Tom wrote:

I think it’s a good idea to distinguish between “awareness” and “narration”. What is often referred to as “self-awareness” is the ability to conceive of oneself as a character in a story and to narrate the events which happen to this character. Awareness, on the other hand, is our response to our environment. It is entirely composed of immediate feelings, not thoughts or even integrated perceptions. Awareness does not require narration because awareness does not insist upon explanations for what’s happening. Explanations are necessary to narration because that’s what makes the story tie together.

When I’m talking about a “higher self”, I’m talking about awareness without narration. It’s a direct apprehension (but not necessarily comprehension) of reality. I call it “higher” only by convention. In fact, its more basic and hence might be more accurately described as lower.

Achieving a state of awareness without narration reveals to us the extent to which our version of reality is infested with imaginary objects and relationships which makes it a powerfully revelatory and potentially life-changing experience. Thus it is often thought of as superior consciousness.

We do not have more than one form of awareness. We can, however, make up as many narrations of our experience as we like.

I think this explanation is good as far as it goes, but I think you’re being way too simplistic in boiling everything down to “narration”. There are elements of “coloured perception” masking the HGA which go far deeper than “narration” would suggest. I much prefer to make the distinction between awareness of what’s actually real, and awareness of what’s imaginary, and I’d replace your usage of “narration” with the latter term. Absorbed’s “facing fears” thread we had some time ago was a good illustration of the kind of thing I’m talking about.

Tom wrote:

To talk about one’s “true nature” is to narrate some place for oneself in the universe that is correct, some action that is purer or more appropriate for one than some other action. This is, I think, a mistake.

This is indeed a common way of looking at “true nature,” but it’s not the one I employ. I actually don’t like the qualifier “true” very much, and prefer to just use “nature” (with the unspoken understanding that it is one’s real nature rather than what one imagines one’s nature to be that is being referred to).

The significance of the “true” qualifier in the way I use it is to denote what’s left when all the imaginary elements of nature have been stripped away, making it pretty much an opposite usage to the one you describe above. The same goes for “true will”; “true will” is not some cosmologically laid down consecrated course that you’ve been destined to follow, but the tendency to action that you have when you are free from the imaginary phantasms that distract you down roads that are not conducive to your actual non-imaginary nature.

“True”, in this sense, doesn’t signify “special” as much as it does “free from all the false crap.” It’s something of a negative definition, and in practical terms there’s no a priori reason why any number of different acts couldn’t be in accordance with true will at any given point in time. Theoretically there is arguably only one such act at any given time, but we can safely assume the inadequacy of our measuring equipment will forever prevent us from actually discovering what that is even if it does exist, so we can happily discard the idea for all practical purposes.