True Self

If we could completely identify with the false self, it wouldn't cause us distress--it would just be who we are. The pain it causes arises from something deeper within us that feels constricted by this identity and suffers when we are not living fully. This deeper intelligence within us feels the pain of being caught in a web of stories and beliefs, scripts and behaviors that cuts us off from our true nature and potential. If we do not realize the expansive possibilities that are our birthright, we suffer.

-- from John Welwood's Toward a Psychology of Awakening,
(Shambhala, 2002, 140).