Are you normal?

I’m certainly not normal. I was born blond-haired, blue-eyed, and colorblind. So not only do I look different – I also see differently than “normal” people. To make matters worse, I’m left-handed… just a cesspool of recessive genes. Over time my lack of normalcy only grew worse when I started noticing other differences and making choices of my own.

Eventually I realized that “normal” was only a concept in my own mind. In fact, my “normal” wasn’t the same as someone else’s normal. Even my “normal” was unique. And in fact it was just a way of limiting myself, a concept rooted in fear to begin with.

Realize that you are not like anyone else on earth. No one on this planet is exactly the same as you are, even if you have a twin. It’s not even close. Your individual collection of experiences makes you unique.

Yet what do most people do with this uniqueness? They try to forget it. They cling to the pack, thinking that need to be like everyone else. They strive for normalcy, to be similar to everyone else.

This is pure folly, since normalcy doesn’t exist except as an imaginary concept. Have you ever met a 100% normal person? Are you normal? Or is there anything unique about you that separates you from the pack?

Throw out dumb labels

“Normal” isn’t a label worthy of your pursuit. It’s worthless. Perhaps you’re worried that if you’re too different, you’ll be ostracized. That’s true. You will be ostracized by other fear-driven normality seekers, but their acceptance is basically worthless anyway. On the bright side, when they kick you out, the ever-growing high awareness community will welcome you with open arms. Plus it’s a lot of fun to go back and tease the normality seekers afterwards.

“Abnormal” or “different” aren’t labels you should pursue either though. In this case you aim for the opposite of normal out of an egoic drive to find a sense of uniqueness. But the person you were meant to be doesn’t lie anywhere on the linear spectrum from normal to different. Comparing yourself to others isn’t going to help you. What you need is a way to compare yourself to yourself.

Get to know your higher self

The best way I’ve discovered to become the person I’m meant to be is to first go and meet that person. You can do this too, and it’s not even that difficult. You can do it in your imagination. See My Favorite Meditation for details. Basically you just visualize yourself going to a room, meeting your future self, and having a conversation with him/her. It’s a very enlightening experience.

When I did this meditation in my early 20s and met my future self in my imagination, one of the first things I noticed about him was that he was completely free of fear. He was amused by all the fear I seemed to have in me, and he would even tease me about it. If I had a problem or concern, he’d recommend a very bold and direct solution, but it often required a great deal of courage to implement. He was brutally honest and direct, never playing games or doing anything manipulative. I always knew where I stood with him. He always held me to a higher standard than I did.

I could see that his courage gave him a tremendous sense of inner peace. But I didn’t understand how I could reach that level myself. It took me many years to find out what his source of courage was. His courage came about because he saw reality a certain way – a way in which it didn’t make any sense to be afraid. It’s not that he was overcoming his fear or facing his fear. He just wasn’t experiencing any fear at all. He saw fear as nothing but an illusion, so it was pointless to be afraid. So fearlessness might be a better description than courage.

But he wasn’t a perfect success – in fact, he experienced more failure than I did. He had his own problems to handle, but he would handle them by diving in and taking action. He’d never hesitate or worry about the outcome. To him life was about action, results, experience, learning, and growth. Fear just wasn’t part of the equation.

One way of looking at this meditation is that my subconscious created this imaginary person as a projection of who it felt I could become – an idealized version of me. But perhaps on some level, this person actually exists. How this model came about, however, isn’t as important to me as how it enables me to grow.

Become your higher self

When you meet your higher self and get to know him/her, it gives you a model for your own growth. It’s a way of comparing yourself to yourself. You don’t need to worry about labels like “normal” that are based on comparing yourself to others. You’re presented with a vision that is uniquely you, one that you can actually achieve.

Year after year as I continued doing this meditation, it gave me a powerful path for personal growth. By comparing my present self to my future self, I could always see what I needed to do to take the next step. My future self became the vision of where I wanted to go. He was the person I was becoming.

