Most of us have manufactured a false self to replace our original, true self: our soul. We begin to build this false self from an early age as we learn from those who take care of us - in particular our mother, or primary caretaker - that some of our behaviour is unacceptable, wrong or bad. By a system of reward and withdrawal of what we want and need, or reward and punishment, we are conditioned to adjust, or completely change, our natural, instinctive way of behaving and responding. In this way, we gradually replace all of the “unacceptable” parts of our original identity, with a false, but acceptable, identity.

As infants, for example, our instinct is to cry when we want something, and to keep on crying until our needs and desires are satisfied. If our crying is rewarded by us getting what we want, then we’ll carry on with this behaviour because it’s successful from our point of view. If we are chastised or punished when we cry, or simply endure a withdrawal of attention and affection, then we learn not to cry, it’s as simple as that. We change our behaviour, change who we are, in order to get what we need.

Of course, a certain amount of conditioning is necessary if we are to fit comfortably into the family we are born into, as well as the greater society. We all need to learn what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t if we are to navigate our way through life successfully. Unfortunately, conditioning can be detrimental, not to mention harmful, to us, if those we depend on for our survival, and for love and attention, react to us or our behaviour in ways that make us feel wrong or bad, or unlovable or unimportant. When this does happen, and it happens all too often, we learn to feel ashamed of ourselves, and ashamed of our instinctive, natural actions and responses.

Feeling ashamed of who we really are causes us to hide and repress our authentic self, along with our original, instinctive, desires and feelings, beneath a manufactured false self. This false self is intended to meet with acceptance and approval, and ensure that our needs and desires are met.

Intense feelings of shame that cause deep soul wounds, and even the loss of parts of our soul, occur if our natural self and behaviour is met with scorn, ridicule, humiliation, chastisement, or any other kind of rejection from our primary caretaker. These kinds of reactions (rejections of who we are) from our “nearest and dearest” will cause us to judge ourselves as unworthy and unlovable and make us strive to bury and hide the rejected aspects of ourself so deep inside our own psyche, in the realms of our unconscious, that they will never surface again - or so we hope.

One of the more common lost soul parts we can suffer from is a loss of a sense of entitlement in some area. Most of us, due to our conditioning, have lost some of our natural feelings of entitlement to things that we should all feel entitled to: such as our right to ensure our own happiness, comfort and well-being, our entitlement to feel the feelings we feel, our entitlement to be heard and acknowledged and valued.

If we have been trained (conditioned) into being careful never to hurt other people’s feelings, even when it means that we will suffer or lose out because of it, then we have been conditioned into believing that other people’s feelings, well-being and comfort, are more important than our own; in fact, we have been conditioned to believe that other people are more important than we are.

A more healthy perspective (especially in situations where all things are equal) is to regard our own feelings and needs as being of equal importance to those of anyone else. This is a more democratic way of relating to others because it ensures equality between people: no-one is more privileged than anyone else. This new pattern of behaviour is also in alignment with the Goddess energies, which seek equality rather than inequality and the prioritising and privileging of one person’s needs and comfort over another.

Our heart will tell us when it is appropriate and compassionate to subordinate our desires and needs for the sake of another’s, such as when we are dealing with the needy and the vulnerable, but if we find ourselves living in such a way that we always seem to lose out, or are suffering or unhappy because we are always putting other people first, then we have almost certainly lost our natural sense of entitlement to happiness and to having our wants and needs fulfilled.

If this is the case, we need to re-claim that missing part of our identity and integrate it “back” into our personality. Just by becoming conscious that a particular piece of our identity - our soul - is missing, and deciding to change our behaviour accordingly, begins the process of restoration. By imagining that our missing pieces are once again part of us also assists in our healing.

Sometimes, there can be a loss of a sense of entitlement to feel and/or express our emotions and feelings. For example, we might feel angry at the way someone has behaved towards us, but if we have been conditioned to believe our feelings are always wrong, bad, or inappropriate, we will never quite feel justified(entitled) to having feelings of anger. We will almost certainly have lost our sense of entitlement to feel certain emotions if we have been chastised for having them, or they have been discounted, disregarded, trivialised, scorned, or otherwise invalidated in our childhood.

Again, if our presence was ignored when we were a child, or our views and words discounted, our feelings, wants and needs disregarded, then we will have lost the idea and feeling that we are worthy of attention, or of being listened to or considered in any way. We will feel instead that we are unimportant, that we don’t matter. Even if these feelings drive us towards achieving success as an adult, we can still be haunted by what we feel is the “real” truth about ourselves: that whatever dizzying heights we may reach in life, we are still not valuable or worthy or important enough to “count” in any sense that matters.

We will never feel truly complete as long as there are “missing pieces” in our character and identity, and we will never be able to reach our full potential and play the part we were born to play in life if we don’t have access to all of our self. If we are to heal ourselves , however, we need to be painfully honest with ourselves, and courageous enough to face the fact that we are wounded, incomplete individuals. Only by facing the truth about ourselves, by seeing where we are incomplete, where we are lacking and wounded, can we begin the process of restoration.

The quest for our soul requires us to journey inwards. To go within, to check our feelings and thoughts. To acknowledge where and when we feel ashamed and embarrassed, when and where we seek to avoid, evade, cover up, hide, conceal and resist. There, in these dark places, are our wounds and our missing pieces to be found: in our pain and our discomfort; but when we identify them we can then reclaim them.

Next time, in The Quest for the Soul, I’ll be talking about how only by acknowledging our wounds and our imperfections will we be able to heal ourselves - and reach enlightenment, if that is your goal.