To the degree that struggle and tension exist in a personality, the various aspects of
consciousness will be at odds with one another. You who are unaware of the meaning of the
struggle are trying to identify with one or several of these aspects of consciousness without knowing
what the true self is, where it is located, or how it can be found in this maze of discord. You
wonder if you are your best qualities, or if you are your over-severe conscience which annihilates you
for your negative traits. Or are you perhaps the destructive demon within you? Which is your best
self? Is it your rage at the demon in you or your total negation of its existence? Whether individuals
know it or not, this inner struggle and search is ongoing, and the more conscious the struggle is, the
better. Any path of self-development must sooner or later come to terms with these questions —
with the deep problem of self-identity.
It is a human distortion to identify with any of the above-mentioned aspects. You are neither
your negative traits nor your self-punishing superimposed conscience, nor even your positive traits.
Even though you have managed to integrate the latter into the fullness of your being, this is not the
same as identifying with them. It is more accurate to say that you are that part of you which
managed this integration by determining, deciding, acting, thinking, and willing, so that you could
absorb into your self what was previously an appendage. Each aspect of consciousness possesses a
will of its own, as those of you who do the pathwork know. As long as you are blindly involved in
the struggle and therefore submerged in it, each of these various aspects will control you in turn
because the real self that could determine your identification differently has not yet found its power.
Your blind involvement enslaves you and inactivates your creative energy. This missing sense of self
leads to despair.