My future self also had the solution to all my growth problems because he’d already solved them. I never had the problem of not knowing what to do. The challenge was always in getting myself to do it.

Eventually this vision become so strong that I felt the presence of my higher self even outside of my meditations. He was a part of my consciousness that I could tap into whenever I wanted, like accessing a living memory. Some people would define this imaginary person as a spirit guide. It certainly felt like that at times.

After a number of years, I felt a fusing of that higher self with my present self… to the point where the two became indistinguishable. I actually became the person I first envisioned in my 20s. It took more than a decade to reach this point though. And now I have another projection of a new higher self, one that is more expansive and which is helping to guide me through the next steps on this incredible journey through life. Whereas my original higher self served the purpose of helping me let go of fear, there’s a new higher self forming that seems to be here to help me learn to develop greater compassion, especially as a balance to courage.

Coming full circle

The irony is that by pursuing your own uniqueness, you’re likely to feel a lot more normal. You’ll be able to connect with people from your own inner strength instead of your fear. You will own yourself, knowing who you are and who you’re meant to be. The judgements of others, whether positive or negative, won’t knock you off course.

A strong connection to other people lies within you already. Your connection to your higher self is your connection to others, one that is always on and simply needs to be noticed. This connection is very different than third-dimensional connections based on ego and attachment. At this level you connect with others through their higher selves too. And this often has the effect of waking them up. Plus it’s a lot of fun to connect with people this way. It’s how people should connect. You simply bypass people’s fears and labels and talk to them as free spirits.

High awareness people do this very naturally. Labels and titles are irrelevant. Two high awareness people can meet for the first time, and inside of a few minutes, they’re discussing things like mission, purpose, and the meaning of life. It makes no difference if one person is wearing a suit and the other is wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt. They’ll barely even notice. Communication is high on content because such people speak as if talking directly to each other’s souls.

On the other hand, when two low awareness people meet, communication is shallow and timid. Each person feels out the other instead of communicating their true selves. They aren’t even in touch with their true selves because they identify with their egos. Egoic communication is competitive and fearful. People play silly games with each other in a vain attempt to protect themselves from potential rejection.

Conscious relationships

I remember shortly after I met Erin in 1994, we were talking on the phone one day, and I said to her, “Erin, I like you a lot, and I’d like to us to be boyfriend-girlfriend if you’d like that too.” She said yes, and we’ve been together almost 12 years now.

This might not seem like a big deal, but consider that this conversation happened before our first real date. Erin and I had only known each other for a few weeks and were just friends. In fact, I was dating someone else at the time we met. So it was a fairly bold thing to say, but it certainly moved things along quickly, since a few months later we moved in together. We could have played games with each other and dated for a long time, but it was easier and faster to just see if we both felt the same. This worked because Erin and I were both the kinds of people who didn’t need to play games with each other.

I’m often amazed at the silly machinations people go through when they’re interested in beginning a relationship with someone. Fear causes people to miss all sorts of opportunities and overcomplicate things to the point of being ridiculous. Imagine how simple relationships would be if fear were removed from the picture. If you like someone, just go tell them and ask if they feel the same. How simple is that? In a matter of minutes, you’re able to move on one way or the other. When you move beyond fear, your accuracy will increase as well, so you won’t even ask the question except when you know you’re going to get a yes. If you get a no, it just means you misread the other person, but that really isn’t a big deal. Getting rejected unblocks your energy and frees it up to attract someone else.

Awareness makes life easier

As you consciously strive to become the person you were meant to be, life becomes much easier. Actually it would be more accurate to say that life is just as hard, but your capacity for handling it grows to the point where life seems to get easier. You’re stronger, so the weight feels lighter.

What’s your vision of your higher self? If you want to become this person, take some time to get to know him/her in your imagination. Allow this vision to inspire you and to guide you. Visualize the type of person you always wanted to be, and then hold that vision until you’ve become its physical embodiment.