Empower the True Self
Before incarnating on Earth, we exist as the pure essence of our True Selves. We are each a unique expression of Source Energy, given distinct gifts and characteristics, through which Source experiences itself in infinite and multifaceted ways. Yet, as spiritual beings embarking on a human journey, we step into the constraints of the Human Condition.
The Human Condition
To inhabit the human experience, a soul must enter into the limitations of a physical body. There is a heaviness that is experienced along with that embodiment, because there is a vastness of energy condensed into physical form that is bound for the lifetime by the realities of being human. We experience life through a particular body which includes its own genetics, sensitivities, capacities, and vulnerabilities from a physical perspective. But that body is also born into a particular set of circumstances such as a family and ancestral lineage, a culture and ethnicity, a geographic location, a socioeconomic reality, and a moment in history. Before we have made even a single conscious choice as a soul in human form, so much of the context through which we will experience life has already been determined.
Yet, we do not enter that circumstance as a blank slate. We carry with us karmic imprints from previous incarnations, which can be thought of as patterns of energy that continue to seek expression, understanding, or resolution within this lifetime. These karmic imprints may emerge as familiar ways of thinking, feeling, responding, and relating, perhaps as dynamics we repeatedly encounter in relationships, or as circumstances that seem to recreate themselves in different forms throughout our lives. We may not consciously remember where these patterns began, but we experience their presence through the tendencies, attractions, fears, conflicts, and recurring themes that shape the way we move through the world.
One of the defining features of the human condition is the phenomenon of forgetting. In entering human form, we forget who we are beyond it. We become immersed in the identity of this particular body, this particular life, and the circumstances unfolding around us, with little conscious awareness of what preceded them. We forget not only the larger nature of the soul, but also the karmic patterns we have carried into this incarnation. Without access to that broader perspective, we experience life from the immediacy of being human. It is at the essence of the human condition. The forgetting allows us to fully feel the humanness of trying to make sense of what happens to us without necessarily understanding why certain themes, relationships, or struggles seem to follow us.
It is also precisely this forgetting that allows karma to operate largely outside of our conscious awareness. The patterns we carry function almost like an invisible magnetic force, drawing us toward experiences that resonate with what remains unresolved. Psychology has long recognized versions of this phenomenon within a single lifetime. Our earliest experiences shape the patterns through which we perceive, anticipate, and engage with the world, and trauma can increase our vulnerability to subsequent trauma. From a soul-level perspective, I understand this process as beginning before the present lifetime. We are energetically drawn into families, relationships, circumstances, and at times subsequent traumas that reflect patterns carried across incarnations. Psychology helps us understand how these patterns develop and repeat within this lifetime. From a soul-perspective, I understand that same process as extending beyond it.
Throughout our lives, we encounter countless experiences that further shape the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. Some are what psychologists sometimes refer to as “big T” traumas, which are significant events that we recognize as frightening, overwhelming, or deeply painful. But we also accumulate “little t” traumas, which are the quieter wounds woven into everyday human experience. We are neglected, criticized, rejected, excluded from the group, made to feel ashamed, unseen, unworthy, or somehow too much or not enough. A single experience may seem relatively small, yet repeated experiences can become deeply formative.
Through these experiences, we learn what appears necessary from us in order to feel safety, love, acceptance, and belonging. We discover which parts of ourselves are welcomed and which create discomfort. We discover which emotions are acceptable and which should be hidden. We discover when speaking our truth brings connection and when it threatens connection. We adapt. We make ourselves smaller. We silence what we know. We suppress what we feel. We disconnect from what we need. We become exquisitely attuned to the needs and expectations of others. We conform, perform, achieve, please, withdraw, control, or protect ourselves…not because those responses represent who we are. We do these things because they once helped us navigate the human environments, we found ourselves in.
Over time, these adaptations become so familiar that we stop experiencing them as adaptations at all. They begin to shape the assumptions we make about ourselves, other people, and the world. I am not enough. My needs do not matter. I have to earn love. I cannot trust other people. It is dangerous to be seen. I am responsible for how everyone else feels. What began as an understandable response to experience becomes a limiting belief, and the limiting belief begins quietly shaping our choices, relationships, perceptions, and sense of what is possible.
