https://www.midjourney.com
The Higher Self is like a game player and the lower self is the avatar in the game.
But, the avatar isn’t really conscious, yet the lower self has its own consciousness.
The metaphor has its limits. Lower self is only an avatar in the sense that it resembles the essence of the Higher Self and exists in a limited world doing its own thing, but is under the influence of the Higher Self’s synchronistic arrangements and intuitive nudges.
Better metaphor would be if the Sims game were a VR game where the player can arrange things and then put on the VR goggle and experience the character through its eyes and make micro-choices within the situation arranged back when the goggles were off.
Even more accurate would be, when goggles are on, there is no memory of being outside the game. And even more accurate is, player’s consciousness is split, partly existing inside the game with no memory of outside, and outside the game arranging the Sim’s situation, simultaneously.
The key point is that lower and Higher Self are functionally independent (separate things) but coupled in terms of influence.
For example, when you get psychic impression, intuitive revelations, or even dream messages from the Higher Self, you can get those while simultaneously being fully aware of your own self-awareness—but you don’t sense or feel that YOU are the one who created those. They seem to come from an outside source beyond you.
Therefore, whatever it is, it has a mind of its own. You can defy its advice and will, and it can do things that you don’t want to have done (like an accident or illness that forces you to slow down in life and re-evaluate your priorities).
So in terms of function, Higher Self and lower self are independent. But both may be two instances of the same ultimate consciousness.
Imagine if you got in a time machine and went back 5 minutes. You’d meet your past self. This past self has a mind of his/her own, and you do too, but you are the same person ultimately, just two different instances. If one of you then went to live in Thailand for 20 years, and the other lived in the suburbs of California for 20 years, and then met again… your personality would diverge because your circumstances are different.
So imagine if two instances of you had one be born into spacetime as a human, and the other into or stayed within time-space (spirit/astral/hyperspace)—how would you differ, if you were the same at the core but had entirely different environments? That’s how I see the higher and lower self being like two sides of the same coin but with the capacity to act independently.
Tom Montalk – https://montalk.net