born in the mind and while they allow us to make sense of the world they are ultimately a by-product of years of education, schooling, ideas of our parents, rigid belief systems, and as we get older whatever we choose. The life experience people will experience will be dependent the beliefs and identity they choose to hold.

The day to day reality you experience is based upon the identity, beliefs, skills and action each individual decides to take. All of them are built on top of consciousness (or below if you take the above diagram).

But who we actually are starts before we begin to form an identity and beliefs, because consciousness is beyond mind. It sits at a level higher than identity and the above diagram simply illustrates how your current reality and consciousness fit together, It is one way of looking at it at least.

It is important to understand that who (or more importantly what) you are at your core is beyond mind and body, and this 5 layer model is simply a way of describing your current life situation or current reality. So while your current reality will be made up of the identity you hold and the beliefs you harbour, no matter what you believe (and you are free to choose any belief) they will always be separate from you true nature.