Perhaps most significantly, this programming can gradually distance us from our authenticity. Each time we learn that belonging requires us to abandon some part of ourselves, we make an adjustment. Often these adjustments are so small that we barely notice them. But accumulated across years, they can create an enormous distance between the person we learned to be and who we authentically are.
Our True Self remains the authentic essense of who we are. But as we move through the Human Condition, our ability to access and express that authentic nature becomes constrained beneath the layers of the human experience. The limitations of the physical body, the karmic patterns we carry, the wounds we accumulate, the negative beliefs and maladaptive choices, all contribute to an inauthentic expression of who we really are. We learn to filter ourselves through what feels safe, acceptable, achievable, or expected. Over time, we may become so accustomed to living through these layers that we no longer recognize where the adaptation ends and our authentic nature begins.
This separation from the True Self does not always announce itself dramatically. It can appear in the ordinary ways we move through our lives such as, remaining in relationships that diminish us, repeatedly overriding our own needs, pursuing goals that do not actually fulfill us, struggling to set boundaries, seeking external validation, or making ourselves smaller to preserve connection. We may experience a persistent sense that something is missing even when, from the outside, our lives appear perfectly fine. We may know that a pattern is hurting us and still find ourselves repeating it.
As this disconnection deepens, its effects can reach across the physical, psychological, emotional, and relational dimensions of our lives. It may contribute to psychological distress, manifest through the body, or appear in patterns of self-sabotaging decisions that perpetuate cycles of suffering. From this perspective, these struggles are not evidence that something is inherently wrong with us. They may instead show us just how much distance has developed between the way we have learned to live and who we actually are.
There is no blame inherent in this process. To be human is, by definition, to experience life without access to its full perspective. We make choices from within the consciousness available to us at any given moment, shaped by the body we inhabit, the experiences we have endured, the patterns we carry, and what we are presently capable of seeing. Even when a pattern becomes visible, awareness alone does not necessarily mean that we have shifted its underlying energy enough to choose differently. We may recognize what we are repeating long before we are able to stop repeating it.
This is also why I believe that the human condition deserves so much compassion. We are trying to make different choices while we are still living inside the patterns we are trying to understand. Sometimes we can see a pattern long before we are actually able to change it. Growth happens as our awareness expands and, eventually, a different choice becomes available to us.
Understanding the Empower the True Self Framework
The Empower the True Self framework illustrates how I understand the layers that can interfere with the natural expression of who we are. We enter this lifetime as our True Self, while also carrying karma (pre-existing patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, and experience that, from a soul-level perspective extend beyond this lifetime). Karma is not punishment. It is a mechanism through which unresolved patterns tend to draw us toward similar circumstances and experiences, giving us repeated opportunities to respond differently. As we move through life, these patterns intersect with our human experience, including both “big T” traumas and the quieter cumulative "little T” traumas of disconnection, rejection, neglect, shame, conformity, and other experiences that teach us to suppress or reshape parts of ourselves. Over time, these experiences become embedded in our programming and core beliefs, influencing how energy moves through us and in turn, how we experience our physical health, thoughts and emotions, and choices and actions.
Empower the True Self works with this system from multiple directions. We begin in the here and now, drawing from existential-humanistic psychology, Polyvagal Theory, and mind-body medicine to explore the relationships among energy, the body, thoughts and emotions, and patterns of behavior and choice. Through the Akashic Records, we then broaden the lens to identify deeper karmic patterns and bring greater clarity to what may be repeating. With awareness comes choice. When we can recognize a karmic pattern and consciously choose differently, we begin to neutralize that pattern rather than continuing to create and recreate the same circumstances in our lives. In this way, we are working with the pattern from multiple directions. We are bringing conscious awareness to what may be happening at a karmic level while also using psychological and mind-body approaches to work with how those patterns are showing up in the present.
Within the psychological container, we primarily utilize EFT by addressing the traumatic experience and emotional learning that help hold negative programming and core beliefs in place. This is where we directly address the “legs” that support the table in the diagram. From an energy psychology perspective, as the emotional charge associated with a traumatic experience is reduced through the EFT process, the experience can lose some of its power as emotional “evidence” for the negative core belief attached to it. By systematically addressing the experiences that have reinforced beliefs such as I am not worthy, I am not safe, or I do not belong, we begin knocking down the individual legs that have supported the larger belief structure. As those supports weaken, the core belief itself can become less rigid and increasingly open to new information, new experiences, and more authentic ways of understanding ourselves.
This is why the different components of the framework are designed to work together. At one level, we are bringing consciousness to karmic patterns so that we can make different choices and stop perpetuating the same realities. At another, we are releasing the emotional charge of experiences that have reinforced negative programming and core beliefs. As these barriers begin to shift, they no longer influence the flow of our energy in quite the same way, creating greater space for our energy to align with the True Self. Since these parts of us are interconnected, that shift can show up in our physical experience, our thoughts and emotions, and ultimately in the choices we make. Those new choices create different experiences, which can further weaken old patterns rather than continually reinforcing them.
The goal, then, is not to manufacture a new or better self. The True Self is already there. The work is to gradually shift what has accumulated between the True Self and its fullest expression, allowing more of who we are authentically to flow through the way we think, feel, inhabit our bodies, make choices, and create our lives.
A Focused and Ongoing Process
Although this framework illustrates many of the interconnected forces that shape the human condition, Empower the True Self is not intended to resolve every layer of a person's experience at once. Healing is an ongoing process. We can only work with so much at any given time, and as one set of traumas, beliefs, and pattern shifts, we may experience a palpable sense of greater alignment with the True Self. Over time, however, another layer may become visible. That doesn’t mean the previous work was incomplete. We may simply be able to see something now that we weren’t able to see before.
This is one of the reasons that Empower the True Self is intentionally short-term and goal-oriented. Instead of attempting to uncover and work through every trauma or core belief a person has accumulated, we begin with a particular area of life or broader intention. The Akashic Records help us to take that larger concern and identify what is most relevant to it. What are the karmic patterns at play? What beliefs or experiences seem to be creating the greatest barriers right now? That information helps us narrow the work. A client may begin for example, with the broad intention, I want to build self-love. Through the Akashic Records, we may identify particular karmic patterns, beliefs, or relational dynamics that appear to be contributing to the present difficulty. Those insights then help us to establish specific goals and identify the areas most relevant for our psychological work together.
This gives us a different starting point. In psychotherapy, we typically begin with what the client is consciously aware of and what emerges as the work unfolds. The Akashic Records gives us an additional intuitive lens for identifying patterns that may not yet be conscious. We aren’t trying to open every possible door. We’re trying to identify which doors are most relevant to the work the client has come to do. We can then use psychological theory, mind-body approaches, and EFT to work purposefully with the patterns, traumatic experiences, and core beliefs connected to that particular goal.
The intention is therefore not to “heal the entire human condition” within one program. The intention is to create a meaningful shift within one part of an ongoing process. This program is about bringing consciousness to what was previously unseen, making different choices around karmic patterns, releasing the emotional charge associated with relevant traumatic experiences, and loosening the core beliefs those experiences have helped reinforce. Each shift removes some of what has obstructed the expression of the True Self, allowing greater alignment to become reflected in our energy, physical experience, thoughts and emotions, and choices and actions.
Empower the True Self can be revisited at different points in a person’s life. Someone could complete Empower the True Self, integrate what emerged, and return much later with an entirely different intention or life circumstance. The next experience would not simply repeat the previous work; instead, it would begin with who that person is now and explore the patterns and barriers most relevant to their next stage of growth. We are not trying to arrive at a final, permanently healed version of ourselves. We are not trying to arrive at a final, permanently healed version of ourselves. We are continuing to heal what becomes available to us, creating more space to live in alignment with who we authentically are.
If you feel that there is a particular area of your life where old patterns, beliefs, or experiences are keeping you from living in greater alignment with who you truly are, Empower the True Self offers a focused space to explore what may be getting in the way and begin shifting it.
Learn more about Empower the True Self: a program for healing the human condition.